Does it make sense to endorse or promote for public consumption an outright lie because it gives people comfort or keeps them on the straight and narrow or the like? — TheMadFool

Plato would say yes emphatically.

Plato was wrong about most things.

I think it would have been much nicer if the southern continent of the western hemisphere had been called just America, and the northern continent called Columbia, as it sometimes was anyway. That's how it went down in the alternate history of my vast fictional universe anyway.

If the triemma shows something, it justifies something. Therefore the trilemma is a justification for believing that there are no justifications for beliefs.

I still don't understand these philosophers that just don't get the contradiction they make in asserting that knowledge is inherently flawed. — Harry Hindu

Nobody here is saying that "knowledge is inherently flawed", we're saying that knowledge doesn't operate the way justificationists say it does, because if it did then the Munchhausen trilemma would in turn show that knowledge is impossible, which is exactly the kind of contradiction you're talking about. That contradiction is thus reason to reject the possibility of justificationism.

To be right, one must make all possible wrongs and learn from them. — Harry Hindu

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. By default everything and its negation might be right and might be wrong; then knowledge comes from determining which things are definitely wrong, and thus narrowing the range of things that might still be right.

In contrast, the justificationist assumption underlying the Munchhausen trilemma is that by default everything is wrong, until knowledge is built by showing something to be definitely right, and then building up from there. But the Munchhausen trilemma, running from that assumption, thereby shows that knowledge thus-understood is impossible, a contradiction (you can't know that you can't know anything), and thus a reason to reject understanding knowledge in that way, i.e. to reject justificationism.

Anarchism worked for most of the history of the human race. It just isn't practical now. — Kenosha Kid

Nothing but anarchism was practically possible for most of the history of the human race. It's only in this age of abundance since the agricultural revolution that steep social stratification has been possible. Anarchism isn't impractical after that, it's just more difficult to keep since there are other possibilities it has to fight against now.

Looked up The Trilemma. It's an economic theory. — god must be atheist

A trilemma is a kind of argument. The top Google result for the word is about an economic argument, but OP is talking about the Munchhausen trilemma, aka Agrippa's trilemma, an epistemological argument, showing that beliefs are justified either by chains of argument that terminate eventually in unquestioned assumptions or axioms (foundationalism), circular arguments (coherentism), or chains of argument that go on forever never reaching any bottom (infinitism).

The OP's link seems to take it that foundationalism is the only viable of those three alternatives, and therefore that all beliefs are based on axioms.

@Darkneos, this trilemma is a good reason to reject justificationism entirely in favor of critical rationalism. The short version is: instead of saying that people should reject every belief until it can be justified from the ground up -- which as this trilemma shows either results in infinite regress, circularity, or appeal to something entirely unjustified being taken as unquestionable -- we should merely permit tentative belief in anything that has thus far survived falsification. So in a disagreement, neither side is wrong by default until they can prove themselves right. Either side is possibly-right, until the other side can show some reason why they must be wrong.

So instead of starting with a blank slate and trying to find some base certainty to build up from -- since we can't ever do that, without just assuming something to be certain by fiat, as an axiom -- we start with an infinite space of contrary possibilities, and slowly weed out the ones we find to be impossible, forever narrowing down the range of remaining possibilities but never pinning down exactly one conclusive one.

As I see it, Those antifa, blm, congress invaders whatever they are called are really not on a left/right scale either. As the Nazis were not on a left/right scale.

Far right is the minimal state and far left is total equality. — Ansiktsburk

That's because you're stuck in the distorted Cold War version of a one-dimensional political spectrum.

The original one-dimensional political spectrum had the left as being for both liberty and equality, and the right being for the authority and hierarchical superiority of the state and capital-owners, who at that time were explicitly the same people: the aristocracy of feudal states.

Then in the aftermath of that original left's partial victory, and the invention of post-agricultural types of capital, the successful owners of that new capital began to conflate their liberty with the hierarchical privilege they enjoyed thanks to the remaining vestiges of feudalism that they retained through their possession of said capital.

In response to that, those who found themselves now more oppressed by those new capital-owners than the old ones who used to control the state began to consider using the state against the new capital-owners, with the ostensible intention of then dissolving both state and capital together and getting back on track toward the liberty and equality of the original left. Note that this was not a unilaterally popular idea even within socialism: the original socialists were libertarian socialists, i.e. anarchists, still on the track of the original left. State socialism was considered a bad idea by them.

And of course it turned out to be a bad idea after all, because you can't have authority without thereby creating hierarchy, so the state socialists became just state capitalists -- and even acknowledged as such, though they claimed it was temporary -- and so places like the USSR and PRC turned essentially back into the same thing the original left had opposed in their rejection of feudalism. Which was also the same thing that Mussolini meant when he coined the term "fascism": the collusion of state and capital.

But likewise, you can't have hierarchy without thereby creating authority, and in the nominally libertarian capitalist countries that's just what happened, and continues to happen, leading right back to the same thing again: the collusion of capital and state. Fascism. Which is basically a post-agricultural, industrial facelift of feudalism, with government and capital-owners the same people.

So now ever since the Cold War, fought between nominally libertarian capitalists and nominally state socialists, people think those are the natural right and left, respectively. But that axis is completely orthogonal to the original one, and both ends of it can't help but fall back toward state capitalism. Because you can't have liberty without equality, and you can't have equality without liberty. Which is what the original left, the true left, stands for -- liberty and equality for all -- and what the original right, the true right, is against.

There are people on the right who call themselves anarchists, within at all understanding the history of the anarchist movement and how against their capitalist ideology it is.

Antifa are anarchists and they hate left and right equally. — praxis

Anarchists are definitionally left, but so much further left than Democrats that Democrats are scarcely better than Republicans in their eyes.

Some of us are also pragmatists and realize that less bad is still better than more bad. Others, sadly, prefer vitriolic graffiti over trying to actually reduce harm. They are at least “useful idiots” to us, much as Trump is to Republicans.

Just to be clear, the received truth is that the Republican party is bad and the Democratic party is good, is that correct? — FreeEmotion

No, they’re both bad, the Reps are just the much worse of the two.

America needs something much better than either.

I am trying to figure out how the system works that a free fair election produced Donald Trump in 2016 and then Joe Biden in 2020. Are the voters to blame, and is it always the voters on the other side? — FreeEmotion

The system is designed in a way that breaks when you have a country with population density disparities the likes of which we currently have. The people overall overwhelmingly lean more toward D than R, but the system gives disproportionate representation to a demographic that also tends to lean R, meaning every election is really close and down to tiny unpredictable factors.

The framers of the Constitution did not write it for a two-party system. — FreeEmotion

That is correct, but they did unknowingly write it in a way that guarantees a two-party system. That two-party system plus the disproportionate representation in turn sets where the threshold of the country’s politics falls: one party (currently D) represents the underrepresented majority’s interests plus enough of the overrepresented rural minority’s interests to actually stand a chance of crossing that threshold, and the other party (currently R) leans as hard as it can on the differences between those two demographics to pull as much as possible away from the other party’s acceptable standards, daring them to compromise their principles for a chance to win, or else hold on to them and lose completely.

That inevitable two-party system, plus more recent intentional political exploitation of it, results in an intensely polarized politics, where the differences between the two factions are played up harder and harder. Except for the golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules. Anyone who opposes that is quickly shut out by the people who own the people who put the people in charge in charge.

When communists accuse others of a coup, they are preparing one. — Banjo

Everything the right ever accuses the left of is projection, including, now, projection itself.

NOS is Trump — Metaphysician Undercover

He's too articulate to be Trump, and doesn't use enough all-caps words. Also, I don't think Trump could figure out how to register an account here.

Anyone can see the character of their representatives such as Mitchell McConnell — FreeEmotion

McConnell was a bigger villain in all of this than Trump ever was, and I think you're right that he represents the real core of the Republican party. Trump was just a useful idiot for the real Republicans.

This is a good argument against retributive justice.

True justice is making sure that the harm that someone does is contained to themselves, i.e. it's only okay to harm someone to the minimal extent necessary to prevent them from harming others (e.g. fighting off an attacker) and to undo as much as possible the harm they've already done to others (e.g. taking from them to replace what they've cost others).

Harming anyone beyond that is worse than useless, doing bad to no good.

How is Jordan Peterson viewed among philosophers? — deusidex

(Sorry, this is actually a deeper OP than I expected, but that was my initial reaction to just the title).

I have long expected that the EU would follow the pattern of the US and evolve from a union of countries called states to a country called the Union with subdivisions called States.

Interesting that Brexit now forces a decision about that.

my rather intransigent interpretation of the entire political foray, being that there exists the libertarian Left, their allies, and everyone else — thewonder

I’m surprised that that was your initial view from which you have since expanded, as the common political frame since the 20th centuries seems to be one of a statist left vs a libertarian right, and only those who study history or think far outside that box seem to realize that a libertarian left is even possible.

Were your girlfriends who were accosted by men when they were alone?
— baker

Ah. Yes, always. — Kenosha Kid

I think he’s asking if they were in a position of power then.

I confess the stasis option is the only one that made no sense to me. I kind of read this as 'gradual progress' but I didn't answer 'maximal change' as 'instanaeous transformation to what I currently think of as the perfect society'. — Kenosha Kid

I'm having a little difficulty parsing your sentence here, but I hope this answers the implied question:

- "maximal change" was to mean you want rapid and radical change from the status quo (so if you only want very small changes, wanting them very quickly isn't "maximal change")

- "maximal stasis" on the other hand was to mean that you want things to be very similar if not identical to how they are now and any changes from that to happen very slowly and carefully.

- "somewhat limited change" was to mean that you think things definitely need to change and quickly, but not nearly everything, and we can be cautious in our pace.

- "somewhat limited stasis" was to mean that you think things are mostly fine as they are now, but there are some little improvements that can be made here or there, carefully.

- "an equal balance of change and stasis" was to mean that you find the status quo about halfway acceptable, a lot of things need to change but also a lot needs to stay the same, and we should be only as quick to make those changes as possible without compromising our due caution to protect what's already good.

Do notice that the option "centrist" was missing from the questionnaire. That despised and vilified option by both the left and the right. — ssu

I didn't mean to exclude "centrist" out of any bias toward it (I consider myself a kind of "centrist" in the proper political spectrum, even if I'm "far left" by common standards). Rather, I meant "both" and "neither" to differentiate different possible kinds of "centrists". I think you're probably right that people who are equally "anti-woke" and "anti-MAGA" see themselves as "neither".

One thing I found interesting about the results of this poll is that while only the smallest group identified their views as "right", nearly half identified their views as something other than "left".

I'm guessing that it's mostly American-style right-libertarians (who often hate being called "right-libertarians") who are identifying themselves in the "neither" (second largest) or "both" (second smallest) groups. They see themselves as centrist, unaware of how right-skewed their idea of the center is, and so of course complain that a population almost evenly distributed between the self-identified "left" and the complement of that set (the not-left) is "skewed left".

My takeaway is that "right" is seen as more of a "dirty word" than "left" is. Those who knowingly push things leftward are proud of that fact, even though (per the results on the non-ideologically-labeled axes of the poll) they only want things to be somewhat left (liberty and equality and change), not maximally, presumably toward what they see as a balanced position. Those who are resisting that movement don't want to be identified as "right", and think that the (as we leftists see it) rightward bias of the mainstream worldview is really "centrist".

I am surprised that 9% chose "maximum hierarchy". I'm intrigued by this. — Kenosha Kid

I'm also intrigued by that, and would be interested to hear from not only them, but anyone who voted one of the last two options of the first three questions ("somewhat" or "maximal" authority, hierarchy, or stasis).

What is salvation beyond a nice house in the suburbs? — Wayfarer

Being friends with your neighbors, having no enemies, finding love, exploring the beauty of nature beyond the comforts of your nice house in the suburbs (knowing that home is always there to come back to), exploring more generally as in learning and experiencing all there is to learn, creating great works for others to explore, doing all there is to do, and making sure that you and everyone else get to keep doing all of that forever.

Don't need whoever manages to enable all of that to be preordained to do so. Just someone willing and able to do so. Which could be us, collectively, and in all likelihood has to be us, or else nobody.

Got any particular story in mind, there, or is it just a hypothetical? — Wayfarer

Just a story archetype. Romulus and Remus kinda came to mind as I wrote that but I didn't mean them specifically, and there is some divine intervention in their story too.

My point is just that we often like stories of underdogs defying the odds and rising to greatness. Even the Jesus story has elements of that, born into poverty, worked a humble job. Take away the "only son of God" part of it and is it less inspirational? Well okay the part where he dies tragically at the end is a downer. But imagine a variant on that story where some kid born to a poor family works hard to get by and in the process comes up with or just popularizes some idea that starts a movement that changes the world. I'm sure there are plenty of real-life examples of that that history buffs in the audience can supply.

Why can't the story of mankind be that kind of story -- we were "born nobody" and then made ourselves great and noble anyway -- and still be inspirational and satisfying? Why do we as a people need "noble birth" (chosen people of God, etc) to feel good about ourselves and our place in the world?

What’s a ‘savior’ without ‘salvation’? — Wayfarer

What is salvation but being saved? And who says we need some special predestined chosen one of divine birth to do the saving? That's a bit of a trite and uninspiring old story TBH. The nobody-turned-hero seems like it should be much more captivating to the many masses who were born as nobodies (as most people are), who might take away the moral that they could help save the world, and don't just have to wait on someone else to do it for them.

Since, collectively, there isn't anyone else to do it for us, that's really the kind of inspirational story we need if we want salvation, since it's going to have to be us all together who do the saving.

Humans need to feel as though they’re part of a story, not the result of an accident — Wayfarer

Is the story of an unplanned child abandoned in the wilderness who nevertheless somehow survives and goes on to become a great hero who reshapes the future for the better not a noble enough story? Does the child have to have been a planned birth of noble parentage to count?

So we weren't planned, weren't cared for, were left alone as infants in a harsh cruel world to fend for ourselves and probably die ignoble deaths to be remembered by nobody. But what if we defy that fate? What if despite that low birth we go on to become the saviors of the world anyway? I think that's a pretty great story.

I hate that "two cows" bullshit. It's transparent capitalist propaganda (the only good scenario is the "traditional capitalist" one) that's unable or unwilling to differentiate capitalism from a market economy, or likewise socialism from a command economy.

What I did I knew and felt to be wrong, but the opportunity was there so I took it. Were the same situation to arise, I'd probably do it again. — Bitter Crank

The question at hand though is do you wish you hadn't and wish you wouldn't again? That's what it is for you personally to think something is wrong, in contrast to merely knowing that others think it's wrong, or feeling a socio-emotional pressure away from it (like preemptive shame), which is what I mean by "a quotational sense". Just because others say it's wrong or because you feel ashamed of it when you imagine telling someone you did it doesn't mean that you yourself really think it's wrong.

I'll grant you, though, that many 'wrong acts' are what you call "quotational sense of 'wrong'". Sexual acts certainly fall into this category when people are swept off their feet by someone else and end up in bed with them, even though they are married or in a committed relationship. That's happened to me, and I didn't count that as deliberate wrong doing. My dick was making the decision, so to speak--a hard cock has no morals. — Bitter Crank

That's not what I meant by "quotational sense". That's "weakness of will", presuming you did actually think it wrong yourself, not just other people, and despite thinking that still found yourself doing it anyway.

Consider for example several different kinds of alcohol drinker:

- One of them is of a religion that says drinking any alcohol ever is wrong, but thinks that that rule is too strict, and sometimes drinking a little alcohol isn't really genuinely bad, so long as you don't lose control. So they sometimes drink, even though they "know that it's wrong" in that they'd get in trouble with their family/community/etc for it, and feel ashamed of it. That's someone who intentionally does something that's called "wrong" but they honestly disagree with that evaluation of it: they don't really think that it's wrong to drink just a little bit sometimes. That's the "quotational sense" I was talking about.

- Another drinker has a history of alcoholism, and if they drink just a little bit they're going to want to drink a lot more, but they don't think it's actually a bad thing for people to drink a little bit. They're aware that some religions etc, maybe the people in AA and so on, think that drinking at all, or at least people like him drinking at all, is wrong, but this person thinks that's bullshit and one drink is perfectly okay. So they try to drink just a little bit, and not too much, just the amount that they think is okay, but because of their alcoholism they end up drinking way more than they intended to, and regretting it later. They did something they genuinely thought was wrong, through a weakness of will.

- A third person isn't an alcoholic and doesn't believe in any of those religions that say drinking at all is wrong. Thy have an occasional drink, and successfully stop before it gets to be what they think is too much, and find no problem with it. But as it so happens, those religions that say drinking at all is wrong, are correct about that, so even though to him it seems he's doing everything right, he's actually doing something wrong, through ignorance.

I've knowingly done bad things as an adult. I knew, as I contemplated the act, that it was definitely bad, and I did it anyway--sometimes more than once. — Bitter Crank

Why?

I expect these cases will involve a quotational sense of “wrong”: something you know others would call wrong, but you think is excusable anyway. Otherwise why would you do it if you personally thought you shouldn’t? (Besides weakness of will; you intended not to but you couldn’t make yourself not).

I do things that I know are wrong, but they're little things, such speed a little to make a long journey less arduous. I'm not ignorant of the law or the good reasons for it, rather I'm cogniscent of what I can get away with and that the benefit to self appears to me to outweigh the risk to society. — Kenosha Kid

Illegal is not the same thing as wrong, and that sounds like you’re reasonable that it’s sometimes okay, not wrong, to break the law a little.

I wouldn't respond to any claim of "we ought to...", with "you're wrong because people don't... Do your research!". — Isaac

In another thread recently I was putting forth a philosophical conception of how (the concept of) willing should be understood in relation to (the concept of) desiring, with analogy to (the concepts of) perception and belief, and you replied with something derisive to the effect that I was making something up, as though you thought I was postulating a way that humans empirically do tend to think, rather than suggesting a useful way to think.

I'm suggesting in this thread that you seem to sometimes read what should charitably be understood as philosophy -- about the usefulness of concepts, even when it's not spelled out with "we ought to..." -- with claims about empirical psychology.

There is a happy medium between making stuff up without a shred of preliminary research and doing a "a thorough survey of all the most cutting-edge research". — Isaac

I'm not sure if you're talking about me in particular here or about people more generally, but I do have a BA in philosophy and I have also read about it casually in the decade plus since graduation, so I myself am not coming at this from a point of zero preliminary research. If anything I would think "you have a degree in the topic already" would be too high a threshold for participating in discussion, even if "degree" only means BA (or even AA) and not PhD.

And I for one certainly don't look down on people who come here posting things unaware of the research that has come before them. I'm happy that they're interested in a topic that I can share knowledge about, and I like to encourage them when I think they're on the right track, point out counterarguments when I think they're not, and give them the names of authors who have written more on the subject if they want to read more.


One thing about you personally and your accusations of "making stuff up" that I've noticed is you seem to disregard the distinction between philosophy and psychology, such when someone proposes a philosophical framework as an interesting or useful way of thinking about things, you seem upset that they're not aware of empirical psychological research to the effect that people tend not to think about things that way, when those two things are not in conflict.

"X is a useful way to think about things" and "Y is how people tend to think about things" can both be true, no matter the X and Y. So people saying things like "try thinking of it this way, it dissolves problems with thinking of it that other way" doesn't contradict any scientific findings that people do think that other way. It's a matter of direction of fit: how do we think vs how should we think.

If you want people to read your arguments and say "me too..." then why not extend the same courtesy to everyone in academia who have been wrestling with the same topics your arguments relate to or touch on? — Isaac

Firstly, because I'm not in any kind of dialogue with them personally. It's not like they're hanging around forums like this for me to talk to. Also, a lot of them are dead. I can't personally tell Mill and Kant what I think about their ethical disagreements; I can only tell others alive today who visit the same places I have access to what I think about those prestigious dead people and their thoughts.

Secondly, because I don't do this for a living and so can't dedicate all of my time to being abslutely sure that I've read absolutely everything on a subject of interest to me before discussing it with others. If you insist that nobody share any of their thoughts on anything until they've done a thorough survey of all the most cutting-edge research in the field, you're asking that nobody but PhDs in a given topic ever discuss that topic, and so for informal discussion forums like this to stop existing.

(That is the overall impression that I get from you: that you're bothered that people who aren't perfect experts are talking about things, and basically want places like this to stop existing).

One thing I hope to learn by discussing things with others in places like this is who else has said what on the subject in question, from other non-professionals who may have a different incomplete picture of everything that's ever been said thus far than I do. And to do likewise for them. So we can all learn a little bit more about this topic that we're unable to dedicate our lives to being perfect experts at, but still find interesting nevertheless.

I already posted this in response to the first version of this comment in the Trump thread, but since there's a new thread I'll repeat it:

There is a long tradition of thought in philosophy that holds, essentially, that "evil is reducible to ignorance", i.e. nobody knowingly does bad things, everyone does what they think is the right thing to do, and is only incorrect about what the right thing to do actually is.

I'm pretty partial to that line of thinking myself. Everyone is the hero of their own story, the question is only whether they are unknowingly a villain in the bigger story of which theirs is only a part.

Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. — baker

Well there is a long tradition of thought in philosophy that holds, essentially, that "evil is reducible to ignorance", i.e. nobody knowingly does bad things, everyone does what they think is the right thing to do, and is only incorrect about what the right thing to do actually is.

(My own experience with depression has been that IF one can change one's life circumstances to suit one's preferences, depression can get a whole lot better. Unfortunately, a lot of life circumstances just aren't easily changed. Bad jobs, difficult relationships, long commutes, loneliness, rage, boredom, anxiety, debt, and a dozen other conditions can't just be waved away. IF ONLY... — Bitter Crank

Yeah, last time I went to a therapist about as far as we ever got was a loop of her saying "there are two ways to change how you feel about a situation, change the situation or change how you feel about it", and me responding "yeah, I've tried and failed to change the situation, so now I'm here to change how I feel about it. How do we do that?" and never getting a straightforward answer.

In truly postmodern fashion, “postmodernism” isn’t even a really well-defined idea to begin with, so I think you’ll need to be a little more specific if you want to critique it.

Maybe the extremes of social constructivism that claim things like “reality is a social construct”?

NB that that view is very unpopular with some parts of the left... like Marxists, who are hardcore materialists.

there's a left wing academic interest in undermining the possibility of truth — counterpunch

Completely unlike the right wing populist respect for truth?

Socialism has killed over 100 million dissidents — Rafaella Leon

omg! Do the police have any leads on finding him? This guy needs to be locked up for mass murder!

Weird name, too. Is he Italian? I think I’ve seen some Italians with “issimo” in their names.

Regardless of whether Trump personally was inciting the insurrection, it's looking pretty clear that it was not just a spontaneous thing that happened because people took Trump's speech on the 6th too seriously.

The real smoking gun about prior planning seems to be Lauren Boebert, a congressperson who gave a tour of the Capitol to many of the insurrectionists on the 5th, who tweeted "today is 1776" the morning of the 6th before the insurrection began, and who was live-tweeting the movements of congresspeople within the Capitol during the insurrection.

It seems extremely unlikely that Trump was completely unconnected to what is looking like a clearly planned event that was both pursuing a cause in his name and triggered by a speech he gave.

Theism does not have a monopoly on disagreeing that "the ends justify the means". One doesn't even have to appeal to any ends besides altruistic hedonism (the criterion of utilitarianism: the greatest happiness for the greatest number) to argue that not just any means is acceptable to that end.

It's like how a sound argument cannot merely have mostly true conclusions, but neither can it merely be a valid argument, but it must be valid – every step of the argument must be a justified inference from previous ones – and it must have entirely true conclusions, which requires also that it begin from true entirely true premises.

If a valid argument leads to a false conclusion, that tells you that something in the premises of the argument must have been false, because by definition valid inferences from true premises must lead to true conclusions; that's what makes them valid. If the premises were all true and the inferences in the argument still lead to a false conclusion, that tells you that the inferences were not valid. But likewise, if an invalid argument happens to have some true to its conclusions, that's no credit to the argument; the conclusion contains some truth, sure, but the argument is still a bad one, invalid.

I hold that a similar relationship holds between means and ends: means are like inferences, the steps you take to reach an end, which is like a conclusion. Just means must be "good-preserving" in the same way that valid inferences are truth-preserving: just means exercised out of good prior circumstances definitionally must lead to good consequences; just means must introduce no badness, or as Hippocrates wrote in his famous physicians' oath, they must "first, do no harm".

If something bad happens as a consequence of some means, then that tells you either that something about those means were unjust, or that there was something already bad in the prior circumstances that those means simply have not alleviated (which failure to alleviate does not make them therefore unjust). But likewise, if something good happens as a consequence of unjust means, that's no credit to those means; the consequences are good, sure, but the means are still bad ones, unjust.

Moral action requires using just means to achieve good ends, and if either of those is neglected, morality has been failed; bad consequences of genuinely just actions means some preexisting badness has still yet to be addressed (or else is a sign that the actions were not genuinely just), and good consequences of unjust actions do not thereby justify those actions.

Consequentialist models of normative ethics concern themselves primarily with defining what is a good state of affairs, and then say that bringing about those states of affairs is what defines a good action. Deontological models of normative ethics concern themselves primarily with defining what makes an action itself intrinsically good, or just, regardless of further consequences of the action.

I think that these are both important questions, and they are the moral analogues to questions about ontology and epistemology.

The purpose of engaging with someone with irrational and hateful beliefs is not to benefit them, in my opinion, but to leave no expression of such a belief unchallenged and unnamed. — Kenosha Kid

And in doing so, aside from the rational pressure of your actual arguments against those beliefs, apply social and emotional pressure discouraging people from holding them. Both the person you're arguing against, but also, and perhaps more importantly, any undecided observers.

This connects back to what I was talking about earlier in this thread, about giving people support and letting them know they're not alone in their views. Feeling all alone applies an irrational social pressure. When I'm the only person arguing for one side of a disagreement, I can feel the irrational social pressure to just give up and agree with the others, a feeling like I'm a bad person for disagreeing with "everyone else", even if rationally I see no merit to their arguments.

About the only thing that props me up against that kind of social pressure is a much longer-ingrained social pressure that makes me feel like a bad person for not making decisions based entirely on their rational merit. So I feel like a bad person for being in a disagreement, but I'd feel just as much if not more like a bad person for caving to a bad argument in that disagreement, so I feel compelled to stand my ground and argue even if I'd really rather spend my time doing something else.

If it feels like there are others who will make my same points for me, or at least others who agree that the other side of the disagreement is wrong, then I don't feel social pressures at all -- I don't have to fight this fight, someone else will, or we can just be separate "tribes" and not be forced to engage -- and so I am more free to treat the discussion as a purely intellectual exercise, and make more reason-based decisions in it.

That's exactly why an important part of rhetoric is communicating to the audience that you are a good person who's on their side, trying to help them think through something, rather than attacking them. If they're in a social-conflict state of mind, they're not going to be open to reason. If they feel like they're among friends and figuring something out together, then they might be.

trying to find something interesting to say about an already well thought out topic. — Echarmion

I think the emoji function is useful for this. If I see someone say something that I think is worth saying that's not being properly appreciated I'll often just reply with some combination of :up: :100: :clap: etc.

Also, thanks. :)

Im not sure pleasantness is what folks are after on a forum like this. — DingoJones

Regardless of what folks are after on a forum like this, what purpose should a forum like this serve? I.e. what's a place like this good for, anyway?

I really don't think any serious breakthroughs in professional philosophy are going to be made here, so that's not it.

Nor do I really expect any widespread social opinions are going to be changed just from the small group of people talking here.

The only real use I can see for an internet forum about philosophy is people who for one reason or another aren't in a position to participate in the academic philosophical dialogue but who find the subject interesting and want to talk to other people who also find it interesting.

They can share thoughts that they've had and find out if others have had similar thoughts and what kinds of arguments for and against those thoughts have been made, and who (if notable) has made them.

Consider for comparison a physics forum. Say someone wanders onto one of those because they just read a lay text about general relativity and from what they've read it seems to imply to them that many large masses moving rapidly around a "stationary" mass (from a given frame of reference) should cause that "stationary" mass to begin to rotate in the direction that the other masses are moving around it. To them, this is a neat new idea they just came up with, that is implied by general relativity so far as they can tell, and they want to talk to someone who knows something about physics about it.

So they share it with the physics forum. What good can possibly come of that? Surely they're not going to make any real progress in physics there. But they can find out that yes in fact, something like that is an implication of general relativity, it's called frame-dragging, and here are various experiments confirming it and other theoretical consequences of it. If that was not the case, they could instead find out what the errors in their reasoning from GR were, or what evidence against that hypothesis has been found, and where to read more about it. If that wasn't the case either, they could at least find out who else had thought of that hypothesis and why it hasn't been tested thoroughly yet. Or if, best case scenario for them, it was a genuinely novel idea, someone could at least confirm that for them, even if nothing is really going to come of that fact, because they're a nobody without the education to act on that idea. Unless, perhaps, someone with the education to act on it happens to be reading that forum too.