Did you choose to be born? Do you choose to die? Not everything is of your own choosing. — Wayfarer

Yep.

But some things are of your own choosing. And convincing yourself that you had no choice when you plainly might have done otherwise is... unwise? A recipe for disfunction.

You made me say it.

The religious only follow their god because they so choose.
— Banno

My conscience is captive to the word of God. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
— Martin Luther — Wayfarer

Yes, there is something unsettling in such certainty... the denial that one might have chosen otherwise. Luther excusing his own sins.

Here's the "argument" from the OP:

This is simply the plain truth. For rhetorical purposes, they will try to avoid the plain truth but it is what it is and when you break down what they say when they're being honest- you will see that for all their noble-sounding talk which is meant to propound the alleged morality of their position.... they lack of a basis for morality and are moral relativists. They don't believe in morality. Morality from such a stance is whatever you think it is- if one is consistent. — Ram

It invokes an impressive number of non sequiturs. But let's set those aside and instead note that choosing to follow god's will does not absolve us from choice. That is, as they themselves will profess, it remains up to each of us to choose what to do and what not to do. Those who profess that there is an objective good decided by their god also admit that it can be chosen or rejected.

The fact of choice, and the issues of direction of fit, are ineliminable.

That is, the problem alluded to in the OP applies as much to the religious as to the secular. The religious only follow their god because they so choose.

...if we adopt the Christian language game in which God is the embodiment of goodness... — Tom Storm

Yep. It's a common Christian response to the Euthyphro.

Why ought we adopt that game?

The argument you present relocates the normative element into a definition. It, and the is/ought gap, are still there, just shuffled sideways a bit.

You've read previously about Anscombe's shopping list. This is much the same thing; the difference between a shopping list and an itemised receipt is not found in the items on the list, but the intent we attach to it - to what we do with the list.

Metaphysician Undercover believes it is illegitimate in some way. — Ludwig V

If you think Meta has convincingly shown that numbers do not exist, then I suppose that's an end to this discussion. And to mathematics.

But I hope you see the incoherence of his position.

You presume the sequence "this is the case" is followed by a judgement "this ought be the case", then show that this is muddled.

Yep.

That sequence is added by you, not inherent in my post.

Even if we could demonstrate that God exists, it does not follow that we ought to act in any particular way. — Tom Storm

Yep.

Even if we had before us is the undoubted word of god, it does not follow that we ought do as he says.

It remains open for us to do as the book says, or not.

There's a cut missing in these considerations. One that has been known to philosophers for a centuries, but hasn't transferred to the general consciousness.

We can look around the world and see how things are. And broadly, we find ourselves in agreement that there are purses and puppies and clouds. We agree as to how things are.

We can also look around the world and think about how things ought be. Again, broadly, we find ourselves in agreement that it's best not to steal stuff or kick puppies.

Now what we want is dependent on what is the case. One can't steal a purse if there are no purses, nor kick the pup if there are no pups.

But that things are indeed arranged in a certain way says nothing about how they ought be arranged. That there are purses tells us nothing about how those purses ought be distributed. That there are puppies tells us nothing about how we ought treat them.

And generally, that the world is arranged in a certain way does not tell us about how it ought be arranged.

Two aspects of this are salient to this thread.

That we have evolved in a certain way tells us nothing about how we ought behave. Even supposing we are disposed to act in a certain way by evolution, it does not follow that we ought act in that way. It remains open that we ought act in a way contrary to evolution.

The second is the more general point that while we can find out how things are by looking around at the world, we can't use that method to find out how things ought to be. More generally, while science tells us how things are, it cannot tell us how things ought be.

The area that examines how things ought be is ethics. And it's worth reading a bit bout it, especially in regard to the logic of ought sentences.

Well, I'm pleased you had a read. I suspect the trouble might be that you want a theory of inner states, while Austin wants to show that the philosophical pressure to construct such a theory is illusory. For you, perceptual explanation requires structured phenomenal states, but that is exactly the assumption under dispute, not a neutral starting point. For you, something like “phenomenal structure is explanatorily necessary” is axiomatic; Austin treats it as a philosophical posit whose motivation has evaporated once ordinary perceptual talk is taken seriously. He's showing that explaining a perceptual error does not require analysing an inner state into veridical and delusive components. he shows that nothing forces us into the ontology of phenomenology.

You were claiming that numbers "exist", and how to be, is to be a value. Now you've totally changed the subject to "assigning a value". — Metaphysician Undercover

Same thing. Again, not my problem that you don't understand this.

Sure, and those rules are axioms about "mathematical objects". When you were in grade school, were you taught that "1", "2", and "3" are numerals, which represent numbers? Notice, "2" is not a symbol with meaning like the word "notice" is. It's a symbol which represents an object known as a number. In case you haven't been formally educated in metaphysics, that's known as Platonism. — Metaphysician Undercover

Very sloppy work. Platonism is not the claim that symbols refer to something, but that mathematical objects exist independently of any theory, language, practice, or mind, and are discovered, not constituted, by mathematics. Nothing here commits to that. You are equivocating between reference and ontological independence.

And I'll opt to believe that you willfully deny the truth, rather than simply misunderstand. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are looking for a rhetorical dodge to get out of the mess you find yourself in.

Anytime a value has being, that's Platonism — Metaphysician Undercover

No, Meta. Quantification or assigning a value does not require Platonic commitment. A value can ‘have being’ within a formal system, a constructive framework, or a model, without existing independently as Plato would claim.

Do you recognize that set theory is based in Platonism? — Metaphysician Undercover

Sad. Formally, set theory is just a system of rules. Treating its sets as independently real is a Platonic interpretation, not a necessity.

Guess it's back to ignoring your posts.

As I said, Platonism, which is an unacceptable ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Platonism is indeed unacceptable, but quantification is not platonic. Sad you can't see that.

Quantification does not require Platonic commitment; it merely specifies the domain of discourse and what statements about it are true. This is consistent with nominalist or structuralist interpretations.

More often, having nailed their flag to the mast, they will double down.

What I have been trying to show is that science can only assist in helping us understand at a microlevel how humans have consistency in color judgment and how some may have divergent judgments (color blindness). Science relies on shared standards of color, consistency of color judgments, and shared language, not private introspection of sense data. So the metaphysics of indirect realism cannot find support from science. — Richard B

Nice work.

You have an awe deficit. — frank

...or you have an awe surfeit.

Awe is not an argument.

You completely missed my point. — frank

You want I should be awe struck into agreement? Nuh.

Take a moment to stop and take in the world around you: the sights, sounds, movements in time and space. Now take in that all of it is generated by your brain (possibly with some quantum magic). — frank

Well, no, it isn't. The bits and pieces around me have a place in there as well. Be they quantum fluctuations or cups and cats.

Your jump from "neural processes are necessary for perception" all the way to "the world is generated by the brain" is illegitimate.

Ok. but "More word smithing" says nothing. I suppose it's just more word smithing.

Or is it that you hung your flag on the "indirect realist" mast, then found that you basically agreed with what I had to say?

I've tried to follow what you are doing here, but scattered inaccuracies and errors make it very difficult. I gather you want to Cantor’s argument into a constructive or even computational lens. It’s valid in that framework, yet you seem to think it can be taken as refuting classical results about cardinality. I musty be misreading you.

, , yes, Maria Corina Machado is playing trump almost as well as does Putin.

Well put.

"I gave you a fact"

says the monkey — Banno

, not noticing how the "fact" is the result of his own attitudes and presumptions.

We experience (are aware of) something when we dream, when we hallucinate, (when we have synaesthesia?), etc., — Michael

That's the point at issue. The thing about an hallucination or dream is exactly that there is no something.

An hallucination is defined precisely by there being no object of which one is aware, only a belief-like state produced in a derivative way.

:meh:

That completely inverts the issue in the question of the OP — Fire Ologist

Good.

See

I think that just as the cosmological argument proves the existence of God from knowing the existence of tables and chairs, so too the moral argument proves the reality of God from knowing the reality of right and wrong. — BenMcLean

Oli, your craving for certainty is not a firm grounding for belief.

...Banno makes some seemingly random claims about the existence of numbers. — Metaphysician Undercover

To be is to be the value of a bound variable. ω and ∞ are cases in point. In maths, Quine's rule fits: existence is not discovered by metaphysical intuition but incurred by theory choice. Quantification, ∃(x)f(x), sets out what we can and can't discuss.

Yes., well phrased Although we might differ a bit on the extensibility of maths.

It's just extending the way we talk about numbers. What started with the Biggest Number game gets extended into infinity, both ∞ and ω, the difference being that while ∞+1=∞, ω+1>ω; The first reflecting the teacher's answer "infinity plus one is still infinity", the second, the player's answer "infinity plus one is bigger than infinity". What we have is a division in how we proceeded, in the rules of the game, not in what "exists" in any firm ontological sense. It's chess against checkers, not cats against dogs. Neither set of rules is "true" while the other is "false".

And the great thing about these games is that they are extensible, in that we add more rules as we go, keeping the game coherent, while being able to talk about more and different stuff.

Part of where Meta and Magnus have difficulty is in their insistence that one way of talking is right, the other, they call variously incoherent or inconsistent, both without providing an argument and in the face of demonstrations to the opposition effect. To establish incoherence, they would need to show a violated rule internal to the system, or an explicit contradiction derivable from its axioms.
Mere discomfort with plural rule-sets doesn’t suffice.

Within cardinal arithmetic, ∞+1=∞ is true; within ordinal arithmetic, ω+1>ω is true. Cross-applying the rules is what generates the illusion of contradiction.

I'd also relate this back to my essay Two ways to philosophise, and to the arguments in Logical Nihilism. It's better to have an incomplete theory that is coherent than a complete theory that is inconsistent or artificially restricted. And better to have many differing, incomplete logics than one, monolithic yet restricted logic. These allow for growth. Advocating for new rules, new distinctions, new domains of discourse gives us a normative standard that is neither realist nor relativist.

Critics may conflate pluralism with anything-goes relativism. But only because coherence is doing real work; incoherent extensions are still excluded. Others will insist that without a privileged logic, critique collapses. But critique is local, rules are criticised from within practices or at their interfaces, not from a mythical God’s-eye view.

I loved teaching this stuff to third and fourth grade kids. The Biggest Number game; they say "A hundred ", reply "A hundred and one"; they say "A million million", you reply "A million million and one"; someone says "infinity" and someone says "infinity and one"...

I was surprised, on enlisting in these fora, to find that there are folk who don't get to the stage of understanding that every natural number has a successor, that "...and one" works for any natural number. (not ordinals... another bit of the puzzle.)

And that infinity and one is still infinity. This hazy number play sets up the kid's intuitions. Especially where it doesn't work. Infinity is not part of the structure that lets us play the number game. It needs new rules.

There's an ontology which presumes that numbers exist — Metaphysician Undercover

We don't need much ontology. Quantification will suffice.

It seems very odd to need a proof that god exists in order to do the right thing.

You don't have access to your wife's voice. — frank

I'm not sure I know what that might mean; but I do hear my wife's voice, through the telephone. That's indirect, in comparison to when she is in the room, but perhaps more direct than listening to a recording...

maybe see https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1034678

The causal chain remains the same, but our attention (the blanket) can be placed in differing locations. So in one throw we can refer to your wife’s voice, in another to the electronically constructed reproduction, and so on.

Hence the similarity with the distribution board.

Returning to colourblindness: the basis for calling the judgment an error is not that the colourblind person’s experience fails to match mine, nor that it fails to match some phenomenal property instantiated by the object. The basis is that, within a shared practice of identifying and re-identifying objects across conditions, their judgments systematically fail to track features that figure in stable, publicly coordinated practices of correction and re-identification. That is an epistemic failure relative to those practices, not a phenomenal defect. — Esse Quam Videri

Interestingly, this is pretty much the reply I owe you from that other discussion.


Good reply.

"Is" and "of" are not the same word.

...he wasn't doing any philosophical work for us... — Esse Quam Videri

Well, he at the least served as a poor example, showing us that the theory that there are two populations does not have a truth value.

...word smithing... — frank

I prefer "conceptual clarification"... I clarify concepts, you smith words, he makes shit up... :wink:

My contribution to your word smithing would be that we do need to speak in terms of experience. Sight is not an isolated activity. It's integrated into a whole. And there is some functional entity we generally refer to as "you" which directs attention. — frank

Yes. I quite agree.

As Isaac may have mentioned to you... — frank

A moment for the departed; he and I had long conversations about this, and I think he introduced me to Markov Blankets; together we forged an agreement that pretty much bypassed the direct/indirect dichotomy. The main distribution board was part of that discussion, another place to throw the blanket. Would that he were here now to give his opinion.

When you hear your wife's voice on the phone, that's not really her voice. It's a computer generated representation. If the logic of that throws you for a loop, I guess we could work through it. I wouldn't advise rejecting it because sounds illogical, though. — frank

See the weasel word? Did you hear your wife's voice? what dis she say? Were have you thrown the Markov Blanket? Were else might you throw it?

Ben only asserts. Watch, you'll see.

I don't think experience has any particular location. — frank

Well, that's a start.

It's something creatures with nervous systems do. A flood of electrical data comes into the brain, and the brain creates an integrated experience. Are you denying that? — frank

No. I'm denying that what we experience is that flood of electrical data. Rather, having an experience is having that flood of electrical data. What you experience, if we must talk in that way, is the cat.

You see the cat, not your neural activity. Your neural activity is seeing the cat. At least in part.

There's a category error that involves thinking that because we can't start at one and write down every subsequent natural number, they don't exist.

1 is a number, and every number has a successor. That's enough to show that the natural numbers exist.

Sure. You experience the cat indirectly. You experience the ship indirectly. You experience the smell of the coffee indirectly. Welcome to indirect realism. — frank

SO your response not by presenting an argument but by reasserting your error.

Ok.

Having a "content of experience" presupposes a container–contained picture of mind: an inner arena where experiences “have” objects or qualities. That’s precisely the sort of framing being rejected. Once you reject the Given, the idea of content starts to feel artificial, a placeholder for a problem that doesn’t exist.

Instead of talking in terms of content, we can frame perception as engagement with the world, and neural processes as how that engagement happens. We drop any separate “object of experience” in the mind.

It will help if you reply to what I say, rather than what you want me to have said.