or the same reason, abortion and collateral damage are not murder, — Sapientia

LOL! Only because the nations who commit collateral damage control the international courts. Which goes to the point that the legal definition of murder is whatever society decides it is.

Whether justice is miscarried or not, a conviction and even a short term in prison is often an enduring punishment, because having been convicting and having served time is frequently an effective barrier against employment. — Bitter Crank

Agreed, but if you're on death row, it's usually for a crime that you're not getting out of jail to go have a job anyway. These are the kind of crimes where you don't want to see those people back in society, unless they're innocent, of course, which unfortunately happens too often.

Maybe they deserve cruel and unusual punishment, for the criminal took away the rights of an individual by murdering them. — Blue Lux

I draw the line at torture. Putting them to death would be like putting a dog with rabies down. Torturing for revenge degrades us, although I understand the sentiment in the case of certain crimes.

Fear is the only real deterrant. — Blue Lux

Some people aren't deterred by fear. There was one rapist who couldn't understand why rape was wrong because the idea of being raped didn't bother him at all. Also, some people like taking dangerous risks. It makes them feel alive.

There is scant evidence to suggest that the death penalty as a deterrent works.

The obvious retort is that it deters those who are put to death. But it's not about deterrent. It's whether some crimes are so heinous and some individuals so far beyond reform that they deserve to be put to death.

Since the death penalty returned to America in 1976, 162 death sentences have been reversed and 1,480 people have been executed, so roughly one in ten was found innocent.

This is the strong argument against the death penalty. I think only those with overwhelming evidence that will never be overturned should be eligible. Jeffrey Dahmer would never have been found innocent, for example. So the question is whether it's better to put such individuals to death.

A decent argument against that would be that it benefits society more to study and understand them. Fair enough, but then that's what they should be used for if they're not put to death.

The main reason the death penalty is so barbaric, and so dehumanising of the society that conducts it, is that it is done in cold blood, against a helpless, powerless individual. — andrewk

However, there are some individuals I would make an exception for, such as serial killers. I don't care if they are helpless and powerless before the state given their crimes and general lack of remorse or possibility for reform.

But our eyes give us only four (:gasp: ) snap-shots per second, mostly in low-res monochrome, with a higher-res colour area in the middle, the latter occupying the same area in our fields of vision as a full moon viewed from Earth. It takes a great deal more than embellishment to make this seem like full-motion hi-res colour video, and this is part of what our brains and minds do to enable us to perceive the world. It astonishes me that we can see at all. — Pattern-chaser

Yeah, compared to the eyes of a Mantis Shrimp, ours aren't so great. But then again, the Mantis Shrimp wastes it's incredible visual capabilities on a dinky brain.

I thought you were talking about death when you said:

But life is transitory, whereas 'our story', our legacy, or what is left of us after we did, — gloaming

If not, then you're saying those of us who suffer will be better off later on in life then those who caused the suffering (I take it by being mindless consumers)?

Those whose legacy can lay claim to have suffered are going to be much better off in the long run for having endured it or having succumbed to its ravages. — gloaming

And they'll still be just as dead as everyone else. How will they be better off for having suffered? Because someone might write a sympathetic history of their woes? Or because the gods of the afterlife when show them more mercy?

Just one question: Am I God? (Hence my avatar?) Because if I am, shame on me for doing such a mediocre job with das Universum! — rachMiel

Yeah, I have a few complaints. But it could be worse.

Thank God for God ... without whose Godly unbroken observation of ALL, things would keep popping in and out of existence! — rachMiel

Popping implies a process of going from being to non-being (which entails time) when God takes a break on the 7th day of the week. All that observing is tiresome. There can't be a popping if there is not a looking. Now maybe if God is turning her back on creation, the popping can happen at the corner of his eyes, since everyone knows God is a giant cosmic ape.

It is what it is? — aporiap

Depends on what the definition of it is.

I think that would be impossible, for every proposition, there is some other proposition that contradicts it. — aporiap

It is what it isn't.

It is what it is. — Michael

Until the goat eats it.

So it's false here? — Michael

Only in a transcendental sense.

It has to do with what it has to do with. — Michael

I want to believe:

saying that "there's a possible world where that's true" implies that you believe that in the actual world it isn't true. — Michael

Okay, but what does my belief have to do with possibility and truth?

Which is to say that it's possibly true, suggesting that it's actually false. — Michael

P is false if and only if P is possibly true.

New theory of falsity.

I don't think it does, but it probably will. — Michael

I think there's a possible world where that's true.

Except bald kings of France. — Michael

Depends on whether the past exists.

If, science proceeds on the assumption that "every event has a cause", and it is an "absolute presupposition", as described, such that it makes no sense to discuss whether this is true or not, then science proceeds as if "every event has a cause" represents an uncertainty. — Metaphysician Undercover

Science may have held this absolute presupposition, but modern physics forced scientists to reevaluate it, at least for the very small. Not sure whether that supports what you're saying about presuppositions equating to an uncertainty, but developments have lead people to question their presuppositions.

Oh well. It is what it is. — Michael

As all things are.

I said don't quote me on that! Yet you quoted me?! — Michael

Uhhhhh, well, I took quoting to mean something else. So not true, exactly.

I'm 90% sure it means "is", but don't quote me on that. — Michael

Well, dictionary.com says:

"3rd person singular present indicative of be."

Which brings in objectivity, time, existence and being all in one sentence.

may or may not have had the occasional choirboy, I don't know. most were sexually active but decent guys. — Bitter Crank

LOL, that was a darkly funny comment. Kind of James Gunn-like there.

Instead they're the foundations upon which claims of truth are built. — mcdoodle

So P is true iff P AND the absolute presupposition P rests upon?

Simon Blackburn is a guest on the latest Partially Examined Life talking about deflation and truth in different areas. He said empirical claims were easy: you just look and see that the cat is on the mat.

However, the presupposition underlying that truth is probably that there is an external world with a real cat on a real mat that we can perceive by just looking. Certain skeptical scenarios would undermine the presupposition, making the empirical justification false.

And indeed, he does mention attending a magic show where the illusionist performed all sorts of tricks that made it look like impossible things were happening, and as such, you can't always trust your senses.

But then again, Blackburn considers himself a quasi-realist, so maybe he's not terribly concerned about the more radical skeptical scenarios.

It is what it is. — Michael

Depends on what the definition of "is" is.

Everything is what it is. — Michael

Which isn't saying anything. Water is water.

Okay, but what makes water be like water and not like glass? Well, turns out ordinary matter has a chemical composition which determines that. And how does chemical composition determine the properties of water? Physics. And what determines physics? And now you're on to cosmology, which is one step removed from asking metaphysical questions.

Hehehe, yup, science have made metaphysics kinda irrelevant. — Christoffer

Not really. Science has been able to answer some questions that used to be metaphysical. But there are plenty of questions that we don't know how to investigate empirically. Questions about consciousness, the interpretation of QM, laws of nature, causality, the nature of time, mereology, supervenience, the nature of perception, and various debates over realism vs anti-realism.

Except, Democritus was on to something, we're still debating some of those things, like the mind/body problem (consciousness in particular). Witty didn't end the speculation. He just added to the speculation that it might largely be the result of a misunderstanding of how language works.

how it was, and how the current distinction between subject and object is an outgrowth - a cancerous one, I'd say - of a more original distinction which was far more coherent and far more interesting than it's current day incarnation. — StreetlightX

Even so, the current cancerous ones had parallels in ancient philosophy. They're not an entirely new outgrowth of something from the middle ages. And the more interesting distinction between subject and object doesn't make questions about subjectivity and knowledge of an objective world go away.

[

Also worth noting that in the medieval terminology from which the subject-object distinction derived, an object was a strict correlate of a subject, so that the two were conceptually inseperable. The esse objectivm was that which existed only for a knowing being - something was objective only to the extent that it existed for a knowing being. — StreetlightX

I don't thinks this quite works. My dreams and fantasies exist known to me, but they're subjective. So is being me. I can tell other people about my subjectivity, and to the extent it's similar to their own, they can relate to it. But there is a sense in which there is this chasm between all of us, to varying degrees. I will never know what it's like to give birth or be born blind.

Even more so, I can't know what it is to be another animal. I'm sure there are some similarities, but I will never experience the world of smell the way a dog does.

As for the medieval view on this, the subjective/objective split showed up in ancient philosophies in both Europe and Asia. It's not just a recent mistake that's been made, but rather is reflective of having minds that can dream, imagine, hallucinate, and have individual bodies which have to use indirect means to communicate experiences.

That objectivity has come to mean that which is somehow totally seperate from a subject is just an unfortunate conceptual slide which has caused all sorts of confusion. — StreetlightX

Well, science (physics in particular) paints a picture of the world very different from the one we experience, and the question of to what extent the world is like what we perceive has been around for a very long time. Does the color we experience exist in the objects, or is that just a result of having eyes that detect EM radiation in the range where photons bounce off objects? Does time actually flow as we experience it? And so on.

I have found that people are good, bad, and indifferent without respect to what they believe about god. — Bitter Crank

Isn't that the truth!

Most discussions focus on just one problem. Trump creates a new problem every week. — Michael

The problems are political, and every news organization in existence is already obsessed with the man. Trump doesn't have much to do with philosophy, other than asking why humans elect bad leaders and fall prey to populism, and wondering about the failings of democracy in general.

But regardless, it seems an oddity when compared to corresponding to things which are actually there. — MindForged

It is, unless one accepts possible worlds into one's ontology.

How is it that a Donald Trump post is the most commented on in a philosophy forum? That's disheartening.

According to the deflationary theory of truth, nothing is added to the assertion, "The cat is on the mat.", by saying the "The cat is on the mat is true.", since to assert it is to say it's true. — Aleksander Kvam

But asserting the "The cat is on the mat" does not make it true. I could be lying or I could be mistaken.

What makes it true or false is whether the cat and mat being referred to is on the mat.

Another way of putting this is that to assert the cat is on the mat is not the same thing as the cat is on the mat being true.

By virtue of truth being necessarily presupposed in all meaningful thought, belief, and statements thereof... — creativesoul

That's what I'm thinking.

his is also why it's not good what many on the left are doing, viz., shutting down speech they disagree with on many campuses. — Sam26

I really, really hate that. However, usually I hear about that stuff from conservative sources that I don't trust very much. Often times, things are taken out of context when reporting so as to cause outrage in the viewer.

If someone cal tell me who the perfect arbiter of allowed and forbidden ideas is, I'll start forecasting their bias and inevitable failure... — VagabondSpectre

That's the thing. Nobody can be trusted in that role anymore than anyone can be trusted with unshared power.