I am finding it hard to say where truth resides.

At the moment I am thinking it must be a mental state and an appraisal of the correctness of that mental state where a belief is either correct or inaccurate although I can't clarify what a belief is other than a type of mental state or mental attitude.

But this position does seem to slide towards idealism where we can only reflect on mental states.

I feel like the truth is a state of affairs where a mental state happens to be an accurate representation of the external world. But we can never be sure that these to things correspond. I feel like the truth in a sentence and even any meaning in a sentence must be in the mind or head.

I feel like the truth could be whatever is the case. Maybe just whatever exists. A search for the truth could be an attempt to live and act authentically.

I think a lie could be called inaccuracy, deliberate inaccuracy, propaganda, misinformation misrepresentation all of which have a les metaphysical feel to them.

(...)and thought about it long and hard. — Vera Mont

What does this entail?

I feel like a lot of thinking does not necessarily resolve an issue. I tend to be agnostic about things that don't have an answer and on some issues I just have to gamble that my viewpoint is the right one.

I feel like the agnostic position is least likely to be wrong unless it is an issue which involves a clear fact like that the heart pumps blood around the body.

Some issues just seem to involve entrenched positions and hyperbole. I feel like we don't make process without truly constructive honest debate that can get us out of entrenched positions and tribalism.

I cannot empathise with people who become aligned to one set of doctrines and cannot defend any other position or question their own.

Some discourse is just so stupid and shallow and defensive that it seems there is no real intention to debate or rationality involved.

I have found self proclaimed skeptics are often selective skeptics whose skepticism is one directional. The skeptic movement itself may have entrenched division by its own rhetoric and sense of superiority.

Individuals that want power and influence seem to require a schism and people who display blind allegiance and will defend them no matter what.
Sometimes it is tactical to support the opposing side on some issues where they have more influence making for uneasy bedfellows.

I feel that we should be anti suicide and do everything to preserve and improve the quality of everyone's life.

"Motivated reasoning"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

"Motivated reasoning (motivational reasoning bias) is a cognitive and social response in which individuals, consciously or unconsciously, allow emotion-loaded motivational biases to affect how new information is perceived. Individuals tend to favor evidence that coincides with their current beliefs and reject new information that contradicts them, despite contrary evidence."

It can affect anyone.

Out of interest what drew you to Sartre's work. I find it hard to understand. Was he an atheist? Pro science? Pro religion? Did he have a technical explanation of how consciousness is possible and how it may be created? Did he support idealism or panpsychism or dualism?

Consciousness is nothing in the sense that it is an empty stage whereupon being appears. — quintillus

A stage is not nothing though.

The human visual system that allows us to see is highly complex and not nothing like wise all the other perceptual systems and in the case of broadcasting a television is not nothing nor a radio or computer etc.

Consciousness requires a preexisting observer which I call the self. I am aware of myself as well as perceptions at each moment. The self may be invisible to others or even non material but I don't equate that with nothing.

A theatre stage has physical features and dimensions on which a play can be performed.

Continually making the given state nothing — quintillus

I have memories from childhood and throughout my life. I don't see how this fits your picture.
My experiences are not eradicated as soon as they happen but linger in memory for varying degrees of time including a life time. For example I can name several dead relatives and tell you the address of the house I last lived in at the age of 7.
So did Sartre and Bradley et al give any concrete examples for their beliefs?

Apparently energy cannot not be created or destroyed so that also does not seem to fit into a nihilation picture.

In that case if there is "harm" in giving birth to children. The harm is not human. But from other animals that "imposed our humanness on us". Should we then go out and blame all human hardship on australopithicus? — Benj96

I believe in free will based on my own experience and as I have pointed out in one of my last posts humans give reasons for having children and have stated beliefs that can be examined unlike any other animal.

Human society is built on reason not on blindly responding to natural urges. I am gay so I am not going to accidentally impregnate a woman whilst drunk or in a fit of lust so I can sympathise with heterosexuals maybe succumbing to wild lust. But strangely most humans are successful at controlling family size ( and even some species restrict population size).

Parents are causally responsible for harm because they are a necessary component in human harm occurring what ever their intentions.
However much I am enjoying an aspect of life (Like the music of Handel or a takeaway) It doesn't make me consider forcing it on someone else. I know most people don't listen to baroque music and I don't like sport and don't like that being forced on me. Having some niche tastes and viewpoints and cognitive issues like ASD and ADHD I can see how one size does not fit all. I cannot just assume other people are like me and replicate that.

We are all going to die anyway and barring an afterlife scenario go extinct and be unaware that we ever existed. I am personally frightened of suddenly ceasing to exist. But when you are in the thick of life it is hard to imagine nothingness and having no concerns and never seeing anyone again. This is one area where I think the religious and other believers in an afterlife have an advantage. They are offering their children eternal life. But unfortunately I see no evidence for the major religions claims.

Just like many a tyrant has claimed on the past. Ironically they pursue obliteration and/or various forms and extensions of human suffering rather than tempering them. An aim with an absolute solution is always fanatical and often antithetical to its proposed purpose. — I like sushi

It should be a personal choice not to create a child based on conscience. I don't know which tyrants tried to obliterate suffering. A lot of current western governments claim to want to end human suffering in contradiction to their policies. The same with the general public who's actions go against their alleged moral stances.

You can have a (transhuman?) policy of ending human suffering without advocating antinatalism. We just know it is not working and is unlikely to work. It also flies in the face of the natural cycle of change and decay - call it entropy if you will.

I don't see why people get angry about antinatalism considering it is a minority held position that is having no impact as far as I can see and their are billions of humans a live to day and many more being born all the time.

I have a lot of anecdotes about my life but they are usually relevant so excuse me if I seem to overshare. I am a frank person.

I think philosophy should be based on real life and lived experience and not exist in a closed off abstract domain.

My dad worked in hospitals and I once asked my mum if he ever worked on a children's ward and she said something like "No because he doesn't have an affinity with children" I asked if she knew that before she married him and she replied yes.

She then went on to have six children with him. Neither of them were good parents and he was particularly unreasonable.

For example when my late oldest brother left the Plymouth Brethren for a Pentecostal church he soon after developed MS and my dad told him he developed MS as a punishment from God for leaving the Brethren. My mother also told me that her cousin died in a bike car collision because he left the brethren and had a career in music. My aunt later told me an open bible was found next to the bed in my deceased cousins bedroom.

The church we grew up in focused on original sin and hell and damnation so like a lot of Christians my parents believed in the principal of total depravity and that they were giving birth to children cursed from birth and heading for hell unless they become religious drones.

So I don't see how you can justify having children with someone that doesn't like them and like a lot of religious people under the premise they are cursed from the outset. The bible and other religions also have a built in narrative to justify human such as the Adam and Eve story.

As a child I asked my mum why brambles had prickles on them that could hurt humans and animals and she said it was all to do with the fall of man. That any suffering and problem in nature was to blame on Adam and Eve.
So parents do give rationalisations for having children that can be and examined and are not just like animals in the wild spontaneously procreating.

"American libertarian and tax protestor. Larken Rose was sentenced to 15 months in prison for willful failure to file income tax returns in five years in which the government alleged that his income was approximately $500,000. He was released from prison in December 2006."

https://www.readthistwice.com/author/larken-rose

So total defeat is not ensured. A person CAN defend against 'existential depression,' and experience 'good moments?' Is it possible to increase the number of 'good moments?' — universeness

I am quite sympathetic to elements of the psychodynamic/psychoanalytic aspect of mind. We don't always understand our own motives and unconscious or forces from past events such as memories that are undermining us.
A thought or an idea may act like a virus multiplying and eating away at your confidence..

Philosophy showed me that most ideas are contestable and nothing is fixed. I think some nihilism and existential despair if not all and might be created by helplessness and past experiences and them being reinforced. I became a binge drinker and seemed to rely on smoking cigarettes to deal with stress.
But these things may have also been counterproductive. I can't judge to what extent but now I don't do either thing and am the least unhappy I have been as an adult.

Also mental health services can always benefit from reform.

I think you can be wrong that life is meaningless or hopeless and therapists should ideally be able to challenge one's thoughts gently. But you can also be right that life is bleak and has intractable problems but we need to develop coping mechanisms and not punish ourselves I suppose.

A command can be followed or ignored. I follow the instruction manual on a new device effectively.

How do you intend to preserve positive legal presidents and concepts of rights?

Also I do not understand how consciousness is nothingness. The only thing we are aware of conscious states and we can't be aware of entities not available to consciousness or independent of it. Idealism I suppose.

I thought that the law a command with consequences for not heeding the command?

I have found that studying philosophy made me less nihilistic. I think that some existential dilemmas are mistaken and combine with low self worth to trap someone.

I became cynical and skeptical about everything and felt trapped in my problems but various things happened including medication and an autism spectrum diagnosis that changed some of my perspectives and gave me tools to fight. I am a wary of philosophical positions that have an element of making things appear futile or mechanical.

Counsellors, psychiatrist and psychologists should be more aware of and sympathetic to existential angst and not treat as hopeless or a character flaw.

Another thing is that the law actually protects large groups of vulnerable people by giving them rights and protections so it is probably indispensable.

I cannot object to people trying to improve the quality of life including if this involves constructing some kind of moral guidance like the legal system but I don't think it has truth value and cannot resolve moral disputes.

The value of moral truths is for resolving moral disputes such as concerning assisted suicide, abortion, the ethics of economic and political stances, the degree of personal responsibility, determing who has if anyone has obligations, the status of non human animals and the environment. Whether an act has the property of being right or wrong.

It seems that what will happen is people competing for the predominance of their personal ethics and interests but not with a real commitment to a rigorous moral calculation. Sometimes the most utilitarian position may triumph.

I think that creating children is the source of all human harm. It is the only way human harms can enter the world and creating a new child is not a solution. People will always die and experience an array of harms they didn't consent to before hand.

It would be good if there was somekind of positive afterlife to reward struggling through this.

No children equals no genocides,wars, murder,famine misogyny, slavery, racism, cancer deaths, MS, inequality and so on. It is a positive philosophy that says no to suffering and false hope.

Correctional institutions are overpopulated — quintillus

Is this a moral claim and are there any other invalid institutions?

Are you a prison abolitionist? I support prison abolition but recognise the need to protect people from antisocial behaviour.

Consciousness is nothingness — quintillus

I don't know how you reached this conclusion and what supports it because it is certainly not my experience.

The words you have written have acted on my consciousness and instigated this response. The law is just words. These words have meaning and we clearly respond to the meaning of words as I am doing now.

I do believe in free will and I don't believe in the causal picture that says causes must be determinate. But in this area we simply have a lack of knowledge we have no explanation for consciousness or volitional action but things work anyway in the absence of a complete explanation.

What do you intend to replace the law with?

I did a degree in Philosophy and Psychology so I am aware of the major positions in moral Philosophy .

Such as deontology, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, utilitarianism, consequentialism and objections to each position etc. The trolley problem. The is-ought problem and so on.

I find moral error theory the most compelling.

The fact that there are competing moral standpoints raises the question of how you choose between them.

Which materialist scientistic view of action origination wholly fails to comprehend that human freedom is a constant self-movement thrust into a not yet future. — quintillus

This seems to strip any relationship between a human and the external world.

But as we know we are subject to physical and mental illness affecting our behaviour.

It seems incoherent to posit no causal role for the physical world we seem to be in and our self. Language has a causal role and affects our emotions and appetites. All input can have an effect from profound to neutral.

One thing I would agree on is that the law is arbitrary and non binding and should not be reified but is rather a tool to encourage certain behaviours and encourage temporary stability.

We can lock people in prison for societies safety even without invoking a legal or moral framework just as a form of self defence. We agree to follow laws because some of them appear to benefit us.

I mentioned elsewhere that I was brought up to believe that radio and television were immoral and shopping on Sunday and women cutting their hair etc.

That seems to prove to me morality is just a label affixed to certain behaviours and things you want to control or prohibit and it is very effective.

My understanding of moral terminology is how it has been used upon me so I am not sure what other moral sense there is. If I was reared differently maybe I would have developed different moral intuitions but I can't know.

I don't have the authority to dictate what other people ought to do but I do voice my personal preferences. By normative do you mean oughts and preferences we ought impose on society. Objectively desirable standards extricable from the natural state of affairs? The most common evaluations of behaviour?

Can you think of an area of my life from which I should have developed the correct moral intuitions? Certainly not parents, school, church or Margaret Thatcher's society that I grew up in.

I believe that the outcome of a thorough moral calculation would be to condemn wide spread swathes of behaviours and why not?

Are we assuming a moral calculation would applaud the current state of affairs?

Do you believe, Andrew, that there are not any sound reasons for morality and that it's only a matter of personal 'sentiments' or arbitrary (relative) customs? — 180 Proof

What you seem to be referring to is problem solving. I believe there are optimal ways to solve problems but I don't think that this requires the label moral.

What does the term moral add to a description of normal altruistic and cooperative behaviour? Does it make it an obligation or is it a label of praise?

We do not tend to refer to all cooperative and altruistic acts as moral such as any job that benefits the public and their welfare. Morality usually entails something beyond a description of an action to praising behaviour as having a special quasi supernatural character or in the case of religions as warranting afterlife reward or karma.

I have a problem with justifying ought claims and with whether any of our behaviour on earth is fundamentally meaningful.
I have a nihilistic attitude in the face of death which seems to eradicate the meaning of temporary activities here and now. In religion and the way I was brought up there was something transcendent to aspire to. I feel like life which always culminates in death is an insoluble problem. We can only alleviate suffering and slow down the dying process.

I do think an actual afterlife would make a big difference to morality especially for karmic reincarnation views. It seems possible that humans created society on partially supernatural premises not on atheistic ideas or the notion we have just one life an not transcendent meaning or values.

Morality arbitrary? — Benj96

But morality does not mean harm reduction or "do no harm" that is the arbitrary linking of the word morality to another phenomena in my opinion. Harm and harm reduction don't need extra moral terms attached to them to point to something.

In one sense the word morality doesn't refer to anything it is rather attached to a set of attitudes and values which people disagree on.

As with the antinatalism thing a lot of these disagreements are intractable.

So long as I and people like me exist, Anti-natalism is reduced to a hypocritical state of constant cynicism and complaint. A cult of mass suicide idealists. — Benj96

At least 700,000 people commit suicide each year and I suppose it is convenient for others that they don't stick around and complain and demand a solution to what ailed them.

Antinatalism is a logical conclusion of a harm based morality and other extreme utilitarian calculations. No one should have the right to inflict suffering on others. So your harm based morality seems to involve ignoring or cancelling out dissenting voices. I think you need another basis for your morality to preserve procreating as acceptable.

I was just pointing out the conclusions of a harm based morality and you have shown the controversy of who does the calculating and what factors they include.

But my own brother died after being diagnosed with primary progressive MS which left him paralysed and he was tube fed and could only communicate by blinking and then died at 47. One plus side is that he never gave up and didn't want to die but he did say he would not have children if they would inherit his condition.
But nobody can say he was not seriously harmed and had his life cut short prematurely. And when I am enjoying things it never makes me feel like taking the risk of exposing someone else to this kind of harm or any harm. My pleasure does no justify anyone else's suffering. So I think the act of creating children is fatal for certain moral positions in my opinion.

I am glad you are enjoying your own existence and hope that may remain a perpetual state.

In my opinion we don't have an explanation for human volitional action and how thoughts can lead to behaviour.

But we know that language can cause or inhibit behaviour and considering the law is just language I don't see why it can't cause and inhibit action

For example your post has caused me to respond and someone saying "come here" will make me respond and a sign saying "do not enter" will cause me not to enter.

Whether I agree with the letter of the law, being aware of legislation will influence my behaviour.

Also most people understand the motivation of the law and why it seeks to constrain their behaviour. Humans are sophisticated creatures rather than causally like Domino pieces and can weigh up the pros and cons of abiding by the law. I have the feeling the law itself is a tool to manipulate people in a way that is a complex causal nexus and peoples reasons for respond to it in various ways is also multifaceted complex and can involve self serving motives and power dynamics.

That the hypothesis Morality as Cooperation Strategies is able to explain virtually all the commonalities and differences of such a huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set robustly supports this hypothesis' scientific truth. — Mark S

It doesn't explain my moral values and also my moral skepticism.

I grew up with a biblical morality enforced on me which included edicts such as don't shop on a Sunday and Women shouldn't cut their hair or wear make up. Radio and Television were viewed as immoral. My own intuition as a child until now is that hitting a child is wrong but that used to be legal and widely supported and I was in a minority.

Cooperation itself is not inherently moral unless you arbitrarily attach that label to it.

I think it is irrelevant what commonalities may be found on a motivated/biased analysis of data on moral beliefs. Something is not true based on majority opinion.

This seems to me like a way to manipulate people towards an enforced collective goal that you are asserting we all share. It seems like social engineering that will find ways to silence dissenters.
Lots of elements of morality are diluted by making it synonymous with what appears to be subconscious cooperation strategies. Such as autonomy and personal conscience.

As someone who grew up in a severe branch of the Plymouth Brethren, that has made me value the truth. We had to read a chapter of the bible and pray every morning and pray before bed time.

Sometimes we went to church 5 times a week. Sunday morning breaking of bread, Sunday evening gospel meeting. Every other Saturday ministry and an open air gospel meeting where we stood on a street while the elders preached (via shouting) to the public.
(I found that embarrassing as a socially anxious person). Prayer meeting Tuesday evening and bible readings on Thursday and on Friday at another church. (The only other sanctioned local Plymouth Brethren Church 20+ miles away.)

We weren't allowed to watch television, women couldn't speak in church meetings, women couldn't cut or style their hair. We weren't allowed to listen to the radio as well because a leader in the brethren hierarchy had declared that kind of thing a tool of the devil.
We were not allowed to shop on sunday and when I did on one occasion my mother blew a fuse and refused to wrap up my birthday presents for the next day and was upset the whole next day.

This Church like however many others believed in biblical inerrancy which is totally unsupported and biblical contradictions and inconsistencies have been recognised for centuries. It was also a" hell and damnation" sermon every sunday and waiting for the end times. And if you questioned any of this you got anger so you didn't bother.

I feel that this was all abusive and a profound waste of my time and after leaving at 17 and rejecting their bogus morality it made me suspicious of any unsupported/unjustified moral claims.

But did they or do they really believe it or was it an entirely faith or fear based belief, or a mixture of social control, fearmongering, hope and conformity etc?

To my mind that level of indoctrination warrants someone to put a very high value on the truth including for one's own sanity.

You could say that there was a hierarchy of truth.

I believe that fundamental truths about reality would be valuable to all in terms of a framework for acting.

From truths about what harms us such as drowning or falling from a height. To truths about politics,how to do heart surgery and the fairest and optimal way to run a society. There could be metaphysical truths about the meaning or meaninglessness of life.

Morality refers to minimising harm. — Benj96

Why? That seems arbitrary and tautologous where the term morality is attached randomly to one set of behaviours or concepts. We can reduce harm without asserting it has an extra moral character.

It is a form of utilitarianism that has led to extreme or absurd conclusions such as killing one healthy person to save a hundred and hence not valuing individual life.

Or antinatalism and related positions where extinction is preferable to life because of the inevitability of harms associated with life (I actually support the antinatalist conclusion that life is too harmful to warrant proliferating.)

Then there are issues like consent that don't fit into this picture. Should something be imposed on a person or people without their consent for the greater good . It then shows that we have an array of non harm related moral concerns. Including self determination, character, obligations etc

I think that morality has a tautology problem.

For example a lot of words refer to things like "Cat" and "Kitchen sink" and mental state words like "Pain" and "Colour".

It is not clear what "morality" refers to and it seems that it refers to whatever you want it to quite arbitrarily.

I don't think that moral language can refer to anything concrete unless it refers to some kind of metaphysical moral domain or transcendent god given or quasi religious laws. That is why it seems that what you attach the term to usually is an arbitrary preference but with no inherent metaphysical moral properties.

In some sense and as Hans-Georg Moeller roughly says in one of his "carefree wandering" videos using moral language can be harmful and imbue destructive acts with a moral credibility. The Nazis can invoke moral sentiment in their actions as they did. It is a recipe for sanctioning actions without due warrant or scrutiny I suppose.

You could just as easily say "I live in a big white house with four columns supporting a portico on Pennsylvania Avenue," and people could find the house all right, yet the statement might still be untrue. — Vera Mont

Yes people can lie
but the point was that when verbal directions successfully get you somewhere you want to go then they must be transmitting truth. Words must transmit facts.

I can't work out what this entails exactly but it seems to mean we can represent facts in language. This may require a theory of what language or mental representations are.

I have a map of my home city and I could guide you without a map to the two houses I spent my childhood in. It seems my brain has stored loads of facts that I can use on a daily basis including the basic meanings of thousands of words. Some basic math facts and procedures. It could be similar to a computer's memory except a computer is not conscious of it's memories or their truth value.

I am just thinking aloud here but truth and falsity do seem to be evaluations we can make of mental states or properties available to consciousness and the act of consciously evaluating.

But it seems we actually have a large amount of verifiable facts available to our mind which I think serves a good foundation for forming further factual beliefs. Coming to think of it conscious states may be required for evaluations of truth.

What leads to relativism isn't that there's no truth, it's that there's too much truth. The volume of truth is incomprehensibly immense. — Judaka

I was feeling like this yesterday. There is potential infinitude of facts and perspectives with different layers of truth.

But in my latest post I have decided that all we have to deal with is the truth of our current moment. That moment could contain profound truths however.

It seems like Philosophy's use of premises and conclusion is valuable. Are the premises valid and does the conclusion follow and that gives us a tool to respond to a lot of claims, ideas and information quickly.

Do cripples value crutches? — 180 Proof

People value different things at different times. Most people are selective skeptics and ideologically motivated reasoners.

You could look at it like this.

Every moment or so we are faced with information in our experiences and have to decide what to do with it.

So the requirement for truth in this scenario is to be able to act on some basis, to be motivated to make reasoned decisions.
But we don't have to question everything all at once to act. We probably have a distinct manageable set of input to assess the truth of.

I don't think we have enough instincts to survive like an animal in the wild so we live in societies with ongoing shifting narratives, values and paradigms we need to assess.

In this scenario I think a philosophers quest for truth is somewhat dubious because it seems psychologically more likely that the philosopher is trying to either prop up some of societies pre-existing paradigms/values or advocate for his or her own ideology rather than being unbiased.

I assume you don't believe in in the deity Ahura Mazda - like any gods, he can't be disprove, but I am assuming you live as though he doesn't exist. That's my point. — Tom Storm

No I actively disbelieve in any current religions and gods. I believe they don't exist because the evidence points to the fact that they are man made. I am not agnostic about things that could easily be man made.

I am agnostic about the basic concept of a fundamental first-cause type, intelligent, sentient creator deity.

I don't live as if I know that there is no God or no afterlife or as if I have moral certainties.

I think that a lot of decisions could be described as faith based because we don't know if we are right or have certainty and can't guarantee consequences.

Part of my own life long motivation struggles is based on not knowing what I should do, what risks I can take, if any of it means anything.

Isn't living like you don't know functionally no different than living like you don't believe? — Tom Storm

I don't think so. Imagine if someone is suicidal for mental health reasons. I would want to give them a reason to live. They may have formed the belief that life is pointless and meaningless. False beliefs can motivate people do harmful things and reach bad conclusions.

I don't know if life is inherently meaningful and I have been in this situation myself. I am now in the situation that not knowing means that I don't rule out possibilities.

Not knowing can mean hope and possibility as well as anxiety and uncertainty. False beliefs can mean false hope or inappropriate despair.

I do think we are in an existential dilemma without answers when it comes to deciding how to live. But I do think we can explore the truth value in our beliefs. I don't how we can decide whose values we can run society on but currently we rely on democracy and political and ideological fights some of which appears to be pure propaganda.

Personally, I think not having a belief in an afterlife makes many of us more concerned about the only life we do have — Tom Storm

One issue about the truth is what to do after you have discovered it. How would you react if there was proven to be an afterlife? And how should we react if we could prove there was no afterlife and why?

I am an agnostic about things like this. I think that living one's life under assumptions about the unknown could be living falsely.

I think that if we don't know something we should live as if we don't know it.
A trivial example is if you are going to visit your mum. and you don't know whether she is home or not.

You could visit her to try and find out and risk a wasted journey or phone her etc but it would be inappropriate to assume she wasn't home without trying to find out. (I can probably think of better examples in the future.)

But you can compare it to Pascal's wager and whether there is anything to lose by believing or not believing in God.