I don't know that you can actually blame a moral theory on an outcome(which is what I did to be fair). But, moral relativism would hold that there was a time or place these acts were permissible. Moral objectivism would argue they were never permissible. Intuitively they seem wrong regardless of when they occurred, so adhering to a system that permits acts(in hindsight) that are always wrong; implies a faulty system of ethics is available. — Cheshire

Really? What if you're committing genocide/slavery against another group that is committing genocide/slavery against your own group? Many in today's political environment argue that killing or imprisoning your political opponents is a good thing.

Ummm....what did they do to Trump, actually?

The GOP utterly failed to do the choreographed selection of the party nominee (unlike the Democrats, who can rely on the ever loyal Bernie to lure in progressives and social democrats) and got a wild card with Trump. And the party is now in a state of disarray, but still holding on two the duopoly.

And let's face it: many in both parties would likely want to change things, but once the dance is going on with a certain tune, you cannot start to tango when everybody else is doing a square dance. There is no evil solid entity lurking in the shadows, no Illuminati. There are just people who think they can control the dance. Yes, there is a power elite in every country. But don't think they agree on things and can act in an uniform fashion. It's more like things happen and the elite accepts it or tries to manage somehow the process. — ssu

Trump ran on fighting corruption, like so many other politicians. Whether they actually did anything or not to fight corruption isn't what I'm trying to focus on.

I'm assuming that when you, ssu, say that you want to fight corruption you really mean it. You don't have any ulterior motives and that if you see Democrats engaged in corruption, you will fight them as hard as any Republican you see engaged in corruption, nor will you be allowing certain corporations to continue to engage in corruption because they are donating to your campaign. I hope you would assume the same thing when I say that I want to fight corruption.

Now when both parties are engaged in the same kind of corruption, then investigating one can be a threat to the other. You and I will become the enemy of both and there will be a lot worse than impeachment that you and I would be facing.

Both parties need each other, 1) to keep the nation united and not have states secede, or another civil war break out, and 2) to have someone else to blame when your ideas fail.

When you say that there are many in both parties that would likely want change, what do you mean by "change"? Anything other than abolishing all political parties and lobbyists isn't any type of change from the status quo.

An attempt at an exploration in search of objectivity, because relativism causes so much harm. — Cheshire

Intrigued by this. How do you imagine it causes harm? — Isaac

It delivered the worst humans have ever done. Slavery, Genocide, Illegal Downloading... — Cheshire

How are any of these the fault of relativism? These acts were often argued to be morally acceptable and objectively moral. It's the actual argument that these acts are objectively moral that provides the reasoning for others to participate in them.

Moral relativism doesn't make the case that these acts are what everyone should be doing. In fact, it makes the opposite case. So, because someone is engaged in illegal downloading doesn't make it ok for you to do it. That's you're own personal choice. And if you are making your moral decisions on what others are doing, that isn't moral relativism, but more of moral objectivism. So, moral relativism isn't thinking that what is good for others is good for you. It is in the understanding that you are a social animal capable of complex reasoning and that using reason to navigate the social environment is in your best interests as a social animal.

Goals? This is a goal. To enslave half of mankind.

You have to qualify now what those goals should or must be. And ay, there is the rub. That is precisely what the debate has been for thousands of years, with no end in sight. — god must be atheist

It's not qualifiying what the goals should be, but whether any goal has a moral property of good or bad (goals are more than just being good or bad) in some sense independent of the person, or group, with the goal in question. Enslaving mankind and freeing mankind are different goals. Whether they are good or bad is something different, and is seems to always depend on the person's, or group's, other goals.

There has been at least one other issue in philosophy that has been solved: Zeno's paradox of the hare and the turtle (the hare will never catch the turtle ... like heck it won't.) — god must be atheist

Another that has been solved is which came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg - evolutionary speaking.

but we can't actually safely and without any doubt in our minds decide what feature in an act makes it moral, immoral or amoral. — god must be atheist

Sure we do. Goals is the feature. If you didn't have goals what would morality be? Those that help realize your goals are good, those that inhibit them are bad. We even label events not caused by any humans, that either inhibit or help achieve our goals as "good" or "bad" events. People or events that have no impact on your goals are not considered to fall into the territory of ethics.

Understanding that morality is subjective isn't that difficult. We all have our own goals. Some goals we share primarily because we are the same species, or members of the same culture, so it can appear as if there is an objective aspect to morality, until you meet a new civilization or person with different goals that include how to inhibit your goals.

I know that Scientific realism is the common sensical position, and I have a lot of time for it.
I guess I'm considering a view of idealism and realism at the same time. For example, I say that physical nature exists independantly of human cognition, which is a realist statement, but then I realise that such a statement, that nature exists independantly of human cognition, is borne of human cognition, and wouldn't be possible without it. Then I get stuck in a double bind. — Aidan buk

Stop thinking of it in dualistic terms and think of it monistically, or else you're left with explaining how physical things interact with ideas.

What does it mean for something to exist independently of human cognition, or human congnition exist independently from physical nature? Are they not causally related? I think you are confusing the map with the territory.

Well, it works well for those in power wanting to hold on to the status quo. — ssu

As such, essentially every government in the world is an oligarchy where the elite few rule the many and limit and strictly control the new members to their club. Just think if you or I were able to become president - what they did to Trump would be nothing compared to what they would do to people like us looking to really change things.

Anyway, if you have so much discontent towards how things are in the country, both from the left and the right, make sure that the opposition will be divided and incapable of unifying. Has worked in other countries, actually. — ssu

Dividing is just practicing what they are doing. You divide people by labeling them. Stop labeling. No more Democrats or Republicans.

I've come to the conclusion that the polarization of American politics is an active if not openly declared strategy (or policy) implemented by the two ruling parties to stay in power. They only ease the tension if some nutcase comes along and starts shooting politicians of one or the other party (as has already happened). Otherwise, make the other side as evil as possible in the "culture war". — ssu

I agree. The argument that voting for a third party is a vote for the other party is part of this strategy to scare you into voting for one of the two. But when you see both as equally evil, then voting third, fourth, fifth, etc. party (or just no parties) is the only reasonable option.

the foundation of the problem...
— Harry Hindu

... isn't identity politics, it's politicizing some issue, and that can be done with practically anything. Currently popular is vaccination vs antivaccination. Many Trumpian antivac supporters are themselves vaccinated, though they may decline to admit it, inanely claiming HIPAA rights violations or whatever, and apparently could care less if a portion of their followers die from not being vaccinated.

Even if there were a significant risk with getting vaccinated, shouldn't Trumpian "conservatives" be willing to take a health risk in order to get the economy going full-steam? Isn't that what a brave patriot would do for their nation's economy? That seemed to be their courageous logic at the beginning of the pandemic. How did it get turned around? If you have no actual principles and are merely a group-thinking follower, the Trumps of the world can make you dance like a mindless puppet on strings. — praxis

Yes, it's politicizing identity. What do you think anti-vac and vaccinated are, if not identities? It's using labels as weapons against your political opponents.

A large percentage of unvaccinated are blacks. Why aren't they getting vaccinated? Maybe we should ask people why they aren't getting vaccinated instead of demonizing them when you have no idea what their reasoning is? What gives you the right to determine the medical decisions of others? Should others make medical decisions for you?

There's two sides to the coin. — frank

But you were talking about string theory. Can you make up your mind which analogy you're going to use? By narrowing it down to only two (views), limits the possible options or solutions you can think of or understand.

Emotion traps people. We want there to be recognition of racial bias in society so that DAs can't get away with just ignoring the murders of black men like Ahmaud Arbery.

But emotion clicks in and says that all white people are complicit, which isn't true, but it satisfies a bruised, frustrated heart to say it, and we just forget the more abysmal truth. — frank

The men who killed Ahmaud Arbery are in jail. Who else has killed a black person and isn't in jail, or isn't being hunted down to put in jail? The knee-jerk reaction to label every altercation between a black person and a white person as racist just makes the word, "racist" meaningless and makes it more difficult to fight real racism. Blacks and whites can disagree and it not be racist.

Labeling all white people as complicit is fighting racism with racism. In what ways are whites complicit, that blacks aren't? Don't blacks keep voting for the same Democrats for 50+ years that are part of this system of racism?

WHO is racist? Point them out so that we can fight them together. Calling everyone racist doesn't make anyone want to help you fight racism.

What does a nation with systemic racism look like vs a nation that doesn't have systemic racism but has pockets of racism in some areas?

Kants thing in itself, direct notions of eternity, nothingness, etc, at first thought, seem to represent thing which are unknowable. They purport to represent things outside of human cognition. But, surely, all there is is human cognition? In such an instance, there is no unknowable, in the way it is commonly assumed, instead, the unknowable is always knowable.
For example, knowing that it sounds silly, someone asks, so you know the thing in itself then? And I'd say, what are you referring to, in your mind, when you mention the thing in itself?
Surely if you can think it, I can know it?

Is this just an instance of taking reason on its own too far? — Aidan buk

It's a good point. The only problem is that we can't say that all there is is human cognition. What does it even mean to say that all there is is human cognition?

There are some ideas that represent things outside of human cognition, but then there are ideas that don't represent anything, or are products of human imagination as opposed to some other natural process independent of humans. These things we can be said to know, as we are the creators of such things. However can we say that we know the Earth, Sun and Moon in the same way that we know Paris is the Capitol of France?

That’s the saddest part, Trump didn’t do jack for his base and none of the wealthy who scored big under his administration stormed the capital. — praxis

The same can be said of Biden, who's been in power for 50 years, hasn't done jack for minorities except insult them, yet they keep voting for the promises made by the Democratic party. The only promises kept by either party is that they keep making you out to be the victim of someone else.

This is what I've been saying for awhile now and is the foundation of the problem as stated by - politics - dividing people based on identity and then making people think that everyone else that doesn't share your identity is out to get you. It's no different than religion. In fact, many religions make their followers out to be victims and most political arguments contain the same logical errors as religious arguments.

Abolish political parties and religions. Abolish group-think. Focusing on the things that make us different from one another and using it as an ideological weapon against each other is the status quo. If you are truly progressive then stop voting for the same people and groups that put us in this state of hate.

I read this as your failure to understand English. Inasmuch as you seem to understand English, your criticism must based on something else. Given your invective and argument, that must be hate. If not hate, please make explicit what. — tim wood

Not hate. Logic. Given what you said, I don't expect you to understand the difference.

How do you ask about a money trail and then complain about an analogy? The criteria for an analogy isn't a one for one literal comparison. Why not just make a needless personal attack without injecting additional ignorance. It's too much of a give away. — Cheshire

The analogy states that the person who hired them should go to jail too.

Talk about needless personal attacks...

It's like why is string theory right? bla bla. Why is string theory wrong? anti-bla anti-bla. — frank

So string theory is what changed your mind? I don't get it. Is string theory right or wrong? It can't be both, but it has to be one.

For Socrates (and Plato), the examined life is a constant examination of our beliefs and actions for the purpose of establishing what is true, good, and just.

Awareness of justice or righteousness (dikaiosyne) enables the philosopher to always act in ways that are good for himself and others. — Apollodorus

Then it begs the question of what is truth, morality and justice? That is something that needs to be examined. If they are subjective aspects of our consciousness then it is impossible to always act in ways that are always good for yourself and others. What you consider good might not be examined and interpreted in the same way as someone else. Just the fact that there are so many people in the world that believe that their personal examinations of their life indicates that it would be good and righteous to tell others how to live their lives and define for others what is good and righteous. Many people aren't happy unless they are able to dictate to others how to live their lives.

Philosophers make a lot of statements that sound nice, but fall apart when examined and integrated with the rest of what we know and don't know. I think Dennett calls them "deepities".

Your "point" is irrelevant and amounts to a hasty generalization fallacy, typical of philosophically sub-literate spaghetti coders. — 180 Proof

:rofl:
I was simply reiterating a point made by a philosopher, something that you say that I need to read more of. So you're saying that Witt is making hasty generalizations, when other philosophers, like Russell, praised Witt's statement that I quoted as
"the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating."

So now Russell and Witt are philosophically sub-literate spaghetti coders? Who needs to read more or less philosophy again?

"I think everyone should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think".
-Steve Jobs

I leave it to you argue with the likes of Wittgenstein, Russell and Jobs because you simply can't be depended on to be consistent and intellectually honest.

A little context certainly helps.

Insurrection: an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.

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

I wonder what 180 thinks of the Bolshevik insurrection, the French and American insurrections of the 18th century, etc.

Do you see yourself in people of other races?
— frank

Absolutely. Maybe you haven't heard: Humans share over 99% of their DNA. Focusing on the small differences, which are just surface level, just shows how shallow you are. — Harry Hindu

So what changed your mind, Frank, in the past 5 months?

Your complete misread of what my remark is symptomatic of a profoundly misplaced (ass backwards) preference of computer programming (formal syntactics) to the exclusion of philosophical discourse (natural semantics) as a model, or ideal, of reasoning. — 180 Proof

And your misread of the post you were replying to stated that not reading to much, as opposed to not reading at all, philosophy is a good thing. My point, that your post doesn't address, is that philosophy itself has made the assertion that most of the problems in philosophy are the result of a misuse of natural semantics.

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."
Wittgenstein
https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/09/take-a-wittgenstein-class-he-explains-the-problems-of-translating-language-computer-science-and-artificial-intelligence.html

KK is a waste of time. Mr. Kid isnt intellectually honest and reading their posts insults one's intelligence.
—Harry Hindu

:rofl: — Kenosha Kid

Proving my point, I see.

wtf are you saying - that incestuous couples have this special power that no one else has where they can choose who they are attracted to?

If you're gay are you choosing to not have sex with the opposite sex? Is it a choice that determines what you are sexually attracted to, or what your sexual orientation is? — Harry Hindu

<crickets chirping> — Kenosha Kid

:rofl:

Wait, who sent who? The hit man is the one that is sent to make the hit, but on Jan. 6th the hit man is the one that sent them? Who did the hit man send, if it wasn't the hit man? Typically inconsistent gibberish made by those that are motivated not by truth, but by politics. :roll:

And isn't there supposed to be a money trail between the hit man and who sends the hit man? Very poor analogy made here, but what would you expect from those driven by hate and not truth?

The person you quoted should take some computer programming courses so that they understand how to use language in a more consistent manner. :lol:

Having sex is an act that is not under dispute. Having sex with your own close relative is a particular sex act that can lead to offspring with e.g. learning difficulties (your parents can attest). Having sex after 40 is just having sex. That is, if you're 43, you cannot choose to have sex as a 33 yr old instead, whereas you can choose to have sex with someone who isn't a close relative. Too difficult for you? — Kenosha Kid

wtf are you saying - that incestuous couples have this special power that no one else has where they can choose who they are attracted to?

If you're gay are you choosing to not have sex with the opposite sex? Is it a choice that determines what you are sexually attracted to, or what your sexual orientation is?

And like I keep pointing out-all of this is irrelevant when married couples are not forced to have babies. Having babies and being married are mutually exclusive. So why can't incestuous couples marry and adopt?

Homosexual relationships were once taboo, and are still taboo in many countries, so pulling out the taboo card is disingenuous.

KK is a waste of time. Mr. Kid isnt intellectually honest and reading their posts insults one's intelligence.

It's more of a statement than a confession. Computer programming uses computer languages. Learning a computer language helps you use your native language in a more consistent manner without the need to embellish or obfuscate your meaning. If learning a computer language is a form of programming, as you are implying, then learning a language of any sort would be a form of programming, as you are implying. :roll:

The fact that you are disagreeing with logic as necessary component of reasonable discourse, or conflating the use of logic and being programmed, confesses much.

A condition is any state-of-affairs that we can point to. The temporal distance between some cause and it's subsequent effect is subjective, as change/time is subjective based on the mental state one is presently in. In other words, consciousness stretches out the relationships between causes and their effects, which produces the feeling of time passing - of information flowing through space-time. Information would be the element that is carried through all causal realtionships. Or maybe it's a particular property or attribute that gets carried through as what we point to that links the cause-effect with another sequence of cause-effect, but again, these relationships are subjectively stretched and the amount of time between any given causal events is also subjective.

Should you be determining whether some life, other than your own, is worth living or not, examined or not? — Harry Hindu

You would need to have some familiarity with the existentialists and phenomenologists to understand what it could mean to fail to live your life. You strike me as someone who has read little philosophical literature and on account of that fails to show much nuanced understanding, and is thus given to making inapt comments. — Janus

So it is your position that existentialists and phenomenologists are the ones that determine whether any life is worth living? Is this who examines your life to make this determination?

I think reading too much philosophical literature is a waste of time, as most of it is just obfuscating for the purpose of selling books. I find that thinking logically is all that is needed and for that, reading computer programming books and trying your hand at computer programming would do you well, or else you fail to show much reasonable understanding, and thus given to asking silly questions.

That seems quite good to me. With regard to consciousness it works well. Some definitions (but not others) of consciousness are completely neutral as to which objects can have it. It takes a theory to then predict which things can have experiences and which things cannot. — bert1

No. In this sense, consciousness has been defined as not being limited to which objects have it prior to any theories being posited. What this actually means is a bit vague and a better definition would be needed in order to test it with theories. It seems to me that you need a definition first to then be able to posit a viable theory as to why consciousness is that way - not being limited to which objects have it.

Being over 40 isn't an act. Incest is. — Kenosha Kid

Lame come-back, as usual. Having sex after 40 is an act, like having sex with your cousin is an act. :roll:

Like I said, having children is irrelevant to this topic. Just as gay and heterosexual couples aren't expected or forced to have children, neither should incestuous couples. Like gay couples, incestuous couples could adopt or find a surrogate.

There's nothing special about it, it's a general rule: that which you didn't cause is not your fault. If your child has a genetic deficiency due to a fluke mutation, no one is to blame. If they have it due to inbreeding, the inbreds are the cause. — Kenosha Kid

Women over 40 stand an increased chance of having children with birth defects. Does this mean that we should prevent women over 40 from having children? What about women with AIDS, or some genetic defect that could be passed down to the child?

None of this even matters anyway as having children isn't necessary component of having a relationship and getting married. Nothing says that married couples must have children. An incestuous couple could adopt, just like gay parents. And since the basic argument for gay marriage was that consensual adults that love each other should be able to marry, that argument would include incestuous couples.

There are as many definitions of information as there are of intentionality , so in order for each of us to know what the other is talking about we would need to clarify these terms. I would just offer that u less you are willing to reduce information to ‘sense’ , the only place for information I see in Husserl’s model of consciousness is as a derived, second order construction. — Joshs

I defined information earlier in the thread as the relationship between cause and effect. Sensation is a causal relationship between the sense and what is sensed, therefore sensation is a type of information.

Intentionality is the causal process of goal-directed behavior, so intentionality is also information. Is everything information? I think so.

This may not make much sense but maybe you can see how it deviates from the logic of natural cause-effect. — Joshs

You're right. It seems like an obfuscation. I think it can be explained in a much simpler manner. The simple idea of cause and effect is that some existing condition determines subsequent conditions. The fact that each effect is determined by its cause means that each effect carries information about the cause, or is about the cause. Effects are also causes of other effects further down the timeline. Designating any particular condition as a cause or effect is dependent upon the goal in mind, or intentionality. An example would be making hammer vs. using a hammer. The hammer is both the effect our building it, and part of the cause of the nail being driven.

The question I was considering was whether the unlived life is worth examining. Of course animals live their lives; consider the question I asked earlier: What could it mean to say that an animal doesn't live its life? — Janus

They're silly questions. I interpret "unlived" to mean non-existent, as in to examine a life that doesn't exist. It doesn't make sense to say that one can not live one's life as you are always living your life, even when examining it.

Animals probably don't examine their lives, either, so that begs the question; are their lives worth living? That question seems irrelevant to the life of an animal, since to ask that question would be to examine their life, which we assume they cannot do. — Janus

The question assumes that a unexamined life isn't worth living. All you have to do it point to the billions of organisms that don't examine their lives and each continues to strive to live. From there, you should be asking to who, or what, is any particular life worth living. I don't see why any life's worth should be determined by some other life's examination, as if that was their life instead of the one that they have. Should you be determining whether some life, other than your own, is worth living or not, examined or not?

Now we seem to have arrived back at the first question: is an unexamined human life worth living?, What if the examination interferes with the living? Then the life is not even lived, much less worth living. What if a life is both lived and examined? That would seem to be the richest possibility. — Janus

I would have to ask, what qualifies as a proper examination?

The second question is another silly question as I pointed out before, you are always living your life, even when examining it. Human beings are inquisitive and examining nature to figure out how it works is as much human behavior as rolling around in mud is a pig's behavior.

Inevitably! Go ahead. Maybe we should also have a theory of definition and theory as well. — bert1

A definition describes what something is. A theory describes why something is.

A definition is used for identification while a theory is used for prediction.

Do you think it boils down to ethics again? How so? — Shawn

Define "ethics". If ethics encompasses how you treat others besides just yourself wouldn't that mean that you'd need to examine everyone else's life to know if their life is worth living? And for those whose life that you determine aren't worth living, what do you do with the results of that examination?

How would an animal or domesticated pig examine their unlived life? What could it even mean to say that an animal was not living its life? — Janus

Domesticated pigs don't examine their lives. Does that make the pigs' life not worth living? The pig doesn't think so as it keeps on striving to live and avoid harm and stress instinctively.

Examine one's life is only something humans do, but as shown by the pig, has no bearing on whether or not a life is worth living or not.

Hmmmphh! Don't we need to define "defintion" and "theory" first? :smirk:

It seems that most of the "is" statements are definitions. The theories are more vague and require definitions to make them less so.

Intentionality has to do with the directedness or of-ness or aboutness of consciousness — Joshs

This is just another way of saying consciousness is composed of information.

I imagine your description of intentionality is accurate for certain approaches in philosophy. In phenomenology, however, intentionality and aboutness are quite different from a cause-effect structure. — Joshs

Then it should be simple enough for you to provide an example of aboutness and intentionality that does not include a causal relationship. In talking about intentionality or aboutness you are basically talking about causes and their effects.

Intentions always precede the action that is intended.

To say that something is about aomething else is to say that something was caused by something else, or else how would it be about it? How would it contain information about something else?

'In philosophy, intentionality is the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. To say of an individual’s mental states that they have intentionality is to say that they are mental representations or that they have contents.' It develops from there into a major topic in phenomenology and philosophy generally. — Wayfarer

Mental states are not the only things that represent things. All effects represent their causes, of which mental states are just one type of cause and effect relationship. As such, aboutness is everywhere causes leave effects.


Aboutness is the same thing as information. Information is the realtionship between cause and effect.

Intentionality is the aspect of the mind that causes other mental states and body states. The will to remember something brings that memory into consciousness. The intent to move your arm moves your arm. Intentionality seems to be something different than aboutness except for the fact that intentionality is a cause for other mental and body states. As such, you moving your arm is about your intent to move it just as your words on this screen are about your idea and your intent to communicate it.

'A physicist', said Neils Bohr, 'is just an atom's way of looking at itself'. — Wayfarer

Can one atom look at itself, or can only a group of atoms look at themselves?

From one view we are people. From another we are atoms. Is the varying size scale something real that exists independent of perception, or is it a product of different types of perceptions? If the latter, is it perceptions all the way down? If the former, then is there really a fundamental size, like atoms, or does it depend on one's perception?

If there is no fundamental size and fundamental is in the eye of the beholder, then we are just as much people as we are atoms looking at itself.

No. Burning your fingers is a sensation. Two plus two is not a sensation. The most elementary steps of linguistic reasoning are not sensations. This doesn't mean that reason and sensable impressions are entirely separate. But as said previously many animals have far greater sensory abilities than humans, but they don't reason. (I know this is not a fashionable opinion.) — Wayfarer

But what is it like for you to add two plus two? How do you know you are adding two plus two? Do you see numbers in your head, or hear sounds, "two plus two equals four"? Again, what form does your reasoning take, and isn't your reasoning always about things?

Linguistic reasoning involves the manipulation of words or numbers, but words and numbers are visual scribbles on a page, or sounds you hear from your professor. So I don't see how any steps of linguistic reasoning does not involve the manipulation of memorized sensations.

You are asserting that animals can't reason without properly defining reason. Are animals conscious? Well, we'd need a definition of consciousness, too. Definitions, please.