Comments

  • Beyond the Pale
    There are different legitimate (in my opinion) reasons for not entering into discussion with an individual. The first would be what you have described as "moral" disagreement (the Nazi example). However, to my mind the reason to not engage is solely to not give the individual a platform to broadcast to other third persons, I don't actually mind discussion with those with whom I disagree, even greatly disagree with. Thus it is to deprive the reprehensible ideas of "oxygen" by not engaging. However, if the discussion was not viewed by third parties, then as I mentioned, I don't mind conversing.

    The second reason not to engage, is when the other party doesn't abide by logic and/or truthfulness. Since productive discussion is futile and since your opposition isn't confined to the truth, your ideas will be viewed by third parties as erroneous or incorrect inappropriately.
  • Infinite Punishment for Finite Sins
    Forget eternal damnation, I'm not seeing the logic in gods punishing humans at all.
  • If there is a god then he surely isnt all merciful and all loving like islam and Christianity claim
    Yes, that's the main logical inconsistency with monotheism, just as omnipotence is the problem with polytheism.
  • Are moral systems always futile?
    To me the OP is a bit of a false conundrum. The idea of formally codifying the principles and issues involved in (an individual) making moral choices is reasonable and beneficial. Not because doing so leads to prospective derivation of moral decisions (which the OP criticizes and I agree with this criticism), rather that once the particular circumstances and details of a situation are known, those principles can be used to arrive at the optimal outcome.

    Just like codifying to law (in general) doesn't remove the need for trials for specific cases.
  • The case against suicide

    Feel free to comment on the mundane.
  • The case against suicide
    Not a bad summary... of the very lowest hanging fruit. What of the high schooler who kills himself because his girlfriend drops him?
  • The case against suicide

    A thoughtful and reasonable take on a difficult topic. I agree that folks are free to make the best decision for their particular circumstances. I also agree that such an important and especially permanent decision should be made with the utmost care and consideration. The fact that most make the decision relatively spontaneously is a tragedy.

    I advised folks professionally who sought to make permanent decisions in situations where experience has shown that those in their demographic who chose to proceed later expressed regret at their decision in high numbers. Obviously I had a professional obligation to point out and underscore this statistic, but ultimately as these were adults, I assisted them should they choose, in spite of this knowledge, to go ahead. I did so with a clear conscience. Though most in my profession refused.
  • Quran Burning and Stabbing in London
    Sounds like London-ish thing to say, I suppose

    Could you go into more detail on your reference?
  • Quran Burning and Stabbing in London
    I'm not an expert in Muslim thought, but I'm guessing you're correct.
  • Quran Burning and Stabbing in London

    Well it's not the fault of the mugging victim who walks through a dangerous part of town at 3 in the morning, yet simultaneously it is a reckless thing to do.
  • Quran Burning and Stabbing in London

    Well the burner is definitely seeking to offend and provoke a reaction. Sometimes you receive more than you're prepared for.
  • Quran Burning and Stabbing in London
    Substitue American flag for Quran and Arkansas for London and post back.
  • Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made?
    I agree. How would I know with 100% certainty if they are determined or not


    There are two ways, both impractical to (currently) impossible. First one could predict with 100% accuracy, outcomes from detailed knowledge of the brainstate before the "decision" was made or second, if you could set up more than one example of identical brainstates then demonstrate that they always make the same "decision".

    However, in my opinion, there are too many examples of "close enough" scenarios of the second situation resulting in wildly different outcomes to personally believe in Determinism.
  • Supercomputers, pros and cons
    Good luck getting surgery from a supercomputer.
  • How do you know the Earth is round?
    Listening for the flat earthers declaring where the edge of the flat surface is located, yet hearing silence.
  • Why Philosophy?
    In my experience, those who are interested in Philosophy are not identical in personality type to those drawn to ethics (and perhaps morality).
  • When Protest Isn't Enough
    at what point, if at all, do you find it morally acceptable to take physical action against government/authority and what does that look like?


    That's "easy". When there is more overall benefit (to society, in my way of thinking), than there is harm to society. One could, of course, concoct an implausible example to make the point (folks commonly invoke Nazi Germany), but to my estimation realistic examples of justified "physical action", in the Modern West would be exceedingly uncommon.
  • War: How May the Idea, its Causes, and Underlying Philosophies be Understood?
    In the context of inner VS outer war, to my mind diplomacy (as opposed to war) is merely a non violent war, not an alternative to war. Say, the Cold War.

    Conflict, due to opposing interests, is inevitable. Whether this conflict is resolved through war, espionage or diplomacy is merely a difference of style.
  • The case against suicide
    Not avoiding the OP. The OP makes the error of implying that death is something that individuals can opt for or against. Everyone knows death is inevitable, only the timing of it is changeable.

    The reality is we're all going to spend the vast majority of eternity as not alive, the only difference is the length of the tiny fraction of eternity being alive.

    As to my statistical analysis, as it happens this topic of suicide is unusual in that there is a ton of experience of prior suicidal individuals who fail at their attempt and whether their personal viewpoint at the darkest moment of their life (by definition), ended up being an accurate analysis and prediction of their personal future. This analysis is an opportunity to glimpse into the future. Ignore this opportunity at your own risk.
  • The role of the book in learning ...and in general
    I've definitely increased this last 10 years compared to the previous 20. But I'm including audiobooks in my tally.
  • The case against suicide
    Which you're free to do. Though I'm wondering if you impose your "know nothing" logic to all facets of your decision making.
  • The case against suicide
    You keep making a rebuttal to an argument I'm not making. I never said anyone KNOWS a suicidal person's grief is temporary, I'm saying there is a 70% chance it won't be at a suicide inducing level in the future.
  • Identity
    It seems to me that all of the listed "identities" are subjective, so while they exist, they're incredibly fluid.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    The concept of "false" (as pertains to the "real" part of reality) only has meaning in the presence of "truth". Thus if you conclude there is no truth, reality falls apart, from your perspective.
  • Is factiality real? (On the Nature of Factual Properties)
    I am not a theoretical physicist, but my understanding is that there is no "past" to travel to. That is, the concept of continuous time is an inaccurate lay person model.
  • Behavior and being
    The purpose of creating a model duck within the model farmyard is to analyze the interaction between the duck and other entities within the farmyard. Not to analyze the duck itself. If analysis of an individual in isolation is one's goal, you use a real duck, ie there is no role for a model.
  • Is factiality real? (On the Nature of Factual Properties)
    Time travel is definitely possible, but only to the future, not the past.
  • What is the (true) meaning of beauty?
    "Can a..."? Sure. That's the thing with subjective descriptors, they can mean whatever an observer chooses them to mean. Someone, somewhere I'm sure believes beauty to mean any conceivable definition you could possibly come up with.
  • The case against suicide
    One could argue that jumping away from a lethal fire is reasonable, even desirable. The fact that the jump happens to be from a tall building, is secondary. Thus the action may not fulfill the definition (in spirit if not the letter) of "suicide", for many.
  • The case against suicide
    Yup, same thing. I don't "know" the store is still standing until I arrive there (which is some time in the future from when I set out from my home), you don't "know" your grief is temporary until it passes at some time in the future. Not difficult to grasp.
  • The case against suicide
    Just so you know, retrospective knowledge (what you call "hindsight"), is in fact knowledge. And as knowledge, is extremely valuable ("valid") to normal people (including yourself). When I hop in my car and drive to the store, do I "know" that the store is still there? No I don't "know" that, but I know it was there yesterday and that I haven't heard that some sort of incident occurred overnight.

    You seem to be wedded intellectually to the concept of prospective knowledge (knowing what's going to happen, before it does). Since that's your thing, can you please give some examples of knowing what's going to happen before it does?
  • The case against suicide
    You don’t know the future so you can’t say it’s a temporary problem.


    Several things.

    First, I said it's usually temporary, not always temporary.

    Second, while "some people" never get over their girlfriend's breaking up with them, wouldn't a normal person be interested in knowing that historically that number of "some people" is way less than 5%?

    Lastly you can magically say it's NOT temporary (or permanent) as if you know the future. Not logical.
  • Emotional distress and its justified/rational relationship to disconnected moral injustices.
    But it might make one a better moral agent to experience the emotions very strongly at least some of the time


    I don't disagree. I used to advise trainees that while it is good to learn from one's own mistakes, it's much better to learn from other's mistakes since 1) you don't have to make them yourself and 2) there are many more opportunities for "learning" thst way.
  • Emotional distress and its justified/rational relationship to disconnected moral injustices.
    Back when human emotions were invented, moral outrages occurred with an individual's community, thus there was evolutionary pressure to possess moral outrage since one could (should) translate such outrage into action within one's community. In the Modern era, the vast majority of examples of moral outrage are learned about through media and occur in distant locales where the individual has essentially no ability to directly influence this occurrence. Thus since moral outrage carries negative personal health implications, the prudent course of action is to make note of the moral outrage but resist the natural (archaic) impulse to react viscerally to the moral transgression, rather make note of it intellectually and bring that knowledge to bear in the infrequent circumstances where one can somehow influence the situation in question.
  • The Face Of Reality is The Face Of God
    Like any subjective entity, in this case intersubjective, gods carry whichever attributes and qualities an observer chooses to imbue them with. Which is fine but makes arguing between observers essentially meaningless.
  • The case against suicide
    So, if I'm stressed out enough by my girlfriend dumping me to consider suicide, the feeling that I'll be this stressed out for the rest of my life according to you is: "valid", but the advice that the Suicide Prevention Hotline person tells me that I'll likely get over it (and her) is: "hindsight" and therefore : "invalid"?

    Okay dude, you be you.
  • The case against suicide

    I never said nor implied that the REASON an individual contemplates suicide is always temporary (though you agreed that sometimes it is, say when it's situational). No, I meant that the conclusion after weighing of reasons to continue living vs dying concluding that suicide is the overall best course of action, is temporary. Sure, the REASON, let's say PTSD from a terrible upbringing, continues. But the day before the equation shifted towards "life's not worth living overall", the individual had the same terrible childhood and the same PTSD as a result and the decision was: "life IS worth living". The following day, for some reason the conclusion is the opposite, BUT some time after that, it shifts back the majority of the time (70 - 93%). All the while you're correct, for many, the stressor itself is not temporary. And I never said nor implied that the fact of the temporary nature of this conclusion should be the basis of therapy, as I have no experience in that aspect of the subject.
  • The case against suicide

    You can call research and experience "hindsight", if you want to. And "knowing what's gonna happen" isn't the requirement to make life decisions, otherwise no one would decide anything.

    But seriously, we're in agreement that being in the state of mind to seriously contemplate suicide pretty much guarantees the individual is unlikely to be able to process counterintuitive data. Hence the need to broadcast what is known in general from past experience.
  • What is creativity?
    I was addressing alleybear's usage of the word in his previous posting, which seems to use the term in just the way you are apparently unfamiliar with.
  • The case against suicide
    It's only temporary in hindsight, so that statement is false


    Uummm... no. 1) the reasons for most suicides are temporary. 2) many lay persons don't realize that.

    It behooves all of us to make fact #1 more widely appreciated.