However, I am also aware that moral relativism comes with it an objection that there can be no moral progress, and so that undermines any idea of making suggestion as core to this would be that there is no increased in 'goodness' by making the above changes - there is no room for progress.
Furthermore, my own arguments as to why we should be using moral relativism in this case (it increases autonomy, respect and dignity at the end of life) are all undermined by my previous argument that 'goodness' is not fixed and therefore the qualities that i am trying to promote are not inherently good. — AlexMcGram
If there are no right and wrong answers to moral questions, how can we say god is wrong, bad, or evil? — Down The Rabbit Hole
Surely some will say whatever it is that God does, says, or commands is good and not evil, no? But the actions and outcomes say otherwise, at least from the human perspective.
The bigger question then is, "If a morality is alien to human sensibilities, what would make that justifiably moral?". — schopenhauer1
Yes. However, if we were to stick with god for a minute- what does a world with evil and mediocre outcomes reveal for its inhabitants (at least on Earth)? Have you ever noticed oddities in timing? An empty park that has one person in it that you collide with nonetheless? Things like this? There are oddities of life whereby the coincidences are higher than would be expected... One could weave a tale of a god who likes chaos and thrives in it. — schopenhauer1
How can you even prove that disembodied brains are possible? The only examples of brains that we have are as parts of bodies. I can't see how anyone could argue that they are more likely without first establishing that they are possible, and so far I don't think anyone has done that. — GRWelsh
How would you calculate density for a infinite number of things (e.g., Boltzmann brains) in an infinitely large space? — RogueAI
Are we not material? Or did our consciousness arise unnaturally? — Patterner
If Boltzmann Objects could exist, if the universe was infinitely old, we'd see billions of odd things floating around. So either they can't exist, or the universe is not infinitely old. — Patterner
I grew up on TOS. I know a lot of people find it unwatchable because of the effects, but it and TNG are my favorites. Then Voyager. — Patterner
How do you account for 'paradox' in your 'every possibility that can happen, will happen in time.'
If I state 'The only true existent regarding Boltzmann brains is that they have no true existent.'
Is that statement true given a very large or even infinite duration of time? — universeness
You need to be careful about what exactly "equally likely to occur" means in this context. The way cosmologists might pose this question is: "Given an observer, is it more likely to be a regular observer (a human or a similarly evolved creature) or a freak observer like a Boltzmann Brain?" This is a tricky epistemological question involving concepts like reference class, self-location and self-selection. — SophistiCat
Intuitively though it seems that simply adding "more of the same" to the world (more space or more time or more observers) should not make a difference to a generic observation made by a particular observer at a particular place at a particular time, so the challenge to epistemologists is to explain just how this challenge is only a seeming one. (Bostrom purports to meet it with his Self-Sampling Assumption, which he also uses elsewhere to analyze puzzles like Boltzmann Brains.) — SophistiCat
If the idea that minds can emerge from mindless stuff is incoherent, this problem goes away. As does simulation theory. — RogueAI
If the universe is eternal, then it follows that every possible event will occur an infinite number of times. — Wayfarer
This seems self-refuting: if we were disembodied brains with false memories there would seem to be no rational justification for believing that we could be such, since the hypothesis that we are more likely to be Boltzmann brains relies on accepted mathematical and physical understandings which are reliant on the assumption that our memories are accurate (enough). — Janus
In the first case, is each person just to be charged 0.50 (because that's the amount of damage they caused) or some larger number (because they irreparably bankrupted the business)? Similarly, in the second case, is the person charged with $500,000 or some lesser amount? Please discuss... — jasonm
Today there is even now a popular 'hype' philosophy like "optimistic nihilism". But to me personally, it's just the same basically with hedonism, which basically it all sounds the same, eg: "just live in the present moment, enjoy life, since we only live once!". But again, is this all there is to life? existence? — niki wonoto
I have actually lived as a nihilist (I won't go into details) — Andrew4Handel
As a moral nihilist (currently not permanently, hopefully) I think saying that Genocide or slavery is wrong is meaningless. It may be that as with tsunamis and the rest of nature extreme brutality and harm is just a feature of nature which is neither good nor bad It means moral values are personal preferences, sentiments, and emotions but that nothing "wrong" has ever happened and that we probably cannot justify prisons or punishments and telling people how they ought to behave. — Andrew4Handel
But there is no one body that belongs to you since it is a different one each moment by your definition. Since you have a different body every moment, why do you not jump all around the neighborhood from one moment to the next? Or would you not notice if it did? That depends of course on if memory is part of this 'mind' you posit or part of the body.
I'm asking what ties the body you've selected/inhabited in one moment to the different body you selected in the next moment, and why that 2nd body needs to be a specific one and not a random one. — noAxioms
Can you justify that? If the parts are moved one at a time, at which point does the identity move? What if one nail (or whatever part you designate as the critical one) is left with the ship being fixed? — noAxioms
Your parts change all the time, and yet you probably consider yourself to be the same person as you were earlier. Less than a thousandth of a percent of your current material is original material, so are you somebody else now? — noAxioms
The ship is the same. It may have had its parts replaced. But the object, the whole ship with its holistic design, function and behaviour remains the same. — Benj96
That does not make much sense to me. What sort of barriers are you referring to?
Occam's razor is commonly used against the explanation "God did it". — creativesoul
Occam's razor is about reducing the likelihood for error. The fewest unprovable assumptions is best. The fewest entities is best.
The hitch seems to have been forgotten though...
...so long as there is no loss in explanatory power, the simplest explanation is the best. — creativesoul
In his book 'The Biggest Ideas In The Universe (space, time and motion,)' Sean Carroll writes about the conservation of energy.
"Both momentum and energy are conserved in classical mechanics, but kinetic energy by itself is not, since it can be converted into (or created from) other kinds of energy."
"Noether's theorem states that every smooth, continuous symmetry transformation of a system is associated with the conservation of some quantity."
"Our universe is expanding; faraway galaxies are gradually moving away from one another as time passes. Consequently, there is a sense in which energy is not conserved in an expanding universe." — universeness
I will continue to eat meat without an ounce of guilt — I like sushi
Torture is not a positive term. If you cannot except that there is no room for discussion because you are not speaking the kind of English I am familiar with. — I like sushi
He must have been toxically persuasive to any un assuming layman (good at hiding his agenda and even better at manipulating people into doing his bidding for him). — Benj96
The most obvious example is the difference between consequentialists and deontologists. Which group is right, and why? — Down The Rabbit Hole
You mean ‘right’ or ‘correct’? Which is ‘right’? Both. Which is ‘correct’ neither. — I like sushi
So am I. I don't wish to cause suffering. So what exactly are we arguing/discussing? — Benj96