It's a good job you crossed it out. It's mostly wrong. For starters anarchy is not freedom. It's slavery, because that is the underlying condition of man. There's been slavery forever all around the world until the west developed philosophies on the rights of man, and the philosophy, politics and economics of liberty. Without institutions to insist upon freedom we would quickly revert to a state of subjugation. If you would argue that we are slaves to capitalism anyway, I would only counter that ours is at least, a productive state of subjugation - with, in theory, minimalist impositions upon individual freedom.

What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that to love freedom so much you would revert to the barter system is taking it too far. Freedom is not absence of government. People are much free-er for the sake of legitimate institutions!

I don't know what it's about. I've read this thread and watched Newsnight, and I still don't know what it's about. But this is probably the right place to ask: are communist citizens slaves?

I cannot do that. It is inherently contradictory. I cannot pretend "you know nothing about reality except that you exist and you have a conscious mind" and that there are "some materialists" - trying to make their case.

Either I acknowledge the existence of some materialists, external to me - and therefore rather prove their point about the existence of the external world; or I am imagining them, which is to say - I am not imagining that I know nothing about reality.

Does it not bother you that the existence of the external, material world is beyond question outside of philosophy? Even you, RogueAI, who propose this, do so by assuming the existence of the physical world, of computers, and other people using their computers to read and respond to your post.

I could imagine I know nothing about reality except that I exist and I have a conscious mind, but then I'm stuck in an endless solipsism - where that is all I can ever know. That is the nature of the subjectivist victory over materialism; the cost of certainty is that the subjectivist can know nothing else but that he exists.

I would rather assume that the world exists external to me; and acknowledge this is at some level, an assumption. It's a safe and prudent assumption; one that recommends itself in all ways, such that I would need good reason to doubt it. Is there good reason?

Ok, but then you have to allow, and account for, questions like why do we rape, rob, and kill each other in certain circumstances. The fact that we do act in this way illustrates that we may not have similar moral intuitions. — Pinprick

I have no particular insight into abnormal or criminal psychology. I haven't given it any thought. My point was that people don't generally behave this way - so please don't ask me why they do. My point is that overwhelmingly people don't. That I can explain. If you say people do, and therefore don't have similar moral intuitions, okay then. That's your opinion. It was something of a throwaway line anyway - Illustrative of a point made by someone else, and I'm sick of you banging at this same point over and over and over again. So I concede the argument. You can chalk that up as a win. People are rapists, murderers and thieves! Well done!

I have no interest in furthering this false narrative. I'm not going to be used as a sounding board for a virtue signalling intellectual midget to parrot their PC dogma. I've explained why the concept of white privilege is false. Now I'm done.

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I had in mind for option 2, as I said before, which is why I'm asking if anyone has changed/cast their votes after such clarifications. — Pfhorrest

I don't accept I'm suggesting that only the descriptive domain exists, because I assert that life stems from the action of physical forces on inanimate matter, and evolves in relation to causality - because, while the moral sense is rooted in behavioural intelligence, intellectual intelligence is qualitatively distinct - and illuminates an abstract realm of existence that does not exist for animals.

To illustrate - the bird doesn't plan ahead, even when it builds a nest before it lays eggs. Humans plan ahead because for humans the future exists by dint of intellectual apprehension. It's a matter of behavioural intelligence that chimpanzees share food - but intellectual intelligence has seen several thousand years of head scratching, seeking to define moral and ethical principles, then applied to religious, political and economic systems. Even if the prescriptive domain exists inter-subjectively, as a collective consciousness, it exists. And that it has a material, biological substrate - doesn't imply that moral questions can be reduced to matters of fact.

I do not claim that we should feed the poor because chimpanzees share food. That's the naturalistic fallacy - and is inherent to a descriptive explanation. Rather, there's a behaviourally intelligent, evolutionary advantageous moral sense - made explicit by intellectual intelligence, that exists between human beings. The descriptive and prescriptive are inseparable. And so, when we look at a list of facts, we see the moral implications. That's who we are! Both!

Maybe you only got 7 votes because the options offered are not exhaustive. They are, to be fair - the options offered by Western philosophy, but none of them - in my opinion, are correct.

"They are separate and starkly different" — Pfhorrest

"There is only the descriptive domain" — Pfhorrest

"There is only the prescriptive domain" — Pfhorrest

"They are separate but still similar" — Pfhorrest

Nope, no, niet, and non!

Life springs from the action of physical forces on inanimate matter, and the organism evolves in relation to a causal reality, and has to be correct to reality to survive. Surviving physiologies and behaviours are correct to reality because they survive. In the human organism, morality is a behaviourally intelligent sense fostered by evolution in a tribal context, prior to the capacity for intellectual intelligence that allowed, eventually, for an appreciation of fact. The descriptive "is" and the prescriptive "ought" are not separate, nor exclusive. They are interwoven in our evolutionary development and psychology; and we, human beings are by our evolved nature, situated between the is and the ought; our behaviours variations upon the ideal - of knowing what's true and doing what's right in terms of what's true!

The possibilities are truly exciting - if only we can get our act together. My terrible fear is; there's a lot of doom and gloom about; and the prevailing view of the future is in terms of limits to resources. That's rubbish. Science could solve climate change in a long weekend if everyone would just shut up and do as they're told. We need massively more energy from the molten interior of the earth, and we can produce resources. Limitless clean electricity, hydrogen fuel, capture carbon and bury it, desalinate water to irrigate wastelands for agriculture and habitation, recycle, farm fish. This doesn't have to be the evensong for humanity. This could be the break of day. Scientifically and technologically, we could make a paradise of this world - but the people get in the way!

Materials science is very interesting. I've been looking at whether carbon nanotubes are strong and light enough to dangle a tether from an asteroid in orbit, as a space elevator. If the tether could span the 100 miles from an asteroid in a low geosynchronous orbit, to the upper atmosphere, we could lift cargo from earth with balloons - catch the tether, and take the elevator the rest of the way. If we can do that, we can build in orbit, and mine space - and our resources would become effectively infinite.

If you agree that the term is a misnomer...
— counterpunch

I do not. — creativesoul

Well, there you are then. I did try to warn you against vaguely waving in the direction of some other thread - when you could easily have copy and pasted the passage, you think is apt. I read that you think the term white privilege is bollocks. Now you don't. What fun you're having with me!

You do know there's a difference between 'Philosophy' and 'Making shit up' don't you? — Isaac

I do, but it's a subtle distinction, and one is not wholly exclusive of the other.

Can’t be used as evidence for having similar moral intuitions. IOW’s just because we don’t rape, rob, or kill doesn’t mean that’s due to having similar moral intuitions. — Pinprick

One can, for example, use an illustrative example of a phenomenon that requires explanation. Why don't we just rob, kill and rape each other? I hope it's moral intuition, and not just because we're scared to. I'd like to think there's some prohibition from empathy, and it's not just a lazy way to save ourselves the hassle! Should I be worried that you don't think so?

For me, I begin with the evolutionary reality of the hunter gatherer tribe, because that's where the enormous majority of human development occurred, and because in my view, Nietzsche was wrong. Man in a state of nature could not have been some savage, amoral brute - or he could not have survived. He defended the tribe, shared food and raised the young; and this is where his moral sense originates. It's remarkably similar to all peoples because the relationship of the human organism to the reality of the environment is remarkably similar for all peoples. Just as all human cultures invented art, music, pottery, agriculture, architecture, jewellery - albeit in culturally specific ways, they all have a moral sense expressed in culturally specific ways; because otherwise, the human organism could not have survived.

Morality isn't just an opinion. Any particular expression of the moral sense is an opinion. But the moral sense predates intellectual intelligence - if chimpanzees are anything to go by, and so is a behaviourally intelligent adaptation, advantageous to the individual within the tribe, and to the tribe made up of moral individuals.

As a 'murican (or Terran / Terrestrial / Earthling), what will make me really sit-up and take notice is (if and) when we drop a (constructed in a hard lunar vaccum) AI-driven "fleet" of (cephalopod-like) submersibles through one or all of the frozen carapaces of the watery moons of Ganymede, Enceladus, Europa and/or Callisto to explore those pitch black oceans where 'extraterrestrial life' most probably resides, and maybe also is most abundant, in this solar system. And I hope this happens before I'm too decrepit or decomposed to appreciate the "eureka" moment. — 180 Proof

I've been thinking about how to overcome the time lag. Do you know how much further Saturn 9.58 AU is than Jupiter 5.2 AU? That's almost twice as far.

Some untethered, autonomous smart bot - has considerable drawbacks, like it would require a lot of processing power in its own right, which means it requires more energy, and is more complicated and so more prone to breakdowns. And what then? To keep the bot simple means spreading its brain across space, and so I think what we need is a distributed network in space, of communications servers, i.e. an internet in space.

There would be a constant two way stream of data. From earth we would upload conditional commands, if A then B, if C then D, if E then F, and so on - covering the range of possible actions, that are then processed in a hierarchical fashion - with inappropriate suggestions filtered out as outgoing data and incoming data passed by en route, informed by constant input from earth, on the basis of information coming in about what had transpired. Only commands appropriate to the situation would be acted on at the other end, by a relatively simple, and hence, more disposable robot. Once this system was in place, it could run hundreds of simple robots at the same time - all over the place.

The content of your link - where you seem to agree with me that the term white privilege is a misnomer, doesn't change the fact that you rolled your eyes and condescended to me, that I don't know what white privilege means, when I said:

The idea of "white privilege" is one of those contorted politically correct concepts, confected to cause offence, to divide people and incite the very racist sentiment it is purportedly intended to address. The white working class majority who struggle to make ends meet - cannot but be offended by such a concept, but that's precisely the purpose. — counterpunch

You said:

Oh dear, yet another white person that does not know what white privilege is — creativesoul

Why? If you agree that the term is a misnomer - that it doesn't describe the phenomenon, why did you suggest that I don't know what it means? Why did you deliberately misunderstand my argument - to suggest I'm ignorant of this basic idea? And also, it was synthesis that called you racist - so why bring it up with me and book273?

So your argument then, is that the trial of Galileo had no effect on the subsequent development of philosophy or science?
— counterpunch

If you look at the lives of the four great astronomers who followed Galileo, it would seem that his heresy trial did not bring astronomy to a screeching halt. — Bitter Crank

I suppose not. But then Kepler confirmed Galileo's observations, and Cassini confirmed Kepler - so what would be the point in continuing to object to heliocentrism? The cat was out of the bag. Looking into this, I'm struck by the fact that astronomical knowledge was a big concern at the time, and coming from all quarters. What would it have benefitted the Church to continue to point out the disparity by hauling astronomers into court one after another? That they didn't, doesn't mean the inclination went away.

According to Barker and Goldstein: "Kepler was motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason."

This is the line the Church should have taken, but didn't, and it's here Descartes method of sceptical doubt, as a means to establish subjectivism - as the only certain knowledge, stands out like a sore thumb. Given the success of scientific method - how could any philosopher consider Descartes argument epistemically robust? How could it have become such a mainstay of philosophy unless it served a religious purpose? That is, to de-emphasize the material, and so promote the spiritual. And the subjectivists are still going strong today; such that they claim reality is subjectively constructed, that truth is relative and decry material explanations of anything as reductionist.

If you consider the fact Newton had to hide his religious views to advance in his academic career, and the troubles Darwin ran into - there's a clear antipathy between religion and science, that didn't stop science dead in its tracks. No, but that has never been my contention. Rather, the philosophical implications of science as an understanding of reality have been undermined with reference to arguments based on Cartesian subjectivism - such that science was used as a tool - but ignored as true knowledge of reality.

Galileo demonstrated that we were not the center of the universe. Darwin explained how we evolved from primitive primates (and worse). Freud revealed that we aren't even in charge of our own minds. Etc. These demotions in status meet with resistance. — Bitter Crank

No, I'm sorry - that may be true, but it is not explanatory, because - however you look at it, religious and political power was based on a divine conception of reality, challenged by science, and science lost. They didn't accept Kepler's argument that: "God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason" for that would imply that science would have been authoritative, as true knowledge of Creation.

Power remained in the hands of religion and European monarchies, justified with reference to God and the Divine Rights of Kings, even as science continued in service to industrial and military power - but somewhat disdained by polite society. The ideological architecture was not reformed in relation to science as truth. Science was not afforded authority as a valid conception of reality. Instead, science was used as a tool to further empower these religiously justified ideological architectures - and otherwise ignored. And we see this playing out everywhere, from nuclear proliferation to climate change denial, and in a thousand other ways; technology - developed and applied with no regard to science as a true understanding of reality, to further ideological ends - and that's why we have a climate and ecological crisis.

Now for the good news. Flip that over, and we have a rationale to tackle the climate and ecological crisis. Give science authority, and apply technology accordingly. Put the science out front as a guiding star, and just follow along in the usual capitalist way, creating industries, revenues and jobs, and saving the world in the process. There's an implicit assumption that environmentally beneficial action must necessarily be sacrificial - that it's swimming against the tide, but that's not scientifically true. The tide is purely ideological. If science is made authoritative, and we all follow in the course of that rationale, we can have a long, prosperous and sustainable future.

Now you're just begging the question. "Killing is considered morally wrong because when we do sanction killing we're not being moral... because killing is considered morally wrong", "Theft is considered morally wrong because the people who don't consider it that way are themselves morally wrong because they don't consider theft morally wrong". — Isaac

Doesn't all morality beg the question? Why is it wrong? Because it's wrong! I can give you a slightly deeper reason than that. It's morally wrong because the moral sense objects to it; classifies it as wrong instinctively. And there is considerable commonality between people, and between people's - as to the broad dynamics of right and wrong.

It's not that I don't accept that there are cultural and circumstantial differences in how the moral sense is expressed. I do. The moral sense isn't dictatorial of human behaviour. It's a consequence of evolution, and so the degree to which morality influences behaviour is a matter of how advantageous it was. Being too moral would get you killed quicker than being entirely amoral! So morality is a sense we can disregard at will.

Only quite recently did we form civilisations - and here there's a Nietzschean transvaluation of values, of sorts - not the strong fooled by the weak, but implicit tribal morality made explicit for political purposes. Because any dispute would naturally split a fledgling society along tribal lines, it was necessary to have an objective expression of the moral sense, ostensibly justified by God, as authority for moral laws that applied equally to everyone. This is the origin of religion.

Where do you get this stuff from? — Isaac

Does it matter? I'm saying it. This is my philosophy. I'll gladly explain it to you, but I honestly cannot understand your interest in something you apparently have such disdain for.

Are you suggesting that there is no such thing as rights afforded to any and all individuals simply because they are human? — creativesoul

Ask Ciceronius. He said it on page 4. It may have been misattributed by the quote button, but that's definitely not my claim.

That's not a reasonable argument. War is a situation in which moral norms have broken down. All property is theft is Proudhon; an anarchist - so again, a rejection of social norms. Rape isn't considered a moral good, even if it occurs within marriage - and becomes somewhere between difficult and impossible to police, particularly in poorer countries. The point is, that the basic moral intuitions remain - even while circumstances keep the rubber from the road.

All are allowed in certain context which vary depending on who you talk to. — Isaac

But that's not true, is it? The basic laws of the land are much the same the world over. Assuming that religion, law, politics and economics are expressions of an innate moral sense - and that devolves in turn to matters of psychology, evolutionary biology, and ultimately causality - it's unsurprising that there's such great commonality of moral intuition, and that there are cultural differences, and differences due to circumstances.

Either we do not share any common moral intuitions, or we do, but they are easily swamped by other more important concerns. Either way, appeal to such commonalities is rendered pointless in resolving moral dilemmas. — Isaac

Right, but my argument isn't about resolving moral dilemmas. For me, this is about the is and the ought. The observation that we have a significant commonality of moral intuition was made in support of the evolutionary argument, but is not really the focus of my argument. I assume that you will have different values to me - and so will prioritise a list of facts differently, but still, you will not but be able to see moral implication in a list of facts. We may disagree as to what they imply given our different values - but it's not illegitimate, as Hume suggests, to continue in the ordinary was of reasoning, making copulations of is and is not, then switch to ought mode. That's what we do. That's who we are - because morality is fundamentally a sense.

This has implications to Popper's 1947 argument in The Open Society and its Enemies, in which he argues that recognising science as truth would require we "make our representations conform" to science as truth, and because scientific truth is effectively indisputable, that it would be dictatorial. That's wrong, because morality is a sense, and while there is a significant commonality of moral intuition, we do have different values based, one presumes on the facts we were exposed to - within our limited apprehensions, and the values we were encouraged to by early experiences, when the human organism is, by dint of evolution, trusting of authority figures. (In that they copy adults because figuring everything out for themselves, they'd die.) So, to sum up - morality is an evolutionary sense. There's remarkable similarity of moral intuition, but values are complex - and inform our understanding of facts. That so, we can accept science is true without it becoming a dictatorial dogma. Hume was wrong, and Popper was wrong, and this in turn, is all a consequence of science rendered a heresy by the Church with the trial of Galileo. But let's put that aside for now.

True, Galileo was found to hold a heretical heliocentric belief. However, Copernicus came up with the heliocentric theory a century earlier in 1533, and it wasn't kept a secret from the then-current pope: — Bitter Crank

Galileo was hauled before the Papal Court of the Inquisition, and so the threat was clear - particularly given the Church was burning people alive for heresy right through to 1792.

Further, Copernicus' book on the heliocentric system was published around 1543 or so, about the time Copernicus died at age 70 from the effects of a stroke. Maybe Galileo just rubbed his current pope, Urban VIII, the wrong way. — Bitter Crank

Galileo was tried for the heresy of proving the earth orbits the sun; emphasis on PROVING the earth orbits the sun, using scientific method. Copernicus constructed a heliocentric model, but did he build a telescope and prove it with reference to observation? No, but Galileo did!

But why blame the church for everything? One Claudius Ptolemy is responsible for the long-running geocentric model of 'the universe'. Why don't you blame this Roman Egyptian for setting science back--a millennia and a half!? — Bitter Crank

Are you suggesting Ptolemy knew the earth orbits the sun, and chose to remain ignorant?

This might be where your train goes off the rails. Holy Mother Church was never in charge of whatever constitutes the "scientific establishment". Science marched on, whether the pope thought it was heretical or not. Our "natural evolution" had unfolded long before Jesus, Mary, and Joseph came along. — Bitter Crank

Are you a Catholic by any chance? Is it that you're offended on behalf of mother Church - that she could possibly have made an error? Sticking with the infallibility thing, huh? For what it's worth, I think it was probably an honest mistake - a mistake made in faith, with no idea of the long term implications.

Human beings have been a damned, doomed species from the get go. Our Original Sin occurred when we emotional volatile apes added intelligence, curiosity, and blind ambition to our species. After that it was only a matter of time before we would get our hands on clubs, arrows, bullets, and atomic weapons, and gas ourselves with CO2. — Bitter Crank

So you don't see an epistemological evolution of humankind over time; no progress of knowledge from "less and worse" toward "more and better" - that the Church interfered in? Because for me, it seems like they dumped a huge boulder in the epistemological stream in an attempt to block it, but only succeeded in diverting an irresistible force.

Sure, much that happened in western culture after the Renaissance (and the Enlightenment) contributed to the situation we are in. Everything from double-entry bookkeeping, the expansion of credit, harnessing steam, global exploration, capitalism, the French Revolution--it all figures in. The history of cultures just can't be reduced to some simplistic explanation like the pope deciding that Galileo's theory was heretical. — Bitter Crank

So your argument then, is that the trial of Galileo had no effect on the subsequent development of philosophy or science? Declaring Galileo grievously suspect of heresy had no effect on how science was used - even as it was used to create 70,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War? While the technologies we have applied are over-used to the point where the planet is literally bursting into flames, you take to twitter, via your iphone, to deny climate change is real, and you think there's nothing in that that requires explanation? Our relationship to science is as it should be? Science is just gadgets - and no truth, and that's how it should be? Then make sure to yell hallelujah as we fall into the abyss!

Political allegiances are complex. They are not a simple matter that can be boiled down to some obvious exercise of moral intuition, so it's not a good example. When we talk about similar moral intuitions, I take that to mean we don't go around killing, robbing and raping each other. We all know that that's wrong. We would, most of us - pull someone out of the path of a car, or hand over a bit of pocket change to help a homeless person. We know that's right. These are decent examples because the exercise of moral intuition is clear in the simplicity of the act. Political motivations are anything but clear, so having signalled your virtue you can move on.

Mmrrr'can!

I mentioned the possibility of microorganisms as having little prominence in my opinion, if not from the fact that microorganisms were inevitably brought there via not only this probe but those before it. Between the actions of the instruments of the previous craft introducing them and the possibility of solar wind and lack of atmosphere spreading them and perhaps cosmic radiation mutating them into forms now unrecognizable or.. alien, I'd suggest there's still little cause for a "eureka!" moment. — Outlander

NASA go to extreme lengths to sterilize spacecraft - so the introduction of microorganisms from earth is unlikely. The spontaneous formation of RNA and DNA are where Intelligent Design advocates defend against a physical explanation of life. If RNA or DNA could be proven to have occurred on another planet - it would be a big deal. It's thought that, to get from RNA and DNA to microorganisms took about 1.5 billion years on earth. Being able to show evolution had advanced that far before conditions on Mars became inhospitable would be a very big deal.

What if it's beyond that of a microorganism. Say a "space algae" of a sort. I'd still default toward the belief this is hardly a game-changer. Now.. something with a nervous system and full-fledged brain on the other hand.. would be a bit of an eyebrow-raiser. Though still nothing outside of the realm of scientific possibility. — Outlander

Perhaps you've been conditioned to expect three breasted aliens and million year old machines that create an oxygen atmosphere when plugged in. But realistically, we are looking for the remains of very primitive life that became extinct over 4 billion years ago. Mars was only warm and wet for around 600 million years after the planet formed. It's overwhelmingly likely they will find nothing conclusive, if they find anything at all.

Is that your argument? Help show me the light here. — Outlander

I'm not interested in engaging with your sarcastic childish bullshit. Offence intended!

The alleged war between science and religion is greatly exaggerated in the telling. — Bitter Crank

I disagree. I think the rift between science and religion is deep, but largely misunderstood. Maybe it requires a good appreciation of what science is, both as a method of investigation, and as a picture of reality, to understand why the trial of Galileo meant we applied the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons. It's not just some bickering about evolution - that's surface stuff.

Think about it this way. Humankind evolved from animal ignorance and only slowly came into human knowledge about the world. For generation after generation our ancestors struggled on in ignorance - plagued by disease, drought and crop failure, and invented religion to give themselves some illusion of control. They struggled on and on - burning offerings and reading entrails, then Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, trying to understand generation after generation - and on and on, and then they discovered scientific method, and the Church declared it a heresy. What if they hadn't declared it a heresy? What if they'd embraced it instead? Our natural evolution would have unfolded. This isn't our natural course. We are not "who we were meant to be."

We were sent down the wrong road, applied the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons, and so now we're looking at a climate and ecological crisis that threatens civilisation and thereby human existence. It's cause and effect. It's evolution. Organisms have to be correct to reality or are destined to become extinct. We're wrong, and unless we address this problem, soon we'll be gone. That's how deep this issue is. It's of existential import.

I humbly reject this, — Outlander

You still do not understand my argument. No offence. It was the 17th century - as in 1633, that Galileo was put on trial for proving heliocentrism using scientific method, and found grievously suspect of heresy, such that science as an understanding of reality was disgraced, even as science as a tool drove the Industrial Revolution. Ask yourself what might have followed instead, had science been welcomed as the means to decode the word of God made manifest in Creation, and so accorded sacred moral worth? If you won't see it you can't. That's okay. If instead, you continue to insist we must TURN BACK NOW - maybe you can explain how we put the genie back in the bottle???

Humanity and unrestrained science do not mix. The world almost became an irradiated wasteland SEVERAL TIMES now due to NON-WILLED NON-HUMAN NATURAL OCCURRENCES/MALFUNCTIONS. See nuclear false alarm incidents. We create all these germs and mutations in things that have the potential to kill us all, there's so many science fiction movies about this that nevertheless speak from a strong position of scientific fact. Please just honestly stop reading, thinking of a reply, and just think about that for a few minutes. — Outlander

You do not understand my argument. No offence. It takes a bit of effort to see. What I'm saying is, because the Church made an enemy of science, science was used as a tool - but ignored as an understanding of reality. Had we recognised science as an understanding of reality, and applied technology as suggested by a scientific understanding of reality - we would not have created nuclear and biological weapons. Instead, however, science was made a heresy to protect religious, political and economic ideologies, even while science was used as a tool for industrial and military power. We used the tools but didn't read the instructions. That's why we have nuclear and biological weapons, and that's why we have climate change. And that's why making science a heresy was a mistake.

In terms of costs and solving engineering problems the matter is, of course, tremendous. But beyond that, what's the point? To find another planet for humans to destroy it?
Rather than make an effort to work things out here on Earth, the solution is to go "business as usual", and consume up another planet, and eventually, what, the whole Universe? Because mankind's appetite knows no bounds nor should any limits be imposed on it? — baker

That's a somewhat ambitious view; of which our current capabilities fall a very long way short. I think we most certainly should work things out here on earth, because the idea we're going to colonise space is a distant dream - that in any case, is unlikely to save the vast majority of people. Further, if we cannot live in an environment to which we are ideally suited, how can we possibly hope to colonise space where every breath of air, every drop of water, every morsel of food has to be created in a hostile environment?

In short, we are not going to be consuming another planet any time soon. I think we should be planning to catch asteroids, mine them and build in orbit - while looking for ways to travel a lot faster and further than chemical rockets allow.

On another note, resources are a consequence of the energy available to create them, and so, given massive amounts of clean energy from the heat energy in the molten interior of the earth, we can produce limitless clean electricity, capture carbon and bury it, desalinate water to irrigate wastelands - like deserts, and so protect forests and natural water sources from overuse, recycle, farm fish, and have continued prosperity, sustainably, into the long term future. It's only a matter of the energy we have available to spend. Given sufficient energy, there is no limit to resources.

That's just so pathetic. — baker

Is it? So you wanted me to dump on religion because I believe in science? I think that's pathetic; not that I didn't feel that way myself at one time. I was in my twenties when I became disenchanted with religion - and I was very angry about it. But when you think about the role religion has played as the central coordinating mechanism of societies through thousands of years of history - the question of whether it's true or not is about the least interesting and least important thing about it.

I'm agnostic because, as a philosopher interested in science - I think it important to admit what you can, and cannot know. I've got to a place where I accept, I don't know if God exists or not; and emotionally, that's quite comfortable.

The last thing I'll say is probably the most important; and it's that religion made a mistake making an enemy of science. Science could have, and should have been welcomed as the means to know the Creation - rather than been rendered suspect of heresy, true knowledge should have moral worth. Why? Because, as implied above, survival is a matter of the application of the right technologies. We do not have a limited amount of resources we are consuming, and once they're gone, we're done. That's not how it is. We create resources by the application of technology, and have not applied the right technologies because science was made a heresy - rather than valued as true knowledge of Creation.

I think this is an extraordinary thing to say:

half of the US sees things like discriminating against particular groups of people as tolerable, if not outright justified. — Pinprick

How do you know what half the people in the US think?

Do you really imagine:

I didn’t even say which side I agreed with. — Pinprick

It’s just a good example of how large groups of people can seemingly have very different moral intuitions. — Pinprick

No, it's not - because you cannot possibly know why people voted the way they did. You are imposing your moral judgement on their choice.

it shows how easily our moral intuitions can be influenced by things like tribalism, or herd mentality in general. — Pinprick

You are a clear demonstration of tribalism and herd mentality; if that's what you were seeking to show, job done!

Why? The matter is trivial. (And they're spending billions on it.) What if space exploration is a subtle and blatantly desperate attempt to prove the Abrahamic religions wrong?! Oh! — baker

So you'd be very surprised if life didn't exist elsewhere, but think proving it; knowing for sure is a trivial matter. Is that because you are so confident in your ignorant opinion - that to you, it is as good as certain knowledge? Well, then - look at it this way: you'll get to say I told you so.

If the only reason for space exploration is to prove the Abrahamic religions wrong then they will have served yet another useful purpose!

I’d like to agree with this, but I’m not so sure. For example, right now about half of the US sees things like discriminating against particular groups of people as tolerable, if not outright justified. This is illustrated in the amount of people who voted for Trump in the recent election, despite his obvious immoral (at least according to the other half of Americans) treatment of women, Muslims, immigrants, blacks, etc. Treating others with respect and decency regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, gender, etc. does not seem to be an overwhelmingly common moral intuition. — Pinprick

I'm not about to weigh in on this. It too loaded to be used as an example of how moral intuitions work; so clearly, that's not your real intent. If you want to signal your virtue elsewhere, I'm sure there are plenty of threads where it would be der rigueur and more than welcome.

I think it would be extremely extraordinary if life existed only on Earth. — baker

I'm inclined to agree. But there's a difference between thinking that life exists elsewhere, and knowing that it does - and it's the difference between looking into the night sky and seeing a lot of floating rocks, and seeing life, wherever the right conditions occur.

Gotta love that one! — creativesoul

You should. It's a compliment that's mostly undeserved.

What if life finds perseverance??

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55885086

The search widens for hot rocks that provide power

Drilling holes into an extinct volcano might sound like an unusual start to an energy project. But that's what J Michael Palin, a senior lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand, is planning to do. His project involves drilling two boreholes to a depth of 500m (1,600ft) and monitoring the rock to see if it is suitable to provide geothermal energy.

"You're selling power all the time, so on a levelized basis, geothermal can outcompete all the other options. Once up and running, these projects can go for decades."

Is having children a benign or innocent act, or is it an unfair imposition as the ANs would have it? This is not a question of opinion. Everybody, including ANs would say there is nothing wrong with doing benign or innocent acts. And everybody would say that unfair impositions are wrong. The question then is, which is happening here? — khaled

I agree, that people's moral intuitions are remarkably similar. But do we ever exercise those moral intuitions with regard to perfect knowledge? No! So we run into something of a chicken and the egg scenario - when asking about whether the facts provoke the moral intuition, or the moral intuition adduces selected facts in support of a moral opinion. I don't think there's a final answer. It's both. That's what human beings do. We are the bridge between the ought and the is, and it's where we "should be" - striving to know what's true and do what's right in terms of what's true!

As usual, the right are victim role-playing snowflakes who peddle fake news and they should all get fucked. Whole debate is a charade and anyone who takes it seriously is a clown and probably some kind of post-modern neofascist or somesuch. — StreetlightX

Glad I'm a centrist; and also glad that you acknowledge "victim role-playing snow-flakes peddling fake news" - is a thing!

Oh, yes, for sure. Life or no life - a near miraculous feat of engineering. Amazing. But still, the idea that life may exist beyond this world - that would be paradigm shifting knowledge, like the Copernican revolution - only more profound.

Knowing that this island Earth was not the only place life had come into being, would be profound - not least in the implication that life is more probable than Intelligent Design enthusiasts would like us to believe. It would give more certainty to the parameters of the Drake Equation:

ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets.

...giving an increased probability there's intelligent life out there. And when we brought it back to Earth it would escape, mutate and turn us all inside out, still walking around, with our organs on the outside! A great day for science!

Morality is a sense, like a sense of humour. Expression of this sense is opinion, but that doesn't mean morality is just glorified opinion. If you hear and joke and you laugh; you didn't decide to laugh. It's not merely your opinion that it's funny. It's the same with the moral sense. If you see something that's wrong, you don't decide that it's wrong. You feel it. You give expression to that feeling it becomes an opinion - but the feeling that something is wrong, isn't you forming an opinion.

If the statute was one of Edward Colson, he was deputy governor of the English Royal African Company, which held a monopoly on England's African trade slave. — Ciceronianus the White

Colson. He was born in 1636; 200 years before slavery was ended. Sure, we look back on the past in horror - but it is not a few hundred years of European history. It is the entire history of human civilisation, all around the world - right back to Ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt and beyond.

The implication is slavery hasn't been defeated by our enlightened moral attitudes. It is endemic to the human condition, and only held in check by rights and freedoms. Yet, for the sake of political correctness, that fact is disguised to suggest that slavery equates to racism. Political correctness makes it impossible to dispute - for fear of being branded racist, and at the same time as the left are constructing this authoritarian dogma in opposition to free speech, they are using climate change as an anti-capitalist battering ram.

Do you not see how dangerous all that is - given that slavery is an ever present threat, only held in check by the philosophies, politics and economics of freedom?

That's exactly what I meant, yes. It's an oxymoronic position to endorse government to protect free speech. Free speech is derived from free will. I do not need the government to regulate when I can go to the bathroom. Or what I can say. But again, I look at the agenda and the origin, not the claim. — Paul S

I think the problem here is that you do need government to protect you from the consequences of exercising free speech - against an extremely aggressive politically correct left. Take what happened to JK Rowling recently. She made some fairly innocuous remark on twitter, gently mocking politically correct verbiage - and was attacked in a hugely disproportionate and vicious manner.

That's the problem. The politically correct dogma is not open to question, and that's unhealthy in all sorts of ways. It's a bandwagon you are required to jump on, and so a very unstable blind force - not unlike the witch hunt hysteria in the middle ages. Which is ironic because... Harry Potter!

I don't plan on discarding the anonymity this site offers me. I value free speech, and principles such as whistleblowing which have free speech at their core. — Paul S

Fair enough. I wasn't asking for your date of birth, social security number and your inside leg measurement, but... whatever dude!

If it's the case that you can confidently state that you believe such measures are necessary, then I wouldn't be convinced that you were genuinely willing to discuss the matter. Your view appears to be matured and you are seeking emotional support. No offence. — Paul S

You have committed the gravest of all possible crimes - you've...offended someone! Oh dear me no! Relax. It takes a lot more than that to offend me. I can confidently state that something needs to be done about the run-away train of political correctness, and yes, I am willing to discuss that.

Do you accept that it's not necessarily polite to encourage your level of free speech rights in the UK as a guide for how other countries should view such rights? — Paul S

Difficult question. On the one hand, I believe in free speech as a universal right. On the other hand, it's not my culture. I suppose it resolves itself in the fact that people in distant lands almost certainly don't care what I think, and as such - I'm quite free to disapprove of regimes that persecute citizens for saying the wrong thing. After all, that's why I disapprove of political correctness.

You see, whether the government has to step in, and whether it should step in, and what it should do about it if it has to or should step in, all depend on what the "right to free speech" means. But you're clearly unable or unwilling to address that. — Ciceronianus the White

I don't think an exhaustive definition of free speech is possible in any reasonable time frame; or necessary in that a common sense definition will do for most practical purposes. If you want to go open a thread entitled 'What is free speech anyway?' I'd be glad to contribute, but that's not what this thread is about. This thread, I'd hoped would be about why it's necessary for government to step in and protect free speech in universities.

I want to give an example. Recently, statues of slave owners were torn down by outraged teens - signalling their virtue. One man, Colston - was born in 1636, which - someone might have pointed out were free speech a protected right, was about 200 years before slavery was ended.

Slavery, at this point in time - had existed forever. It was how the world worked. Yet, because of political correctness - it's impossible to say, hang on a minuet, slavery existed all around the world since the dawn of time, it was perfectly normal in Colston's era, and btw - it was Western civilisation that developed the philosophy, politics and economics based on freedom, (including freedom of speech) that ultimately allowed slavery to be ended.

But because of political correctness - and the aggressive, twitter mob, de-platforming tactics used, that was impossible, and so the perception persists that slavery was some particular cruelty white people invented because they're racist. And it's just not true.

When you consider those dynamics, the need for intervention becomes clear. We cannot have the proliferation of a dogma that's not open to question - or else!

So, just to be clear - you are in favour of free speech, but not in favour of government measures to protect free speech?

Would I be correct in assuming you're an American with an innate suspicion of federal government?

In the UK free speech is not a Constitutional right; it's not an automatic assumption in the background. Here, there's an increasingly stultifying stranglehold on free speech being imposed under the auspices of political correctness - that implies students are being indoctrinated with an anti-western, anti capitalist, anti white education - that's immune from cross examination. That's why these measures are necessary.