Okay, complete the sentence:

The _______ of George Floyd!

Yeah, it's their special power to see things in black-and-white like that. — baker

As opposed to only seeing things in black, like lefty political correctness freaks do?

The bat and ball problem in the middle is a distraction - particularly as you don't give the answer. I was following your argument - now I'm doing math. What were you on about? I'd cut that. Secondly, you seem to be confusing consciousness - with the conscious mind. They're not the same thing - but you skip back and forth, explaining one and then the other, as if they were. The problem of consciousness is the problem of why there is an experiencing self, a ghost in the biological machine, a... something looking out through the eyeholes. The conscious mind is the aspect of our mental processing dealing with the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware at any given moment. Even if language is the currency of our conscious mind, it does not explain why there is a ...something looking out through the eyeholes.

Chemistry!

The Enlightenment was never complete. Certainly, there was a rebuttal of absolute religious authority, the divine rights of kings, and a movement toward democracy and sovereignty invested in the people. But philosophy, literature and film have merely confirmed the Church's position on science - as a heresy, established with the trial of Galileo in 1634.

Sure, science can be used to surround us with technological miracles, but is afforded no respect or authority. From Descartes' subjectivism, to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - 1818, right through to present day blockbuster films - all we see is the mad scientist, stringing together some world ending abomination unto God; depicted as either a careless fool or an evil genius - that only the flag waving, God loving hero can save us from.

But here's the problem, the climate and ecological crisis is a consequence of applying technology as directed by ideology - rather than, applying technology as suggested by a scientific understanding of reality. It's not a matter of morality - it's a matter of truth, and science has proven the truth of its ideas endlessly with technology that works.

But hey, maybe if we pray hard enough - snap off a few more salutes to the old skull and crossbones, climate change will just go away!

I don't like it, because I don't agree with the original - cogito ergo sum. It is arrived at by dishonest means, and written in terror of the Church - by a contemporary of Galileo, who had just been tried for the heresy of finding certain knowledge - that the earth orbits the sun, by scientific method.

It is no coincidence that Descartes finds he knows nothing for certain except that I am thinking, and therefore I exist. His method of doubting everything is skeptical doubt - not rational doubt. He pictures an evil demon deceiving him, to believe that he has arms and legs, and eyes that see the world about him, and in this condition - possibly deceived, he established cogito ergo sum, but philosophically he had painted himself into a corner.

His conclusion applies to nothing; but not to worry, says Descartes "For the light of reason assures me that God cannot be a deceiver, for deceit proceeds from defect, and God is perfect" - and so it is God that saves Descartes and his idea of a disembodied consciousness from the solipsistic oblivion of its conception.

The Church was delighted with Descartes. Galileo was threatened with torture and held under house arrest for the rest of his life - while Descartes became the pet philosopher of Queen Christina of Sweden.

Is this about David Cameron? If so, it was certainly malice! He could not have believed he could reduce immigration to the tens of thousands while a member of the EU, but that promise did open the door for UKIP to point that out to him. His renegotiation could not have been renegotiated without treaty change - but it did publish a long list of complaints about the EU in every newspaper. He did not have to make the referendum a manifesto commitment Parliament were forced to approve, less yet, set the bar at a simple majority. Cameron set up a coalition of Eurosceptics (ECR) in the EU Parliament, failed to reduce immigration, failed to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU - and then declared himself chief spokesman for Remain, and lost, on purpose! It was malicious! Cameron was a Brexiteer who denied Remain an honest advocate by pretending to be a Remainer. He queered the Remain pitch, and then hauled all that baggage with him into a referendum that he provided for! And the weirdest thing is - I'm apparently the only one who sees his malice! Everyone else thinks he's an idiot!

I read your article, and also read the wikipedia entry on Max Stirner. Interesting guy - and not nearly as well known as he deserves to be.

"Stirner is often seen as one of the forerunners of nihilism, existentialism, psychoanalytic theory, postmodernism and individualist anarchism."

The idea of egoism is extremely compelling - for it cannot be denied that the individual often finds his egoistic (hedonistic?) interests second to those of society, until one remembers that he was not always able to wipe his own arse, let alone feed himself, wash his clothes, make his bed, and still have the energy to:

fulfill their individual desires without any restriction or denial of when, how, and where to conceive that same purpose; — Gus Lamarch

He would have to be a complete psychopath to forget that his egoistic self was born helpless, ignorant and dependent, and was nurtured at the bosom of his mother, in the schoolroom, and at an apprenticeship, where others put their egoistic desires second to his development. Do you suggest the individual just soak up all that social benefit and then declare himself owing nothing to anyone but his own egoistic purposes?

Even in his prime man is dependent on others, and the social division of labour. Either he will be constantly occupied building himself a house, making his own cloth and pots, raising crops (and not be able to do any of those things as well as a specialist) or, to pursue his own egoistic purposes he must necessarily outsource all kinds of needs. He could live in squalor, I suppose - like Diogenes, but what kind of egoistic purposes can a squalid individual pursue? He eats scraps with the dogs, but he is free? It's compelling, but it fails. It's not honest.

Humanity and everything it has built and developed has been maintained for thousands upon thousands of years of hypocrisy and lies. And why? Because we are intrinsically egoist beings; we want individual, not collective, achievement. — Gus Lamarch

No. That's not right. Human beings lived as hunter gatherers, in tribal groups of around 40-120. Then, these tribal groups joined together to form civilisations. To join together, to prevent any little dispute splitting society along tribal lines, they needed laws, and so needed to justify law and order in society. They made God the objective authority for law and order. It was a convenience - not a lie, and civilisation has conferred huge benefits.

I'm getting a heavy Nietzsche vibe from you, but Nietzsche was wrong. Primitive man was not an amoral individualist. He was a tribal animal, and could not have survived unless he were also a moral animal that shared food, and protected the women and the young. Man has a moral sense - that was made explicit when tribes joined together, and needed God to justify law and order in society.

That was the 'inversion of values' of which Nietzsche wrote - not from individual to social, not the strong fooled by the weak, but an implicit tribal morality made explicit in a multi-tribal society. This is the "lie" - but there was never an individual, amoral freedom to call truth. We are, and have always been constrained by the moral requirements of society - tribal, and later, multi-tribal.

I see that your ideas are founded on a strong will to change the world, or to cause the same change of thought that had completely transformed the future of humanity as Christianity did in late antiquity. You seem convinced that you know something that we all don't know. — Gus Lamarch

That's a bit of an unfair observation. I see the way the world works, and write in relation to that - not what you, personally, know or don't know. I'm not out to put anyone else down, but it remains that we use science as a tool, and ignore it as an understanding of reality. Instead of recognising science as a means to establish an increasingly valid picture of the reality we inhabit, we have maintained overlapping religious, political and economic ideological architectures; justifications for the application of technology, in apparent denial of science as truth. Do you know this?

Did you know that we used science to create 70,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the cold war because we disagreed about how to organise an economy? That we ignored climate change since the 1950's to make money from oil, and now want to spend trillions on climate change, all of a sudden, without recognizing that climate change was caused by applying the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons - and asking, are windmills a sufficient answer to the problem? If not, what is?

Maybe I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Maybe we are headed, inexorably for the abyss. Maybe that's what we want - to wipe ourselves out. I don't know what you know. I'm not a particularly sociable person. But I know I want to belong to a species with a future - because otherwise, it just makes everything I am and everything I do seem...masturbatory.

That's interesting. So it was Galileo's presentation of the ideas that annoyed the Church, as much as the ideas themselves. Dumbest smart guy ever! Still, it doesn't change the overall narrative, which is that the Church made science a heresy, and that was a mistake. Imagine if all the technological miracles science surrounds us with were considered proof of God's blessings.

The fact that your brain takes "Murdering black people is wrong" and gets to "Would defend a black criminal against prosecution" is a testament to precisely how racist you are. They are not comparable. Wanting law and order is not a carte blanche to murder criminals in your protection. — Kenosha Kid

Murder is wrong. Show me a murder and I'll tell you that's wrong. Show me a criminal - who fought off four police officers while handcuffed, and was restrained, and died... I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the police. With you, it's quite the opposite. Because the criminal was black, you immediately infer racism, and call it murder. You have no doubt. Rather than answer my question: What was racist about it? - you attack me with accusations of racism.

No, *you* do. Equal to that's in your eyes is a failure to represent "straight white males". — Kenosha Kid

Straight white males are singled out by political correctness for a lack of representation. I treat people as individuals regardless of race, gender or sexuality. You put straight white males last, and then insult them into the bargain.

"Many gay people are quite well off."

That is not a rational measure of the D advantages they may have had specifically because of their sexuality. — Kenosha Kid

The question was:

Many gay people are quite well off. Some are not. Why lump them into the same, supposedly disadvantaged group on the basis of who they are attracted to? — counterpunch

Answer the question, or don't respond. The latter is my preference - if that helps!

I would thank you - and mean it, had I not just glimpsed at your profile and recent comments, and discovered a disregard for the consequences of philosophy. Publish and be damned - seems to be your byword, whereas I have struggled mightily to secure the future - with the least possible disruption. I worry that seeking to emphasize the truth value of science will merely cause a disenchantment with the ideological architecture of society - and plunge us into some anomic, nihilistic abyss. It's true, we made a mistake in relation to science 400 years ago that hasn't been corrected, and is key to securing the future. But we have to learn that lesson and bring it home - and with regard to the future, we have to get there from here. I've no desire to upset the applecart. Where then would I get my apples?

I have zero expectation that you would ever acquire sufficient humanity to give you pause before cheering on a murderous mob if that mob's interests happen to coincide with your own, — Kenosha Kid

And I have zero expectation that you would ever back democracy against fraud, or law and order against a black criminal.

The beauty of not being a piece of shit — Kenosha Kid

You don't think you're a piece of shit? Even though you believe truth is subjective and relative? You should see yourself from where I'm standing.

is that I don't have to base my attitudes on secondary characteristics. — Kenosha Kid

What are you dribbling about? Political correctness IS identity politics. You lump people into groups based on their arbitrary characteristics. What you don't do is treat people as individuals - regardless of race, gender, sexuality, nor respect their freedom of conscience and freedom of speech.

Wanting, say, gay people to have the same quality of life as me, the same opportunities and advantages, follows naturally from an egalitarian position. — Kenosha Kid

Many gay people are quite well off. Some are not. Why lump them into the same, supposedly disadvantaged group on the basis of who they are attracted to? It makes no sense. Similarly, not all black people are poor. Not all white people are privileged. There are plenty of poor white people. Who's arguing for them if you assume they are privileged - merely because they're white?

Your view is that extending these opportunities and advantages to people with different characteristics to yourself is bad because it doesn't help straight white males, i.e. people with your characteristics whom are already amply advantaged compared to others. — Kenosha Kid

No. That's not it at all. I would argue that people should be treated fairly, as individuals, regardless of what arbitrary group categories they happen to belong to - because those coincidences of identity say next to nothing about who an individual is, or where they stand in society. Particularly as equality legislation on race, gender, sexuality - was passed into law years ago.

What you seem to be arguing for is not an equality of rights, but equality of outcome - with the most privileged, regardless of individual merit, for everyone but poor whites, about whom you couldn't care less. It's why the Labour vote collapsed in the North, and why Americans voted for Trump in huge numbers. Left wing, politically correct ideology disenfranchises them - and the left shouldn't ignore that, less yet double down on the demonization of ordinary people.

I'm joking, of course. — Kenosha Kid

No you're not. That's what you really believe:

these beliefs you hold to be beyond contradiction lean heavily toward the racist, homophobic, transphobic, fascistic and, in the case of your ideas for environmental science, utterly batshit insane. — Kenosha Kid

There's no need to pretend you're joking. I'm not going to de-platform you for speaking your mind. I would have applauded your honesty if you hadn't pretended to be joking, before I told you you're mistaken. Objecting to political correctness isn't racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic. I'm not any of those things - but I am myself, a straight white male, with interests I refuse to put second to the interests of others just because they're black, gay, women or like to pop on a frock at weekends and call themselves Veronica!

The problem is you think deferring to others on the basis of their arbitrary characteristics is the definition of decency and humanity - even while under the auspices of political correctness black people are fed some false narrative and incited to riots and looting, and children are fed puberty blockers that will destroy the rest of their lives, etc, etc, you continue - blinkered in your absolute conviction that political correctness is the answer to all the moral questions that have taxed the minds of philosophers throughout the ages, you think you left wing ideologues have solved it at last, and that anyone who deviates from the dogma must be a bad person. You're wrong.

if it was some kind of magic bullet, I think we'd know already. — Olivier5

Were that a good argument, we'd still be living in caves. Geothermal energy has been tried. It's employed extensively in Iceland and New Zealand, for example, but even there - not in the hard core industrial manner I proscribe. I'm not talking about dipping your toes in a naturally occurring hydrothermal vent. This is magma power at 700 'C - not warm water power at 100 'C.

I am not the only one with plans, that's true. But mine will work - whereas, producing slightly less carbon isn't an answer. It's a hell of a lot of money to spend on greenwash - and just when the window of opportunity to prevent disaster is closing. Let me give you some facts and figures.

East Anglia ONE off the UK coast, 102 turbines producing 714 megawatts - enough to power 600,000 homes. Cool right? Wrong. It took 10 years to build, cost £2.5bn, and in 25 years it will be scrap.

We would need 6000 windmills of this size to meet the UK's current energy demand - and that's without factoring in plans, from 2030, to begin adding the energy demand of 30 million electric cars to the national grid. So that's 10,000 windmills - minimum, roughly costing £2500bn, to provide energy for 25 years, and then, the same again. That's not a plan - it's a disaster.

By drilling into hot volcanic rock, close to magma chambers beneath volcanoes, and at subduction zones where one continental plate meets another, lining the bore holes with pipes, and pumping water through the pipes, to produce steam, to drive turbines - I believe we can produce virtually limitless amounts of electrical energy. It would require significant investment, but it wouldn't need replacing in 25 years, and it would produce more than sufficient energy to meet our needs. Sufficient in fact to extract carbon from the air, and desalinate water to irrigate land for agriculture, recycle everything - and genuinely provide for a prosperous and sustainable future for humankind.

Thanks for wishing me luck. Short of omniscience, we all need a little luck. That said, I don't think everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot or a liar. I recognise people who have intelligent, informed, conscientious viewpoints - and if they disagree with mine, I challenge them to justify those opinions. You don't rise to that challenge. You just repeat yourself. And I know what you think. It's bog standard left wing doggerel. Whereas, I have something to say.

The irony is that the book that triggered Galileo's second trial -- the Dialogue Concerning the Two Main World Systems -- was written at the request of no other than pope Urban VIII aka Maffeo Barberini, a Florentine humanist and a friend of Galileo (who was from Pise and worked in nearby Florence much). Galileo had stayed out on heliocentrism since his first trial circa 1615. The new pope asked him to present the two systems comparatively in a neutral manner, so Galileo tried to do that but apparently the resulting book was quite slanted in favor of heliocentrism. Maybe Galileo saw his revenge at hand and mocked his past prosecutors a bit too much... — Olivier5

You seem to know more about Galileo's trial(s) than I do, which is also quite ironic. I do know that in Dialogue, Galileo put the argument for geocentrism in the mouth of Simplicio - a pun on 'simpleton' in the common Italian. That was probably a mistake. He was dealing with ideas that were very serious in their sacred and political implications, particularly at the height of the Protestant rebellion against the authority of the Church. He would have been much better offering the Church a way out - not least by refencing St Augustine, and construing science as man's understanding of the word of God made manifest in Creation.

The Jesuits hated it and used it against Urban VIII whom they branded as weak against heretics and Protestants. Geopolitics weren't too good for the Church, thirty years war and all... Urban VII had to repudiate Galileo and agreed to a trial, although he commuted the ultimate prison sentence for his ex friend into house arrest. — Olivier5

Therein lies the problem. The Jesuits, and the Papal Court of the Inquisition. No-one expects the Inquisition!

It begins with massive, base load clean energy from the molten interior of the earth.
— counterpunch

You have a plan, huh? Any funders yet? — Olivier5

I have plans. I know what needs to be done and how to do it. But I don't have funds. I've communicated my ideas to a few people who say they're interested in this area, but I get nothing back. It's like, they're offering funds for innovative technologies, but they've already decided - and it's just a publicity stunt and/or a tax write off.

It's kinda weird to assume a bunch of things about my opinions after I just asked you why you think everyone on the left is alike, or why you think they are inherently less rational. But in the hopes of getting this conversation somewhere: — Echarmion

It is kinda weird that you identify with the left - and when I challenge prominent left wing ideas, you say "How dare you assume what I, personally believe?" Suddenly, you're not a collectivist - supporting a dictatorial dogma. Suddenly, you're a lone wolf - as is everyone on the left!

Political correctness is useful insofar as it keeps ad-hominem and poisoning of the well at bay. — Echarmion

Is that so? It's not an incoherent and unjust philosophy, in direct contradiction of human rights like freedom of conscience and expression? It's not a basis for de-platforming academics, shutting down people's opinions, controlling the internet and avoiding discussions you find uncomfortable?

It makes sense to take care that our language doesn't unduly label and marginalize people who might have important opinions to contribute. — Echarmion

You don't think political correctness unduly labels and marginalizes people? Or is it that, because it only does it to white people, that's okay in terms of your identity politics hierarchy of victimhood?

It plays into the whole "culture war" thing, which as far as I am concerned is a distraction from actual problems. — Echarmion

It IS the whole culture war thing. It's the left's war against our culture!

Having responded to your first paragraph - it occurs to me that you've shown elsewhere, that attempting discussion with you is pointless. You will not engage with the points raised, but just directly contradict them by repeating your dogmatic position. I find that deeply depressing and I'd rather not waste my time responding to the rest of your post. But I can't resist this:

It's a bit of a Truism that having less stuff is more sustainable. — Echarmion

No. That's profoundly wrong. But what it is, is confirmation that you are in the mainstream of left wing thought, on everything from political correctness to climate change, and yet would deny it. Either you are blisteringly lacking in self awareness, or radically dishonest. Either way - I'm not banging my head against that brick wall. So thank you, and fare thee well.

I think it was St Augustine who wrote something like "rational knowledge and religious knowledge cannot be in conflict" - so it was wide open for the Church to embrace Galileo as discovering the means to decode the word of God made manifest in Creation, afford scientific understanding moral authority, and technology would have been applied as suggested by a scientific understanding of reality - rather than for ideological ends.

But the Church was burning people alive for heresy right through to 1792 - well into the Industrial Revolution. Refusing to afford science any moral authority, as the means to establish valid knowledge of Creation - meant, we worshiped the book, not the Creation itself, and maintained the religious, political and economic ideological architecture of societies, intact - unreformed in relation to this burgeoning understanding of reality, even as we pressed ahead with technology, produced by science reduced to the status of a whore.

We need to grow up real fast, accept that science is true, and act accordingly. It doesn't mean turning the world upside down. We have to get there from here. It begins with massive, base load clean energy from the molten interior of the earth. In terms of the fundamental physics, doing anything requires energy, and we need massive amounts of it. Not less energy - from wind and solar, but radically more, from the big ball of molten rock beneath our feet.

Sounds like you're there! So why do we not agree?

Let's start with epistemology.

What can we know, and how can we know it?

In order for better sense to prevail, one has to understand the fundamental nature of the problem. With regard to the climate and ecological crisis - which is, whether you believe in it or not, an imminent existential threat - the fundamental cause is not capitalism, as the left would maintain, but is our mistaken relationship to science. In short, science is not just a toolbox full of new gadgets and neat ways to kill people. It's also an instruction manual for use of those tools. But we don't act in regard to science as an understanding of reality. We use the tools but we don't read the instructions. That's the mistake we need to correct to survive. It didn't matter so much what we believed when we were half a billion people running around naked in the forest, poking each other with sharp sticks - but now we're 8 billion, and ignoring a scientific understanding of reality in favour of the primitive religious politics of our ancestors, as a basis for the application of powerful technologies, and it is the fast track to extinction.

Then why do you support political correctness and extinction rebellion? Why do you act in ways that are contrary to human rights like freedom of conscience and freedom of expression? Why do you pursue a "have less-pay more" approach to sustainability? You may not think you want eco communist authoritarian government and genocide, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The climate catastrophe is now inevitable. — Olivier5

There's the spirit!

It's gonna start hitting badly by the end of this century only, if we're lucky. What form of 'civilisation' will sustain and survive for centuries ahead in spite of climate change, I don't know. I guess we'll all take a hit, some bigger hit here, some smaller there. But I would hope that societies built on common search for truth and respect for truth stand a better chance of surviving the incoming crises than societies built upon lies. — Olivier5

There's a massive source of clean energy inside the earth - that we can tap into and use to extract carbon from the atmosphere, and sequester it in the earth. This isn't just producing slightly less carbon, because we get a small fraction of our energy from wind and solar, but actively reversing climate change - using the heat energy of the earth itself. So no, climate catastrophe is not inevitable. It's a matter of the technologies we employ.

Where philosophy comes in, is that this approach implies a global solution, and ultimately, a post material world. This is externalised by national and economic ideologies. Politicians want the huge kick-backs from all that windmill building, they want bumps in the mining stocks in which their final salary, index linked pension pots are invested, they want 'green' jobs, and the pretence of sustainability, more than they want sustainability. A global solution providing limitless clean energy is contrary to the idea that nation states are sovereign entities; like the world were a jig-saw puzzle made up of nation state pieces, and not in fact - part of a single global environment with ideological lines drawn on it.

common search for truth and respect for truth — Olivier5

That's exactly what we don't have. We are dealing with people who believe nation states exist, and that there's a man in the sky who will drop down at the last minuet and make everything all right. And people who think, just in case, they'd better die with enough gold on hand to bribe their way across the river Styx. That's the problem. We are technologically advanced, but ideologically, we haven't moved an inch since Galileo was being shown the tools of torture and asked if he might like to reconsider his earlier answer.

Well therein lies the problem. I can make the case to the right. It's a case for a sustainable and prosperous world. It's a case for dividing massive infrastructure costs from loss of revenues. It's a case for maintaining geopolitical stability as we transition to sustainable energy sources. I can make the case to them. I cannot make the case to the left - who, I would argue, are using the climate change issue as an anti-capitalist battering ram. They are constructing an argument for eco-communism, overlaid with authoritarian political correctness as a means of control. The only thing I can tell the left is that their approach will not secure a sustainable future, and it will run to genocide.

I don't know Issac. It's not merely a matter of distance run, but whether you are running in the right direction.
Have you actively sought to abandon your assumptions and base your arguments in solid realities, like epistemology, evolution and physics, and then see if your philosophical favourites can be sustained in those terms?
Or are you looking down the wrong end of the telescope - starting with some metaphysical concept, like being, or some moral purpose - like equality, and bending the world around it?
Do you have a tendency to think in terms of superlatives - highest, fastest, biggest, strongest? That's often a road block.
Are you unreasonably attracted to nihilistic despair? You know you can just turn your back, because nihilism supports no value that requires you accept nihilism. All these, and a thousand other things - I've had to force my way past. Have you?

I live in the UK. I was a Remainer. I ripped into the right for several years during and after the 2016 Brexit referendum, which coincided with Trump's election - and had many of the same characteristics. It's true, they lied. But ultimately, capitalism is necessary to a sustainable future - and the left wing, anti capitalist, carbon tax this, stop that, eat grass and cycle approach won't work.

I worked for it. I tore my hair and gnashed my teeth. I looked past myself, and past the powerful religious, national and economic ideologies with which I was indoctrinated since infancy, and I persisted - for many years. I don't imagine I am superior except in any regard but this. I earned the truth.

Think of it this way...things are as good as they can be each and every moment. — synthesis

Or as Voltaire had it - "all's for the best in the best of all possible worlds." A perspective, known derisively as Panglossianism.

Since Reality is something you experience outside of the intellect, there are no answers to your questions. OTOH, your (personal) reality was whatever your experience was, but keep in mind that it was considerably different than what was taking place (due to all kinds of filters). — synthesis

There was a man. There was a stake. He was driving in the stake. The fact there was a delay between perception - in terms of the sight and the sound, doesn't mean it wasn't real. It just means that light travels faster than sound, and that is also an explicable and predictable physical reality.

You don't seem able to follow the argument, and engage in actual debate. Everything you say is mere contradiction. So, believe whatever you like. It doesn't matter anymore. Humankind is surely doomed - because, like you, they're wrong, and what is wrong cannot survive. It's cause and effect.

Completely unlike the right wing populist respect for truth? — Pfhorrest

Yes, I think it is different. For the right, it's lying. For the left, it's post modernism.

The idea is that as some things improve, others dis-improve, by definition (and proportionally). — synthesis

I see. I guess, but I don't see things that way myself. It implies futility - like all we're doing is re-arranging the deck chairs. I think science is a path, and it leads somewhere; at the very least, a long term, prosperous and sustainable future for humankind.

Simply the fact that we cannot access the present (time-lag between event and perception thereof) certainly suggests that we are not experiencing reality (Absolute or relative). — synthesis

I once watched a man driving in a stake. He was some distance away, across a railway line. I was on the other side. I watched him strike with the hammer, and heard the sound of him striking the stake after, out of sync with his movements. So, here are my questions: Was there a man? Was he driving in a stake? Did his blows make a sound? Did I hear the sound? If you answered yes to all these questions, what was not real about it?

Reality is not like the movie our brains convey. As a matter of fact (whatever that may be), nobody has a clue what vision is. So, what are you seeing? — synthesis

Yes, it is. It could not be otherwise. The idea that the reality we experience is subjectively constructed is false. It's largely a product of western philosophy written in the wake of Galileo's trial for the heresy for proving the earth orbits the sun. His contemporary, Descartes - wrote Meditations on First Philosophy in terror of the Church, in which he doubted all that could be doubted, and found the only thing he knew for certain was cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am.

Subjectivism, and ultimately, post modernism follow from this root - and currently, there's a left wing academic interest in undermining the possibility of truth. But it's a falsehood. Descartes' doubt was skeptical doubt, not rational doubt. If he'd stuck his hand in front of the fire, rather than a ball of wax, he would soon have discovered the undeniable existence of an objective reality - prior to cogito!

Further, as I've already told you, the senses are evolved in creatures that had to make accurate life and death decisions about reality, generation after generation. If the senses were not accurate to reality, human being could not have evolved.

Furthermore, if reality is subjectively constructed, how can there be art, or traffic lights. Try going into traffic court and saying, you may say the light was red, but subjectively, it was green! Go to an art gallery and listen to people speaking about the brushstrokes, and the lines and the colours. They are clearly seeing the same thing. Or do you suggest they are subjectively constructing the same unreality?

There is Absolute Truth and there is relative truth — synthesis

No. These are thought experiment concepts of truth. With absolute truth - you place yourself outside reality, looking in at some imagined entirety of it - and condescend to the man trying to make sense of the world around him with his limited vision. By relative truth you mean subjective truth - and the post modernist implication from subjectivism, that all truths are relative. But subjectivism is false. Truth is in correspondence to an objective reality.

I had a good friend who used to say that, "Things have never been any better or worse then they have ever been," and over time I believe I have come to the conclusion that he may be correct. — synthesis

I don't understand the saying. It doesn't seem to make sense. Either it's a truism - meaning, "things are what they have been in every moment" - or it implies an eternal unchanging state, in that nothing ever improves or dis-improves. (Yes, dis-improves is a word - I looked it up!)

As far as Reality (or reality) is concerned, the human mind is simply incapable of gaining access. — synthesis

Untrue. Or rather, dependent on defining reality in inaccessible terms. Most basically, the sensory organs evolve in relation to reality, and are tested insofar as they allow for the survival of the organism. If a monkey, swinging through the trees saw branches further away, or nearer than they actually were - physics would ensure his extinction. The reality we experience is accurate to the objective reality that exists.

Perception may be limited to tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, but that doesn't mean what we see is not real. If you would define reality in terms of the entirety of the magnetic spectrum, or the fact atoms never touch each other, and so forth, then you can define reality beyond reach, but to my mind, science begins at our fingertips - not at the far end of the universe, and has discovered the range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the space between atoms.

And although it may seem reasonable to assume that the earth orbits the sun, etc., that's doing a great deal of assuming where I would contend that it is impossible to understand even the simplest of things (if for no other reason than each event is preceded by an infinite number of events determining such. How you possibly understand the true nature of anything? — synthesis

It is not necessary to know the location and velocity of every sub-atomic particle in the universe in every moment to experience the real. I can close my eyes and run my finger across the keyboard and experience the reality of it. Truth isn't absolute truth. Reality isn't inaccessible.

What you've got there is either a brain tumour or a junkie trying to score pain meds!

"Is producing factory farmed animal products ethical?" I think is the better question - because the consumer cannot be expected to bear the cognitive burden of knowing how everything they consume is produced.

Producers are in a much better position - to know how things are produced, and effect beneficial change. However, producers cannot do this in a competitive market without lawmakers establishing a regulatory floor, informed by science.

But as science is seen only as a tool, and not as an authoritative understanding of reality, lawmakers make regulatory decisions based primarily on national and economic interests. Without a common recognition of science, competition implies a race to the bottom - and regulation for ethical production becomes "an unnecessary burden on business."

It's not my metaphysical assumption that there are fundamental building blocks. That's the assumption carried forth by quantum physics. I didn't introduce a metaphysical perspective. I pointed out its existence, and wondered if it's true. I see no reason to believe it is - and, trying to explain the weird behaviour of sub, sub atomic particles - I'm thinking double slit experiment, EPR, quantum tunnelling and the like, points rather, to a lack of existential properties that define matter on the macroscopic level i.e. location, velocity, spatial dimension, mass, etc. I suspect the behaviour is ontological, insofar as that's an appropriate term for something that doesn't have qualities like location and mass for causality to act upon, but has velocity and spatial dimension, like a photon.

I think quantum physics is philosophically mistaken in assuming the idea of fundamental building blocks. Rather, I think quantum physics is a science of the frayed edge of reality where something bleeds into nothing; that quantum effects can be explained as the lack - and gaining of existential properties, location velocity, mass - etc, by things that don't quite exist, and that the central focus of reality is the causal, deterministic, macroscopic reality we inhabit, where all the forces intersect.

I also think that BLM created a false narrative with carefully edited phonecam footage - for example, footage edited to exclude George Floyd fighting four police officers while handcuffed, yelling "I can't breathe" when clearly he could, and preventing them from putting him in a vehicle. All that was omitted. All we saw until police bodycam footage was leaked, was Floyd pinned down - not the urgent need for him to be pinned down.

Since the invention of the computer, science has really come together. The ability to process large amounts of data, and communicate ideas, was a game changer. Science does now constitute a highly valid and coherent understanding of the middle ground reality we inhabit, and should be taken seriously - as an understanding of reality. The earth does orbit the sun, human beings did evolve, heat does migrate from warmer to cooler bodies, etc!

https://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-universe/dark-energy-the-energy-of-nothing

I suppose, if you two are arguing, and don't feel that listing academic sources is any way to resolve the issue - you could each put your cases to a neutral third party and agree to accept the verdict.

To assume that science knows reality is impossible, — Rafaella Leon

No it's not. I'm doing it right now. I am assuming science knows reality. Piece of cake!