Hypothetically speaking supposing there was an omniscient being - doesn’t have to be (a) god necessarily maybe a hyper intelligent AI or a genie or whatever but you could ask it one question - anything at all, what would it be? — Benj96

How many neurons or transistors does your brain work with?

Incidentally, this argument refutes utilitarianism:

1. If utilitarianism is the correct normative ethical theory, then gang rape is right (if the gang is sufficiently big)
2. Gang rape is wrong (irrespective of the size of the gang)
3. Therefore utilitarianism is not the correct normative ethical theory. — Bartricks

Good point. But almost every action has disadvantages for someone (animals included). How do you want to offset these disadvantages?

Or in other words, what is the correct normative ethical theory?

1. If rape is wrong, then you ought not to rape
2. Rape is wrong
3. Therefore, you ought not to rape — Bartricks

Points 1 and 3 seem logical to me, but point 2 does not. Why is gang rape wrong, for example? Some have fun and there is only one victim. In the sense of utilitarianism this could be commanded.

↪SolarWind

How do you know that X is wrong? — SolarWind


By my reason.

Anyway, you've missed the point. I derived an ought from an is. Here, again:

1. If Xing is wrong, then we ought not to do X
2. Xing is wrong
3. Therefore, we ought not to do X — Bartricks

Sorry, I don't understand a word, not even the first sentence:

"1. If Xing is wrong, then we ought not to do X".

Who or what is "Xing"?

Ask yourself! :)

If xing is wrong, you ought not x, yes? — Bartricks

How do you know that X is wrong? That's just asking the question shifted.

Example: Is it right or wrong for a resource-poor country to invade a resource-rich neighboring country?

Please infer based on the facts alone.

No, but what is the point?

Can you give an example of how to derive an ought state from a state of being?

↪SolarWind
Total nonsense. You can't seriously think this -

What we should or should not do cannot be derived from being. — SolarWind

has any meaning? — Bartricks

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

Well, if we lack free will, then we lack all obligations. Or at least, that seems self-evident. Obligations, whether moral, instrumental or epistemic, presuppose free will. Thus, if we lack free will, then we lack any obligation to do or think anything. As such, if hard determinism is true, nothing you think is anything you ought to think, or ought not to think, and likewise for anything you do. So it is a kind of dead-end. — Bartricks

What we should or should not do cannot be derived from being.
Since determinism is part of being, it has no influence on ought.
And the free will has also no connection with it, because it is only a feeling.

These are all islands of knowledge that have nothing to do with each other.

If death has no properties, what valuation does it have?

How much suffering must someone experience in order to make it "worthwhile" to kill himself?

In terms of game theory, a value is missing here.

I don't think it matters to punish or to treat offenders. The only important thing is that offenders never harm society again, if possible. As far as I'm concerned, they can also be banished to a beautiful island. The punishment would be to distance them from the rest of society.

Free will, which is nonsensically defined anyway (free from what?), plays no role in this.

I do not understand. Both say there is a neutral substance in living beings and both say a stone has no consciousness.

Can anyone explain the crucial difference between panpsychism and neutral monism?

I concede you are right. — Down The Rabbit Hole

All respect. Rare that someone admits that someone else is right. Was a good try, but no one will ever solve the theodicy question.

It's very simple: why aren't we born in heaven right now without any suffering?

Well no if you believe in rebirth you have already a reason to "act good". But most people who believe in rebirth don't they follow some kind of religion already? Don't know, just asking.
And well then, we would have to convince more people start believing on rebirth. But without any God for that, wouldn't that be difficult to happen? — dimosthenis9

I don't know any religion that fulfils that. It would be a kind of Hinduism without gods or Buddhism with souls.

What I'm very interested in, what would you call someone who doesn't believe in gods but in souls?

.If you gonna make people stop believing in religions then WHAT could replace God? How can you convince people to be "good" ??? — dimosthenis9

If you believe in rebirth, it automatically means that you want to preserve the future world.

Do you need a God for souls to exist?

↪SolarWind

< This infinity is never reached because it is only a potential infinity. We cannot be in the moment of "infinity" and therefore never have experienced infinite happiness.> — SolarWind

All that matters is the good goes on forever. — Down The Rabbit Hole

If you suffer 1 year and are happy for 9 years, then you have 10% suffering.

If you suffer for 1 year and are happy for 99 years, then you have 1% suffering.

If you suffer for 1 year and are happy for 999 years, then you have 0.1% suffering.

It never becomes 0, only in the limit.

But if you have never suffered, it is always 0%.

Quantum superpositions amongst entangled wavicles are fundamental, which give rise at a very basic level to percepts, which eventually reach enough emergent organization to constitute consciousness. It seems as obvious to me as evolution was in Darwin's seminal account, but the research that proves exactly how it all works is yet to be performed. — Enrique

No classical, quantum mechanical, electrodynamic, chemical, thermodynamic or emergent equation contains a term for the smell of a rose.

Grow to more than infinity?

-10 + infinite good = infinite good
-157 + infinite good = infinite good
-258958 + infinite good = infinite good
-999999999999999 + infinite good = ..... — Down The Rabbit Hole

This infinity is never reached because it is only a potential infinity. We cannot be in the moment of "infinity" and therefore never have experienced infinite happiness.

Why is "b+" better than "b"? — Down The Rabbit Hole

If you have a sum of positive and negative numbers and you change the negative numbers to zero, the sum grows. Simple mathematics.

... (a) no finite bad to be cancelled out by the good (b) finite bad that is cancelled out by the good, and as there is no reason to prefer "a" or "b", god acts completely reasonably in picking at random or letting what will be, be. — Down The Rabbit Hole

If you take (b) and delete the bad you get (b+), which is better than (b), thus God could never choose (b).

If you ask the wrong question you will inevitably get the wrong answer. — prothero

I'm not the thread opener and I'm just making case distinctions.

That paves the way for a souless universe devoid of any inherent value or purpose.

Why can't there be a universe WITH souls and WITHOUT gods?

The way I see it, if God exists and is omnipotent, then I think he can do as he pleases. He is under no obligation to submit his actions or the motives of his actions to human scrutiny and judgment. — Apollodorus

That is not the question. The questioning presupposes goodwill. Then the existence of suffering is illogical.

If God is not benevolent, then it is a different question.

If God were all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, wouldn't that be self-evident?

It seems to me that the formulation of the laws of nature as differential equations leaves room for several solutions. They are formulated from one point of time to the next. But there is no next point of time. Only in retrospect it can be determined whether the solution fits the differential equation. But this only plays a role in special cases like Norton's dome.

There's a reason I say I'm not the same person as you. — InPitzotl

It's not about the triviality of you not being me or anyone else, it's about whether you COULD be someone else in a hypothetical world.

So I can imagine to have been born e.g. in India. It doesn't matter if this imagination is detailed, it is enough to have a rough and principled idea. If you don't know what an imagination is or have no imagination, then of course the discussion is superfluous.

To get this scenario to make sense, it's necessary to presume that identity is, rather than constructed and generated by a physical construct, somehow fundamental and separate from physical constructs. And that presumption is basically just a presumption of dualism. — InPitzotl

It is not true that you always get out what you put in. The proof that sqrt(2) is irrational starts with assuming it is rational.

I don't put anything into my proof except that it is conceivable to be a different person in a different (imagined) world. Then simply asking what the difference is between WA and WZ. There I still wait for a conclusive answer.

I wanted to warm up my cold thread again and ask whether the existence of an immaterial instance can be regarded with my consideration now as proved.

Only the question remains whether the qualia now belongs to the matter or to the pointer proved by me.

And thus I think God can create a stone too heavy for him to lift, and lift it. — Bartricks

The example of the stone may not be good because we cannot watch.

Imagine someone in the desert praying for it to rain. It will then rain or not rain (before he dies of thirst). He will know. How can it rain and not rain at the same time?

The problem occurs when God contacts us. We cannot perceive contradictions.

Thus, it is irrelevant whether God can create contradictions, we would not perceive them.

Most of them are just silly questions that admit of easy answers. I believe in God, so I'll answer them.

Heavy Rock:

1. Can God create a rock so heavy, he himself cannot lift it? — elucid


Yes. God is all powerful and so can do anything, including making a rock so heavy he cannot lift it. He can lift it too. — Bartricks

I don't understand. If he does lift it, he obviously hasn't fulfilled the first condition.

On reflection, of course, if there is no life after death we have nothing to fear. — Apollodorus

How do you imagine this "nothing"?

Is it like floating in a dark and silent room? Seeing and hearing nothing forever?

A very terrible idea.

Anyways we've been going around in circles for a while now. — khaled

That is in the nature of things, that is philosophy.

Yes, I'm just making assumptions. I assume that an animal feels pain when you hit it. You have to decide what you believe. That is life.

But even if Qualia only depended on the physical configuration, you have absolutely no way of finding the significant variables. Maybe people born after 3 pm on Wednesdays actually enjoy torture (though they’ll act like the rest of us and scream). — khaled

I assume that the "Qualia law" (matter->Qualia) is a law of nature similar to the other laws of nature, thus steady and time-independent.
Like Newton's law of universal gravitation, it has no jumps and is not different on Wednesdays than on Tuesdays.

If everything would be arbitrary, do you then go in the evening on the street and beat up people, because it can be that they are sad, if you do NOT do it?

But as you said, qualia must be completely separate from any physics, or else the physicists will consume it as some force or other. So you have no reason to believe that a clone of you, with the exact same matter configuration, would have the same, or similar, or any qualia. — khaled

After all, I am a victim of my own arguments. That qualia can have no effect on the matter is logical, since every effect entails a contribution in a physics book. So it remains only matter->qualia and not vice versa.

That the arrow in matter->qualia, however, should result in different right sides with the same left side, would mean that the qualia would still have to depend on something else. What should be that?

And you have 0 reason to believe they are experiencing the same qualia as you, if any qualia at all. — khaled

There is an infinitesimally narrow gap of realization if someone has EXACTLY the inner configuration of oneself.

Then it is to be assumed that the equality also leads to equal qualia. Now it would be extremely implausible that a small deviation would lead to a completely different qualia (or no qualia). That would be very discontinuous.

Anything is possible, but that doesn't get us anywhere.

I doubt qualia can be treated as a good basis for ethics. Especially given that you can't even tell anyone else has it other than yourself. How do you know the keyboard you're typing on right now isn't in extreme pain? Those are the questions you have to ask when you propose an ineffable, private qualia. — khaled

Exactly. I cannot know it. But I can accept it as plausible that I am not the exception in the universe.

We are faced with the amazing situation of not being able to prove something intuitively true.

Which is more probable?
1) I am the only human being who has qualia.
2) There is a principle which material configuration has qualia.

↪SolarWind

"Epiphenomenalism is true and we can prove it:

If there would be a mind effect, this effect could be captured by the physicists, they will eat everything what has an effect and define a force to it.

What remains can only be an epi. Q.e.d. !" — SolarWind

This assumes that something will remain. I don't think so. — khaled

It is the other way to eliminate qualia. However, this would mean that ethically speaking, any genocide would be the same as breaking stones.

I think that is not the whole truth.

Do you think that some physical effects are not caused sufficiently by physical causes? Because it's that or epiphenomenalism. — khaled

Epiphenomenalism is true and we can prove it:

If there would be a mind effect, this effect could be captured by the physicists, they will eat everything what has an effect and define a force to it.

What remains can only be an epi. Q.e.d. !

The mistake most make when it comes to time is to conceive of it as a kind of extended stuff, and that immediately generates actual infinities. For now any region of time, like any region of space, can be infinitely divided. And thus we have to posit actual infinities. Which can't exist. — Bartricks

I would actually phrase it a little differently. For me, time is the display of an imaginary clock. After all, it is not possible to place a clock inside the sun. Would someone claim in the inside of the sun there would be therefore no time?

One must distinguish simply between events and the time itself. The events play no role for the abstract time, also not the Big Bang. I can imagine a clock, which survives all events and therefore this clock can indicate any time (it would have to be able to indicate however arbitrarily many digits).

This clock could have shown any time back to negative infinity.

Jellyfish, bacteria and viruses can reproduce well and have no brain.