But consciousness - on his view - is quite different. We're not talking about more of the same. And thus it cannot emerge. It must therefore be present all the way down. I don't see that you've said anything to block this. — Bartricks

No. His point is that consciousness is not a different sort of emergence than liquidity. That's why he denies radical emergence.

Liquidity emerges naturally based on the properties of the particles that make it up.

The only point I want to stress is that experience (consciousness) all the way down can be misleading, because it would suggest that particles or tables are conscious somewhat analogous to the way people are conscious. He doesn't say this at all.

He'd say that experience is an "ultimate" one of several features that are found at the base of physical stuff. Just like liquidity is an ultimate too.

But as found at the base of physical stuff, it isn't configured in a manner that has consciousness as a person would. But being that it is one of the properties of physical stuff, when it is configured in things like brains you do get experience like ours. So experience emerges naturally for him.

I have to repeat that this is not my view. I don't think panpsychism is correct.

Having said all this and explained (or failed to explain) his views as best I could, feel free to attack the view as much as you wish. I don't want to block anything, I just tried to state his views.

EDIT: I forgot to add, this version of his panpsychism comes from his two most cited works I believe, Realistic Monism and Consciousness and Its Place in Nature.

He goes on to expand and elaborate his views, later on, in a manner I can't defend, because I don't understand it and because what I read seems way off the mark to me. So I'm only presenting what I think I understand. Just so you know.

It's fun, y'know? You just have to keep two bookmarks. — thewonder

Maybe I'll try again some other time. I've changed my tastes a bit. So it could click this time around.

They believe that their existential status has been called into question. It's their very way of life that they believe to be at stake. If anyone is serious about bringing an end to the war, they will have to take that into consideration. We need Kanye West to bring us there, though. That's what I'm saying about the Postmodern condition. — thewonder

And if the US war machine is coming after you with fury, it makes sense to think that. But now they're still in power, so the war just meant mass death with nothing positive happening. Like almost all wars.

Maybe a very select few would - somehow - react to Kayne in such a way that they rethink US foreign policy. Maybe his lyrics help soldiers or something.

But beyond these very tenuous connections, I don't see how this helps us understand the Afghan war. Unless one is only focusing on the media spectacle side.

Maybe you can expand on this last point a bit, see If I can make more sense of it.

That's an interesting take on Wallace. Again, going back to D.T Max, he was asked at one point, I think it was in an interview, about one scene in Wallace's article on the cruise ship. Wallace was looking at the ocean and he was saying that the ocean was vast, dark and empty. Don't quote me strictly on that. But I believe he said something to that effect.

Max asks, was that Wallace simply describing what the ocean felt like to him or was that his depression talking? I don't know. What you say about Wallace constantly tormenting himself reminds me of that.

And I think this is true. It's hard to explain Wallace better than he explains himself, but I think one can say that his acute and amazing powers of observation and detail must have applied to everything, not only his short stories or his books, but to himself too. It's the price he had to pay for the gift he had.

Nevertheless, I still think sincerity is sincerity and that can be used in a perverse manner too. But by now, given how much literature has expanded, it's just extremely hard to come up with something new to say something tried and true in an original manner. So it's said "naively" as it were, and can come off as cliched. Too bad, but, then again, this is person-dependant. What I find to be just cheesy sentimentalism, others find profound. And what I find deep others find verbose or obscurantist. Oh well.



I got to page 450 of Infinite Jest and just lost interest. It did not grip me like his other stuff. And I do believe Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon by Pynchon to be quite harder to read than IJ. It's just a matter of taste. I loved his other stuff, not his novel. The endnotes did it for me, it made reading way too slow.

On the other hand, these very same techniques in his essays and short stories are a true pleasure. And some will like all of it some parts of it and some don't like Wallace. Just like some hate Pynchon. It's all fair.

What I do think is that Wallace was unique in being able to express himself with such precision that is almost unmatched. He could easily form sentences and paragraphs around ideas that would take other writers entire books to try and elucidate.

I think his critique of pomo in literature is completely legitimate. And a serious problem for writers thinking about creating a "new style" or genre. But in real life you can get stuck in the images and the "narratives" while setting aside power structures. In a way, it's like wrestling with authority on authority's terms. So you can take the Iraq war and just treat it like a TV spectacle and you analyze that. But then you don't mention the millions of civilians which were killed. And that's a problem, if this is overlooked.

Not saying it to you specifically, just speaking in general terms.

Having said this, he could very much describe the "water", which we take for granted, such as being in a luxury cruise and being amazed at how comfortable he was in his room, with all the luxuries given but then describing how in like a day or two, he was upset his waiter brought his room service 10 minutes late. Or him pointing out that we take a sunny day as any other, don't even bother to think about it. But if we knew it was our last day on Earth, how much we would appreciate every little detail.

In the end, it really is about being aware. Which is easy to say and so hard to do all the time.

Yes, see, before making families homeless and destroying all their worldly posessions, Israeli terrorists let them know that that's what's about to happen before hand. So it's all good. — StreetlightX

What, you wouldn't want to know if your house was going to be destroyed? At least you get to live.

That's honorable. . .

I very much like DFW. I could finish all of Pynchon's hard novels, couldn't finish Infinite Jest. :lol:

But his short fiction and especially his non-fiction are second to none. I've still to read that article, but I recall some aspects of Wallace's comments on pomo literature.

I guess I have to agree with Wallace's biographer D.T. Max, when he says that he doesn't really understand the idea of an "ironic turn on irony", or words to that effect. I think Wallace was trying to explain sincerity in a meaningful way and focused too much on how the mainstream commodified cynicism. Sure, that happens.

But you still get rebels, frequently. Look at Assange or Snowden. Look at the George Floyd protests and etc. If I don't remember incorrectly, Wallace predicted things like Skype and Zoom. But he thought people would end up wearing masks for fear that the other person looking at you would think you were being insincere if you looked away while talking.

I think he took these ideas too far, even if the way he expresses this is unique.

And now we have people analyzing all the phenomena Wallace could not have predicted: smart phones, talking about Q, etc.

So yes, I think at times of Wallace's articles. I think they're spectacular. But he risks excess in the claims he makes, even if they're largely correct.

Yes, Israel sometimes sends paper saying your house is going to be destroyed.

Very humanitarian. :roll:

For him, everything that exists, everything is physical. But he concludes by saying he is not bothered much by what labels he uses for himself, in this respect he is also happy calling himself a ?-ist.

The main point in this is simply to say that there is only one kind of stuff in the world: physical stuff. Or call it "immaterial stuff" or "natural stuff."

Idealism even, would not bother him. His only caveat with this is that if idealism is conceived as "consisting of ideas" and so everything is made of ideas, then there must be someone who is having the ideas.

Neutral monism, as he understands, is the view that the world is neither mental nor physical as we currently understand these terms. But he think it isn't true because in having experience, we are acquainted with - we know - certain fundamental aspects of reality in merely having experience. And since for him, experience is a physical phenomena, then neutral monism would be misleading, because we are not completely ignorant about the nature of the world, by virtue of being conscious.

The basic idea is to reject metaphysical dualism.

His "physical" has nothing to do with Dennett's ideas by the way. They're kind of the opposite.

"A common objection today is that such ideas invoke an unacceptable form of "radical emergence," unlike the emergence of liquids from molecules, where the properties of the liquid can in some reasonable sense be regarded as inhering in the molecules. In Nagel's phrase, "we can see how liquidity is the logical result of the molecules 'rolling around on each other' at the microscopic level," though "nothing comparable is to be expected in the case of neurons" and consciousness. Also taking liquidity as a paradigm, Strawson argues extensively that the notion of emergence is intelligible only if we interpret it as "total dependence": if "some part or aspect of Y [hails] from somewhere else," then we cannot say that Y is "emergent from X." We can speak intelligibly about emergence of Y-phenomena from non-Y-phenomena only if the non-Y-phenomena at the very least are "somehow intrinsically suited to constituting" the X-phenomena; there must be ''something about X's nature in virtue of which" they are "so suited."....

...It should be noted that the molecule· liquid example, commonly used, is not a very telling one. We also cannot conceive of a liquid turning into two gases by electrolysis, and there is no intuitive sense in which the properties of water, bases, and acids inhere in hydrogen or oxygen or other atoms."

Strawson considers liquidity to be weak emergence, as do most other philosophers, I believe.

Chomsky is the exception. Probably McGinn too, but I am unsure.

The idea would be that there has to something about physical stuff that is inherently suited to give rise to consciousness in certain modified states.

If there is nothing about physical stuff that could possibly give rise to experience, then experience would be a miracle. That is, nothing about the nature of the physical could possibly lead to experience, hence in having experience as we have it, is completely inexplicable even to God - if such a being existed.

On this view, there would be no reason, or law, or tendency that could account for something emerging radically.

The example I've been talking about is consciousness, but it can apply to any emergent thing.

Of course, there are several ways to develop this argument. One option would be that there must be something about matter that is inherently suited to give rise to experience, but we have no idea what that something could be and we quite possibly may never be able to understand it. This view is held by Chomsky, for example.

Good to see Gantz being a great humanitarian:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-gantz-non-humanitarian-aid-to-gaza-depends-on-return-of-israeli-soldiers-bodies-1.9836555

:roll:

there'd be no reason to suppose it resident potentially but not actualized — Bartricks

Fine.

I'm trying not to defend his views, but to articulate as best I can.

Sometimes I agree with him, so it's hard to keep it in check. In any case, that's his main argument.

I can only assume that you think Strawson is not committed to attributing conscious states to everything. Okay. Why not? — Bartricks

Because consciousness only arises in quite specific circumstances, such as the configuration of brains found in human beings. And other creatures too, which we think are conscious: dogs, horses, etc.

In a table, matter is not so configured so as to lead to experience. Nor is it configured in this manner in rocks, rivers, dirt and so forth.

Again, consciousness can't emerge - Strawson doesn't think so. So it is not - not - like liquidity.

So consciousness must be present - fully present - in the building blocks. If it is not fully present in the building blocks, then we have something coming out that wasn't put it. — Bartricks

Strawson didn't say consciousness can't emerge, he says that it does. Rather he states that consciousness cannot radically emerge: there has to be something about matter that, when combined in a certain way leads to experience. Like you said, it's hard to make sense of the idea of experience arising out of a combination of non-conscious stuff.

Experience is a property of organized matter, so is liquidity. Both liquidity and experience are inherent in matter, they can emerge given certain specific configurations. There is something about matter that when so configured, we get experience or liquidity.

But if matter does not organize in this specific way, we won't get experience, even if the property of experience is already in matter. That his panpsychism in a nutshell.

I lack the capacity to communicate this to you, despite repeatedly trying my best.

So, I think this is as far as we'll go.

Wait, you asked me if I though liquidity was emergent. I said yes. In fact, I go so far as to say that it is radically emergent, that is, there is no conceivable way (to us) to understand how it could be that apparently non-liquid molecules could combine to create liquidity.

Strawson on the other hand, thinks these phenomena are emergent, but not radically so. On this "soft emergent" view, liquidity, experience and everything else arise out of the specific combination of physical stuff.

There is a reason as to why this is so, according to him: he says it doesn't make sense to think that experience could arise from something completely and utterly non-experiential, as matter appears to be, because it would be a miracle to have experience if at bottom physical stuff does not poses properties that can give rise to experience. So physical stuff must contain, among its properties, experiential stuff - potential for experience.

So to avoid radical emergence, he postulates that experience and everything else, is already inherent in the base stuff of reality.

The last three paragraphs are his view, not mine.

I entirely agree.

Note too that as a general rule the mention of quantum mechanics in a philosophical discussion is an admission of defeat. — Bartricks

In materialism? Really? To say that quantum mechanics is the study of physical stuff is an admission of defeat? That's surprising.

Now, liquidity - you haven't answered my questions about it. What is liquidity and is it an emergent property or not? — Bartricks

Liquidity is defined as "the state in which a substance exhibits a characteristic readiness to flow with little or no tendency to disperse and relatively high incompressibility."

It is an emergent property, of course.

Yeah, sure.

But then what happens when one chosen person is instructed by God to say, kill another chosen person and yet this latter one is instructed by God to save a child?

Unless we multiply God per person, then the same God would be telling X to kill Y, and God is also commanding Y to save a child. Yet the child can't be saved if Y is killed.

We face the typical dilema of God giving two orders simultaneously which are contradictory. Unless God's notion of morality differs radically from ours, such a situation is hard to reconcile with our innate ethical faculties.

I don't have a clue what a quantum field is. But the concept of materialism predates any such notion. — Bartricks

Then you are working with an outdated notion of materialism. I mean, you can use it if you like. It has no relevance to what's happening now because the notion of materialism used by Descartes was directly based on the science of his day. That science is now outdated.

I don't understand what you said about Descartes. He made several arguments for the immateriality of the mind. They're good arguments. — Bartricks

Yes he argued that the mind cannot be explained by mechanistic means, among other arguments. And he's right about that to this day.

Based on what I've seen thanks to you and YuYuHunter, I can't wait for the translation.

Mostly his epistemic/metaphysical stuff. His pessimism is a bit too strong for me. :grimace:

Descartes did not just arbitrarily believe that minds were not material mechanisms, he argued that they are not — Bartricks

Yes, correct. He based that in large part to the creative aspect of language use.

I'm offering Chomsky's version of events. Which I've found to be accurate based on historical and original sources.

Materialists believe there are objects extended in space. That's a good working definition. — Bartricks

Well if you call quantum fields extended, okay.

Descartes' arguments have not been refuted and if he were alive today he would still be a dualist and would join me in deriding the stupidity and dogmatism of those who think the mind is material. He didn't suffer fools gladly and he'd have torn Strawson a new one. — Bartricks

Ah, ok then. :up:

There is no reason to think materialism about the mind is true. When faith in a view is widespread, many mistake that for evidence or think that there must be an evidential base for it. But there is no evidential base for materialism about the mind. I have asked to be shown evidence for it time and time again, and in 10 years of asking, no one has provided me with any, just fallacious arguments that won't withstand a moment's reflection. — Bartricks

At bottom, this is mostly a terminological dispute, not so much of substance. I think that's important to point out. Panpsychism aside, Strawson's materialism claims that everything is physical, whatever the nature of the physical may be.

But if you don't like the term, you can say that everything is immaterial or you could adopt neutral monism. I would even say idealism here too, with the caveat that I don't think that everything is made of ideas, nor is everything in the world the product of a person.

Materialism used to have a distinct meaning and could be counterposed to other views. When it had a intelligible meaning was back in the time of Descartes and Hobbes. When materialism essentially meant mechanistic materialist: the world is a giant machine, like a massive clock. But it didn't reach the domain of mind. Hence Descartes' dualism.

That all fell apart when Newton discovered gravity and proved mechanistic materialism to be false: the world does not work like a clock, there is action at a distance with no direct contact. But with that we lost an intelligible notion of "body". So metaphysical dualism collapsed.

Consider shape. We cannot get shape from that which is not shaped. Molecules have a shape as much as the objects they compose. They do not have to have the same shape, but they have a shape. Likewise for conscious states. Consciousness cannot emerge from that which is not conscious. — Bartricks

Yes. That's the intuition. And what Strawson tries to avoid by articulating panpsychism, he wants to avoid "radical emergence" as described in your own words.

I think radical emergence exists, it's what happens in nature. We do get shapes from that which lack shape and we do get consciousness out of non-conscious things, just as we get water from molecules that give no indication at all that they have such properties.

People today call that magic. It was more or less accepted as a brute fact back in 17th and 18th centuries.

conscious states - not something else - must be fully present in molecules — Bartricks

As a property, like electricity or gravity or liquidity, which is inherent in matter. This does not mean that this property is realized in ordinary objects, any more than liquidity is realized in tables. It's the same stuff at bottom, but only different configurations of matter lead to liquidity, which is also not found in tables.

So Strawson must, onpain of inconsistency, insist that everything has conscious states. Not something 'like'consciuos states, but the real deal. Thus my wardrobe is conscious. My hand is. My ear is. A speck of dust is. Properly conscious. — Bartricks

I've stressed the point several times. I don't know how to express myself more clearly. I'll say it one more time: Strawson is not saying that a table is conscious, nor is a wardrobe. He never says that. What he says is that the stuff tables and wardrobes are made of consists of matter than has in it the capacity to become conscious when configured in a certain manner as in the case of brains.

Again, think of liquidity. It's not found in wardrobes, but it can arise when configured in a specific manner. We don't therefore say that tables and wardrobes are wet.

This does not imply what you keep saying, namely that ordinary objects are conscious. They are not, nor does Strawson ever claim that at all.

I don't think that formulation captures what Strawson in saying, because if we say that a table is conscious, we would associate it with our own intuitions of consciousness which would make this view completely insane. And whatever one may think of Strawson, he's not insane. Is he wrong? Perhaps, I think he's wrong in some sense, sure.

It would be more accurate to say that Strawson thinks that tables, rocks, pianos, etc., are made of the kind of stuff that, when modified in a specific manner constitute consciousness. But the property of experience is already in the stuff which makes everything up. As would be the case with every other emergent property of nature, once we "go up" from fields or strings or whatever is at the bottom of things.

If one remains a materialist despite being driven to these lengths, then I think one has discovered that one's materialism is a faith. — Bartricks

Yes. This is true. But as he points out, any metaphysical view is tied to some kind of faith, because we have no way to test these views. We can only depend on reasons and what sounds likely or intuitive to us.

Fair enough.

I lost some of the focus of thread, which was presenting Strawson's argument.

Unless God's command conflicts with the rights of other people. Then it's not so clear this argument from authority is valid.

Yes. It is mysterious and such radical emergence is usually ridiculed by many modern philosophers. They refer to it as "magical emergence". It was taken for granted in the scientific revolution. But for whatever reason, today some people don't like the idea that some aspects of nature simply don't make sense to us.

Yes, I am the same — spirit-salamander

:clap:

Hey man you've done some amazing work on that thread really really good stuff. It's been very helpful and interesting. Many thanks. :)

But an experience is a conscious state - to be experiencing something is to be in a state of consciousness — Bartricks

Yes.

But the claim Strawson makes is that phenomena are experience-involving or experience-realizing. This means that the phenomena we interact with realize or involve our experience. An aspect of the object reacts to experience. If they did not, then his panpsychism would fall apart on that alone.

Rational intuitions are our source of insight into what's what. There's nothing else to appeal to. All of our rational intuitions tell us minds are immaterial, not material. — Bartricks

Consciousness arises through complex interactions in the brain. The brain is molded matter. Why would this thing consciousness coming out of brains not be physical too? We'd have an interaction problem - substance dualism - that we can do without.

This imples that physical stuff is much more than what we intuit.

So, my reason is telling me, then, that my mind is not in the business of having properties such as shape, smell, taste, texture. Not, in other words, a material object. — Bartricks

Why aren't tastes, smells, textures and so forth physical things? Why not? Tastes from the tongue, smells from the nose, etc.

I think the problem here is the very common association of materialism with whatever physics says. Or eliminitavism. There's no reason to believe in eliminitavism, or at least, no good reason.

They'd surely need to be in order to avoid having to posit a new emergent property of consciousness? — Bartricks

What's at bottom are the ultimates, which involve or realize experience. When these ultimates organize in a certain way, then you get consciousness as you or I would recognize, arising from brains, in a manner that is quite obscure. So for Strawson, you don't need anything else, everything is a configuration of physical stuff. Thus he avoids the emergence problem, it was there all along, just not yet configured in a proper manner.

Just as you can't get something shaped from combining elements none of which have any shape, so too you can't get consciousness by combining that which is not conscious - that's his case, I take it? — Bartricks

That's the idea. It is commonly thought that matter cannot possibly have those properties which we associate with consciousness, such that non experience-involving matter could ever combine to create experience. That's the no-radical emergence thesis.

But for Strawson stuff involves experience at bottom. If this is true, then combining matter in a proper way brings forth consciousness quite naturally.

My mind appears to be nothing remotely like a material object. Everything - but everything - our reason tells us about our minds conflicts with the materialist thesis. — Bartricks

And yet, as Chomsky points out in his very insightful essay The Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden?, this intuition is false. He quotes Joseph Priestley who "culminated" Locke's reflection on thought and matter, as when Locke considers that God could proceed "supperadding" thought to matter.

Priestley says:

"It is said that we can have no conception how sensation or thought can arise from matter, they being things so very different from it, and bearing no sort of resemblance to anything like figure or motion; which is all that can result from any modification of matter, or any operation upon it.…this is an argument which derives all its force from our ignorance. Different as are the properties of sensation and thought, from such as are usually ascribed to matter, they may, nevertheless, inhere in the same substance, unless we can shew them to be absolutely incompatible with one another.”... this argument, from our not being able to conceive how a thing can be, equally affects the immaterial system: for we have no more conception how the powers of sensation and thought can inhere in an immaterial, than in a material substance..."'

for panpsychism is manifestly false. — Bartricks

I also think it's false, but would state my view less strongly. I take radical emergence for granted, as Chomsky does too.

So if materialism is true, then everything must be conscious if anything is?

What possible reason is there to be a materialist given it has such absurd implications? It's perverse. No evidence it is true and plenty that it is false. — Bartricks

According to Strawson's materialism, it does not follow that things need to be conscious. What follows is that the phenomena we interact with in the world are experience realizing or experience involving. In other words objects have those properties which must interact with experience. This does not mean that objects themselves are conscious.

His panpsychist position is such that he thinks that what he calls "ultimates", whatever they may be - quantum fields or even strings - also realize or involve experience. There is no evidence for his view. But there is no evidence against it.



As to the rest of your reply, no. These aren't conscious states. But every time you move an arm or look at a table or anything else, you interact with these things through experience so the objects and your body are intrinsically suited to interact with it.

Mind you, that's his position. Not mine.

You can accept his "real materialism" while rejecting his "realistic monism". The latter includes panpsychism. The former doesn't.

But then again, you may reject both.

As usual in these types of discussions :100:



Yes, this phrase "nothing but" reminds me of another one, quite similar, as is the case when someone says something like colours are just waves of light, emotions are just chemicals. By saying these words, it's clear that hard problems are put to the side.

So take your example

Reality is nothing but appearances — Janus

What is an appearance? Is the questioner implying that this person suffering because of some famine or some war is an appearance? Well that seems to take a lot away from what I'm experiencing. And likewise with selves being social constructions. Yeah, probably they are constructions, but we don't treat them as we would characters in a novel...

It's easy to say, but big problems remain with all of them by using "nothing but" or "just".

This is my area of expertise.

Strawson uses physicalism and materialism interchangeably. The point for him is that his materialism says that the nature of reality is physical, whatever its nature may ultimately be. As for the panpsychism, he thinks that materialists have to consider it a real possibility, on pains that if you reject such a view, you are committed to the view that there is "radical" or "brute" emergence in nature, meaning some wholly new property arises which was not at all apparent in its constituent parts.

But he used to not be a panpsychist, although he always respected this perspective. He would've called himself "an experiential-and-non-experiential monist".

But in all his phases, Strawson has never doubted that experience is the most obvious and certain thing we are acquainted with.

EDIT: I forgot to ask are you the same spirit-salamander from Mainländer's reddit page?

I believe this was the case for the Taba negotiations. Namely commit to resolution 242, with some modifications and land exchange. This meant that Israeli's got to keep some land not stipulated in 242 and Palestine would do the same. But the land swap would've been moderate.

This would still be the case for a reasonable resolution of the conflict for the short to medium term. But it's more than enough to work on. Israel has gone very much to the right since 2000 more or less. Yes Hamas beat the PLO in Gaza by very little, but they won. I don't know if there's something to the right of Hamas in Gaza. Maybe.

But it wouldn't really make a difference because the situation on the ground in Gaza is dire. So even if they wanted sophisticated missiles, they can't get them. Nor should they seek them either, don't get me wrong.

So, in short, yes. Moderates or at least a compromise towards moderation is the only way.

Sure. Makes sense.

even Kant’s: seemings. — Mww

What is the problem with seemings in Kant? I've read some of him, but I don't recall thinking to myself that this was a problem for his philosophy, unless his thought is confused with Berkeley's

Aren't seemings simultaneously given and (partially or in some important aspects) a priori? I have to continue reading C.I. Lewis on this topic, it's interesting...

Smaller units of stuff implies empirical reductionism, right? For that reason, I stipulated metaphysical reductionism, which pertains to ever smaller units of conception. Prime example......A = A. The logical laws. In Aristotle and Kant, among others perhaps, there are also the categories. Gotta start somewhere and the irreducible offers the least possibility for contradiction. — Mww

Yes. That's the kind that is fashionable nowadays, the empirical one: Dennett, Churchland(s) and (heaven forbid this lunacy) Rosenberg. The latter literally believes "there is nothing but fermions and bosons"... :roll:

He also rejects free will, so there’s two strikes. — Mww

He does. But it's one of those debates that don't seem fruitful to me. I mean, I think it exists but if others deny it, whatever.

But I understand others who find it interesting. That's the nature of philosophy.

It isn't a tautology: moral acts are obligatory because god commands them. However, that doesn't mean that god commands moral acts because they are moral. Those are two very different things. — ToothyMaw

But I'm assuming that people believe that the commands given by God are moral, because they are given by God. He wouldn't command me to do something immoral, surely? I suppose it depends on which religion you have in mind.

There's the whole Abraham and Isaac story I know.

How is it not crystal clear? God commands it, it is right, we should do it. I'm not saying divine command theory is infallible, but it makes ethics very simple. — ToothyMaw

Let me put aside religion just for this paragraph, then I'll put it back in. Why do something moral? Do we know? I often can't give better reasons than asking "how would you feel if X is done to you"? Where X stands in for theft, murder of a friend, etc. But this doesn't seem to me to go deep into morality.

Now back to religion. God commands something, it is right because He says it is right. Why is it right? Because God says so. This seems to me to be equivalent of asking but what's wrong with I did and a police officer replying "it's the law". Yeah, fine. I don't think that's a good reason, much less an argument.

I don't think in either case morality is clear, as in us understanding why we should be moral.

But I may be interpreting this completely wrong, so, I'm not chained to this interpretation.

Metaphysical reductionism asks, nonetheless.....if a thing is true why merely believe it, and, if a mere belief, on what ground can it be true, this first brought to light, of course, by the Socratic dialogues and dialectical arguments in general. Usually partaken by those with nothing better to do. (Grin) — Mww

Sure. But that path of reductionism just leads to ever smaller relations of units of stuff. If that provides a satisfactory answer to those that use such methods, well good for them. It doesn't seem like a very coherent idea to doubt the given in such a manner that it is eventually denied. But what's the basis for the denial if not the given itself? But then there's no reason to trust anything, it seems to me. That's problematic.

As Galen Strawson points out, by quoting Democritus:

"The Intellect speaks first: There seems to be colour, there seems to be sweetness, there seems to be bitterness. But really there are only atoms and the void. But then The Senses reply: Poor Intellect, do you hope to defeat us while from us you borrow your evidence? Your victory is your defeat."

Having nothing better to do can be entertaining, at the very least. :grimace:

those things can indeed be morally obligatory just because he says so. — ToothyMaw

Sure. But it doesn't offer an explanation which isn't tautological as to why you should or should not do X, Y or Z.

Thus, morality is clear as day in the context of religion - even if the principles imparted by god are arbitrary. — ToothyMaw

It may appear clear. Doesn't mean it is. Even in a secular standpoint I does not seem to me that morality is clear in the sense of giving justifications for not doing or doing certain things.

Or that's how it looks like to me.

Their idea of moral behavior (as far as verbal and bodily actions go) is still the one as first modeled by religion. — baker

Maybe. When we first managed to articulate our thoughts many things, if not all things were caused by different kinds of gods. It provides some kind of explanation as to why the world act as it does, including ourselves as well. But calling this religion might be misleading, in that today religion is associated with specific traditions and are rarely used to justify events and behavior in the world.

We could also call it "folk science" or "protoscience" or "folk psychology".

I'm not asking whether morality can be justified without religion. I'm asking whence the idea that it can or should be. Is this just rebellion against religion, or is there something else to it? — baker

Sure. Nowadays it's less rare for many people not to refer to a God or Gods for moral acts. So the idea can be articulated somewhat, without religion. Not that religion makes morality more clear. Just because a deity announces a moral principle to be valid does not make the moral principle itself more important or better stated.

Sure!

I like Kant. But compared to you, I wouldn't dare provide even a bare bones description of what I think he's articulating. I'd be massively embarrassed in mere seconds. So I'll stick to Schopenhauer, Chomsky and what I believe to be true based on things I've read and thought about myself, which can be called roughly "Kantian".

So yes, I think you are correct in this topic. And I think such a philosophy shouldn't even be controversial in general, it should be obvious. But, if it were, we wouldn't be arguing philosophy. And that's not realistic. :wink:

Ok?

If I were a dog, I wouldn't be able to write dogs don't have language.

They seem to lack a science forming faculty as well. But maybe they're hiding the secrets to a unified ToE.