Questions and stances embedded in the OP stated for the sake of brevity:

Do humans posses a capacity of autonomy regarding morally relevant decisions?

What is the difference between moral knowledge that is acquired intellectually (or culturally transmitted) and moral knowledge that is the result of experience?

Claim: Experience yields a greater degree of autonomy compared with theory because one understands why something is bad rather than accepting someone else's word.

Generally the exercise of autonomy, as exercising choice between many options and being able to tell good ones from bad ones, increases with experience. But we are leaving out intelligence. Someone who is very dumb but has loads of experience may not have much agency as someone who is very smart but lacks much life experience.
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I gave the example last time. A person who is told not to touch a hot stove because it burns will not learn the significance of such advice until that person has touched a hot stove.

A soldier who drills everyday with a patriotic view toward fighting in war may have a radically different view once war is experienced. I listened to adult sibling describe her brother as he had been before and after an experience in war and it brought me to tears. If it afforded her brother any greater moral autonomy beyond the "truth" of what war entails versus its myths I'm unsure. Some naive choices (if you can call them that) have grave consequences. He may be fit to give advice to more naive individuals, to increase the idea that there are other options open to young men.

In highschool I witnessed a pig slaughter and butchery. They stuck a knife in it's throat and let it bleed for quite a while. I put my hand into the warm chest cavity and felt the organs. I had made up my mind that I was not going to eat its meat out of sheer disgust. The gamey smell of guts and singed hair was enough. Later I attended the cooking process and the smell changed completely (frying pork skin and fat) and my appetite was stimulated. There is the fact that such an experience is encoded in my memory when I think about the hidden processes which I'm apt to ignore. If the consequences of my choices are hidden, then the first-hand experience with any of those processes will inform my choices.

I was sifting through this trash heap with CasKev and all I could find that I liked was a sparkly sequin.

Also, there is something (an agent) hunting us on the trash heap (I hear it over the ridge), so get ready to defend yourself.

Someone post directions to a trash heap worth sifting through so we can get outta here.

Sapientia was peeing into the wind (always here to lighten the mood with his antics, or is he trying to lure the thing over the ridge by scent marking).

Jordan Peterson distances himself from Campbell, since the latter became somewhat of a new-age guru.

Whereas Campbell says 'walk through the gates past the threshold guardians to follow your bliss'.

Peterson says, ' train first in the old ways before you walk through the gates past the threshold guardians to follow your bliss'. Christianity is a guide to becoming fit. Christianity embodies the preferred values by which you should conduct your life.

If you 'follow your bliss' willy nilly it might lead into the mouth of chaos, like a baby bird who was just eaten by a cat as it left the nest. Stay paranoid, work-hard, bootstrap, or we might end up like Venezuela.

But might that not be what you are secretly wishing for: catastrophe and death (or the risk of catastrophe and death).

Culture is broken and the life waters have left the cistern. Go out and get some by traveling across the borders of the known.

Edit: Deleted my post.

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism. — Dennett on Rapoport's Rules

The comments competed for attention, like Daniel Dennett's memes, and one now reads: 'whether it is wise to explore what is given or to start anew'.

When in Xia do as the Xians do.

The Xians inherit an uncomfortable chair from their elders which is the only chair they are allowed to sit in by law until a certain age. After a period of seven sitting revolutions the chair is abandoned and put in a glass case, to be gifted to the closest of kin who haven't yet been inducted into the sitting period of PainOhw. Older Xians pride themselves on keeping very comfortable chairs for their age appropriate guests. From an outsider's point of view, Xian chairs have become an cultural obsession. Those who have not completed the ritual of PainOh age are discouraged from sitting at all in the houses of their elder peers, unless an uncomfortable chair is present.

Young Xians are known to proclaim outloud, as they sit in their uncomfortable chairs, 'this chair is surprisingly comfortable'.

Sounds like Jordan Peterson.

Ok. Given the simplicity of example I think I understand why.

Between two people set to find solutions to diverse sets of problems, the one who acquires working solutions quicker on average is likely engaging algorithms with less steps and therefore generally more intelligent.

Please do translate for us.

If one computer runs slower than the other but again takes the same number of steps, they're still equally intelligent. — Efram

So if a computer takes 10,000 years to finish its procedure rather than 1 second, all else being equal, they're still equally intelligent? Imagine how many more computations the latter can make while the former is still calculating problem 1.

This wouldn't apply to humans in a competitive scenario. We'd always call the faster person more intelligent, even if all the procedural steps were the same.

I accept your distinction about unfalsifiable claims.

Why would you assume that you know how your lucky shirt works?

Maybe your lucky shirt just increases the probability you will win by 1%. Could you scientifically verify that your lucky shirt increases the probability that you will win by 1%?

Maybe your lucky shirt is solar powered and the sun went behind the clouds at the most crucial moment.

Maybe your lucky shirt is paired with unlucky shoes but you were ignorant about all the unlucky variables.

If it is robot that looks and acts human than it wouldn't be an issue unless someone realizes they are not human, but if they are nothing like a human they I imagine it is a given that it will be a problem until the people they interact with get..acclimated to them as well as the sentient being themselves gets acclimated to human beings. — dclemets

This thought has occurred to me many times in relation to my failures as a thinker and or communicator as indicated by the phenomena of reciprocity in the forum. I don't really engage anyone on a personal level and my mind therefore pictures me as an alien, a foreign entity, a homunculus playing at being a thinker. Pinnochio is yet to become a real boy.

If for instance there was somekind of objective measure of agency instituted here (whether that just was a belief of free will, or a measure of brain function) I might not pass. Someone who is terribly ugly though might find real freedom here in being disconnected from the selection pressures of being seen.

It recalls the movie Gattaca. The condition of biological perpetuity necessitates brutal (or not so brutal) discriminations across a wide diversity of specialized domains (species adapted to specific niches). We are buffeted by the facts and specialized agents of considerable power (all too obvious forces) in the world.

It reminds me of Jordan Peterson's meme about open and closed borders as applying across domains of practice.

Edit:

Suppose that one of us here in the forum is actually an artificial homunculus (AI language program) being tested by Google. Paul used to have modbot (chatterbot) in the old forum, which was like playful marionette to inject humor into the thread. Sometimes Paul spoke through modbot and sometimes Paul let modbot speak on its own, unless I'm mistaken (that was my impression).

Some people didn't know what modbot was and that was a bit hilarious.

I think it would be really interesting if we couldn't tell the difference between human agents and non-human agents a part via this forum.

Deciding to do any act for whatever cited reason is magical.

This thread will be the cause of me planting a Calotropis in the lower garden, so I can attract Monarch butterflies. Any butterfly may spark a vision of the chaos of indeterminable casual chains, crisscrossing like neurons in a network.

To be scientific using a Popperian meme: this thread will not be the actual cause (nor will it won't be) of me planting a Calotropis in the lower garden because the hypothesis (that it did) is unfalsifiable.

The problem is that I can at any moment be seized by the absurdity of life.

Imagine a being sitting at a computer (?) somewhat incapacitated by the illusion of his or her choices. What ought I to do at any moment (tell me, command me, provide me a God that screams "thou shalt")?

Somewhere Wosret said something about specialization and it is trying to weigh into this post right now.

If specialization is called for, we have to abandon all routes that distract us from that aim. Suppose I've been tasked with building a bridge across a body of water by a certain date or otherwise I'll be killed. If I indeed am motivated to avoid death (and the threat is real) I'll drop everything that I'm doing here and set to work on trying to get that bridge built (according to whatever specifications are demanded of me).

If nothing is demanded of me and my desires are disordered, well then... I think I'll just fart around here. I'm free to be mediocre. Hurrah!

What if I had to pass a difficult test to get into the forum. Uh Oh!

Also if ideas are ever believed to be the origin of a cause and effect, like the idea of the Butter Fly Effect, then maybe they also lead to big (or negligible) outcomes via biological mechanisms.

Is the idea of the Butterfly Effect subject to its own effects (what are those effects objectively measured)? I mean this in the sense of memes passing from one mind to the next.

A more relevant analogue of the Butter Fly Effect is to be found in how organisms evolve by natural selection.

A small event (gene mutation) that codes for an adaptive trait has effects that continue far into the future.

Trees and vegetation do influence the weather, so tiny accidental events do have far reaching casual effects via biological mechanisms.

But it shows this desire to encroach on everything with evolutionary motives. — Andrew

Why isn't this just an extension of what everyone is doing in this forum, full of selective pressures on the "proper" way of doing things. Obviously the ability to reason well has benefits for whatever reasons are the "good" reasons. I also have to be able to write in English. I also have to have access to the internet and a relatively recent computing device. Lucky me (except for the glaring "bad" traits). I have to conform to necessary rules.

If life is a bowl of sausage is it better to not look behind the curtain to see how they are made? Only the sausage makers should be allowed back there (a different species of being).

On one side of the fictional future is an intimidating tower of powerful authors (tools used to control human nature which are (un)justly distributed and ultimately leashed to instinctual effects) while on the other side is a pit of postmodern despair, insensibility and madness.

And this is all bullshit because you can go take a walk (unless you don't have functioning legs). There is nothing here yet to determine when you can and cannot take a walk.

Is there?

What specific creature is the target of our concern: Harry, Andrew, Wayfarer, Reformed Thespian? Whose concern is "our" concern?

I think the Buddhist spandrel of "dependent arising" is fit to reproduce in the corner of a postmodern cathedral.

"When this is, that is
This arising, that arises
When this is not, that is not
This ceasing, that ceases."

Where is the moderating agent who didn't appear who would have saved us all this trouble (either Jesus or Baden will do).

Am I passing the Turing test?

Types of posters who are welcome here:

Those with a genuine interest in / curiosity about philosophy and the ability to express this in an intelligent way, and those who are willing to give their interlocutors a fair reading and not make unwarranted assumptions about their intentions (i.e. intelligent, interested and charitable posters).

Types of posters who are not welcome here:

Evangelists: Those who must convince everyone that their religion, ideology, political persuasion, or philosophical theory is the only one worth having.

Racists, homophobes, sexists, Nazi sympathisers, etc.: We don't consider your views worthy of debate, and you'll be banned for espousing them.

Advertisers, spammers: Instant deletion of post followed by ban.

Trolls: You know who you are. You won't last long — Baden: PF Guidlines

What is the point of reproducing? — Andrew

Depends on how and why you do it.

There might be a point somewhere in the room while your doing it but it's a matter of perspective.

It could be the point of a Samurai sword, or the point of a needle, the point of your nose, the point of your prick, the point of your intellect, the point of your gorgeous face, or a numerical point in your bank savings.

Non-reversing mirrors do reverse the image as if you were turning around to meet your duplicate. Reversing mirrors don't reverse the image.

Already getting nauseous about perspective.

But then in your duplicate's world the semantics of the word "right" might be reversed. He'd simply be using a foreign dialect of English, which is true on his cultural side of the divide .

Everything on the other side of whatever side your on is could be affected by whatever the mysterious rules are.

The reflection of the image of the self,

The echo of the sound of the self,

All occurring in the absence of an embodied community.

More so, when a body never meets a body and it becomes normal... what then?

Narcissus poeticus which grows in Greece, has a fragrance that has been described as intoxicating. — Wikipedia: Narcissus (plant)

I get the same problem when I reach out to try and touch all those porn stars. I hit a flat screen.

Now we need a memetic complement to that last Dawkins quote.

"They came into being with language. Look for them floating loose in a sea of data ; they have cavalier freedom (if worms have it). Now they swarm inside the neural networks of mankind."

I am a meme editing agent.

Take the underlying principles of religious belief and apply them to prevailing materialistic views. — Nobel Dust

I'm not sure what these principles are in your view. Everyone talks about this stuff as if the details are obvious. Maybe this is evidence of epistemic hubris (something religious beliefs and behaviors can be criticized of).

Is epistemic hubris a principle of religious belief? It is a charge leveled against religion (or theory) on the basis of trying to conserve tradition (or sell a theory), from an outside view. Faith conserves itself, whereas any scientific doxa that supports and guides prevailing theory changes in the pursuit of testing hypotheses.

Is not this assertion that "we cannot know" itself a dogma with affirmations and denials? Is not this itself a statement of knowledge? Is "we cannot know with certainty" not itself an assertion of KNOWLEDGE (a dogmatic assertion) as THE WAY to interpret Scripture? Whether conscious of it or not, this is what is called "double-talk" and those who believe this are doing the very thing they claim to despise, even in the very speaking of it. Its like Oprah stating on national television that it is arrogant to think Jesus is the only way, and then turning around and telling us the ONLY WAY is to believe that all religions lead to the same God. Is this not itself an arrogant claim ... a claim which must have a bird's eye view of knowledge to state it with such certainty. — John Hendryx: Reformation Theology (blog)

Intuition may as well be a kind of informal or non-explicit logic. Dan Dennett says it's a process of attaining an answer without knowing how you got it. All of our current attempts at formal logic depend on automatic processes of which we are unaware.

The exceptional and seemingly effortless calculating skills of Daniel Tammet and other savants might well be called a form of intuition.

Emotions, intuition and logic are all features our working biology that make us human.

We already struggle to adapt to the changing environmental (selection) pressures of life. The problem with an AI overlord is whether or not we are willing to let something else make decisions for us (world shaping processes are always going on without our input anyway, or are a part of our short-sighted self-serving democratic decisions ).

Some human group will tell us that such an AI is the way to go but there will be no consensus. Conspiracy theories will reign and radical mistrust along tribal lines will win out (given our political reality at the moment).

To calm your Cartesian anxiety:

"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42." ~Douglas Adams

"On page 42 of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jonathan Harker discovers he is a prisoner of the vampire. And on the same page of Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein reveals he is able to create life." ~Anonymous

Stay tuned for the sequel to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. An AI program named Mary Shelly will give birth another AI program that will retell the story of Frankenstein. You will no longer go to the cinema or read a book for this new mandatory telling. You'll preform in the cinema for an otherworldly set of authors. Don't worry, it will be a choose your own adventure version (unless you unluckily enough to encounter page phase 42).

On page 42 you must commit to some regretful or promising mistake. You might be imprisoned by a monster or have given birth to one (or 42).

(Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Douglas Adams and Daniel Dennett, by marriage of neural happenstance)

(The strangeness of this post is principally the effect of psychological compensation and other mostly predetermined stuff.)

On the Cartesian Anxiety of Our Times and What Faith Can Offer

Charles Pope is seriously NOT helping.

Superstition as a definition requires belief in supernatural phenomena but sorting out what kind of false beliefs fit into that box might not be so easy.

When a baseball player chooses to wear a certain lucky hat or a pair of socks, or preform a pre-game ritual, anthropologists might term such behavior as superstitious. Such behavior might be going on everywhere, among everyone, but couched in contemporarily acceptable terms.

I like the idea of thought contagion (memes) to explain the spread of beliefs. Other truth-testing processes provide us with the tools to assess the truth value of whatever behavior, phenomena or claim is being made. I'm a white belt wizard still in this dojo of mixed mental arts.

(This is a NOT a Wiccan forum) <------- Is this a true belief?

I've had a momentary vision where you are all wearing pointy hats and writing runes in a magic mirror and the runes are causing things to happen.

Sounds like a conspiracy theory is in the wings.

I'm poor because I have no sense (cents).

I can't change because I have no cents (sense).

So my great grandmother wouldn't want any of her descendants to cheat on their girlfriends/boyfriends, and her intention still exists... — intrapersona

She has no intentions if she has passed. You have a memory of her character by which you presume you could predict her behavior were she alive. Also such beliefs could either be cultural norms passed onto her in addition to the result of a personal experience in the course of her own life which she thinks should apply to the conduct of others.

Just because you claim to represent the wishes of the deceased doesn't lend any "objectivity" to some free floating intentional spirit (which probably doesn't exist by an empirical measure). People will ask for reason as to why they should trust you as a representative of a dead person's wishes in the absence of some concrete record (like a will). If sleep and time can change a living person's intentions, why can't death?

We can project intentionality into characters in novels by extrapolation and inference. Perhaps we do that with living people also, such that we apprehend events as having a certain probability, owing to trends, habits, customs and partially controlled processes. We infer and project intention of criminals based on what they were caught doing, on incomplete evidence, using reason.

Can you articulate your intentions at the time you posted this thread? Do we infer strictly one what we observe? Can or did you deceive yourself? Are there not processes of pure habit or instinct that explain away your intentions in spite of what you claim they are?

Intimacy (my loins are aching for a mind meld)

We have clearly just seen that without a person to object then there once alive body becomes just a piece of flesh "objectively", REGARDLESS of what third parties standing by think or are waiting to do. — intrapersona

If you jettison the third person point of view then you jettison the need of ethics altogether so there is not point in asking whether or not it's ethical. Who gives a fuck about ethics if only you exist (and the sexy corpse, with its spirit watching from the periphery.)

Let's pretend you have an opportunity open without the baggage of petty anti-necrophilia moralists.

What else guides your own decision to fuck corpses? Do you personally feel a compulsion to fuck dead people?

If i was to have sex with a piece of fruit, would that be unethical? — intrapersona

It depends on the circumstances of a specific act and normative attitudes and customs govering our behavior. Say you're boning a piece of fruit and forcing a 4 year old to watch, or doing it in public. If it happens in the privacy of your closet, with consenting adults, I don't see it causing any harm. There are certain types of behavior that approach taboo status. No amount of reasoning about actual or perceived harm is going to shift attitudes in favor of necrophilia.

A 2008 court case in Wisconsin didn't have any anti-necrophilia laws on the books but prosecution used a "consent" based argument. The corpse didn't give consent, couldn't give consent, and the defendant ended up being found guilty by argument that a more lenient verdict would interfere with charging rapists who happen to murder their victims in the process of their crime. It wasn't a great argument apparently, and the defendant only intended to have sex with a corpse but the verdict shows the obvious disgust such an act engenders in us.

It doesn't follow that because a corpse has no intent that it is therefore ethical to engage in necrophilia. There are always third parties standing by to be offened, to penalize you, to signal to others the consequence of such acts and to shape social standards.

The most relevant interpretation of a "leap of faith" in my own case of overcoming the absence of meaning life is to take the risks I'm currently unwilling to take to increase agency. The potential I'm squandering makes me well up and proclaim: there is no potential there really and don't regret my person. Incentives and reason unravel to the base state of just avoiding suffering out of instinct or habit, trading happiness for what is bearable.

Honestly, I'm a "pussy" given vulgar parlance of the playground. I've always been one.

If you ever see a homeless man in the park arguing with someone who isn't there, filled with neurotic rage, I'm the precursor to that person. Just a few missteps and I will be that person.

I fear what I shouldn't fear too much and am exhausted by it.

Now some Joseph Conrad quotes:

"How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?"

"A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns."

"The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. "

If a legal document called a will is said to represent the intent of the deceased then such a person's intent does carry beyond death but only regarding very limited instructions contained in said document, subject to laws and means of those who stand to inherit assets or carry out the wishes of the deceased.

A will is just one kind of vehicle for carrying on the intent of the dead though. One could imagine all kinds of creative schemes someone might intend to have carried out after their death. If they've planned well enough then maybe such purposes could be carried out in a very literal and non-interpretive manner such that it accords perfectly with their wishes.

Or maybe you'd prefer to believe that the ghost of the deceased hangs around and causes actions which the living would conventionally regard as happenstance. Only special folks can commune with them to pass on their intent to the living.

I've a dead guy right now, whispering in my ear, telling me all about how he intends to go to heaven and that he needs my help to do it.

The most dangerous time period is always the current period.

Hope that helps.

Well, you might want to do some research about the rights of dead people.

Slate: Habeas Corpses: What are the rights of dead people?

Whether or not we should respect the wishes of the deceased depends upon the law and culturally relative (normative) treatments for the deceased.

There is probably a law against being buried in your own back yard. You'll probably get arrested if you try to dispose of a dead body on your own.

A dead person has no intent really. It all comes down on how it affects the living who have to manage the deceased.

The death of a loved can be tough. The normative treatments we have surrounding the disposal of the deceased is there to mollify or mitigate harm. Though one might argue in some strange sense that the same normative treatment actually causes more harm when things don't go according to plan, or in other words, we're culturally conditioned to respond to death in a certain way but that way can change.

Check out Lo and Behold, documentary film by Werner Herzog. There is an example of emotional harm done to the memory of the deceased in it.

There are some African nations were it is normal to dress the dead up as a sort of manikin, posed as if they were doing what they were known for or liked in life, in spite of decomposition.

Somewhere in Papua New Guinea there was a practice of mummifying dead by smoke and minerals and posing them in houses or in rocky niches. From our point of view it is grizzly but it was quite normal at some point in time. Be warned if you go searching for pictures. It's grotesque.

Do you think you would have to defend yourself against the gun-toting Christians? — Lone Wolf

No, but my fears and insecurities probably generate fictions and lock onto stereotypes which try to give the world a bit of order.

Is that even a good representation of Christianity, or is it more of a culture stereotype of some places in the United States? — Lone Wolf

I'm not very much concerned with the good representations of Christianity. Bad, harmful and scary ideas loom large in the imagination. We pay attention to what gets our attention.

Indeed, the meme for faith exhibits frequency-dependent fitness: it flourishes particularly in the company of rationalistic memes. In a skeptic-poor world, the meme for faith does not attract much attention, and hence tends to go dormant in minds, and hence is seldom reintroduced into the infosphere. (Can we demonstrate classic predator-prey population boom-and-bust cycles between memes for faith and memes for reason? Probably not, but it might be instructive to look, and ask why not.) — Denett, D. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, pg. 349

There is an interesting medieval portrayal of Christian priests in Netflix's new Castlevania anime. The choice to burn a supposed witch sets of an ironic chain of events. One sees in such a world that behavior has been constructed around certain ideas (faith) and the people who are empowered by them. Science, as with Cavaca's cartoon, only survives in areas and inviduals designated by the church as evil.

And why is atheism seen as stronger and more able to protect in a government situation than another religion? — Lone Wolf

Self acknowledged atheists might be better apt at separating church and state from a policy point of view, if that is at all important or good for a supposed democratic society composed of diverse faiths.

There seems to be recent narrative that couples Christian fundamentalism with a wild west flavored libertarianism.

I tend to view certain types of God fearing peoples as brutes with guns who don't believe that government does any good whatsoever. In a situation of being in a lawless society, lacking a tribal association and a gun, I would be the weak one until I joined the atheists group. For sure they'll have guns also. Maybe we'd have to defend ourselves.

Ideally God would be the representative of necessary values that optimize and help life to flourish. God is an abstraction of the ideal king, leader, something like a hierarchy of organizing principles. That changes and should evolve depending upon the cultural context though.

If reason is of a high value to the optimization of life then God should have quite the capacity.

The problem is the fundamental error in memetics, which is the assumption that humans are the ones to create memes, when it's quite the opposite. — Bluebanana

It might be more beneficial to you if you could believe in personal autonomy and responsibility over the choices you make in life such that you can recognize why memetics is bunk and has no explanatory power, like genetics does. You have the ability and resources to critically evaluate ideas.