This is just begging the question. The question "what is the (morally) right thing to do?" is not a question which cannot be answered by science, it's...
Yes, just like there's a scientific answer to the question "will it rain tomorrow", but we can't know what it is. The fact that we can have a damn goo...
No. Did I at any point say that one could not have any desires or objectives without science telling you what they are first? If, for some disturbed r...
Yes. I'm a determinist (or at least a compatibilist), so I believe there exists a scientific reason why everyone does anything. Whether that reason is...
I don't really see how this position differs from any of the previous ones in any meaningful sense. If I were to say that drawing cards at random from...
Maybe the difference here, though a subtle one, is between an answer to the philosophical questions, and the answer. I could provide you with an answe...
Freedom to what? Freedom is not a thing one can advocate, one had to advocate the freedom to... (something). What is it you think capitalism advocates...
@"Michael" The conversation I'm having with Harry is about Ethical Naturalism specifically. This thread is about the pejorative use of the term 'Scien...
Because the family resemblance of decisions labelled 'moral' includes things which match the properties of the decision to tithe - namely in this case...
Actually it was Hans Jonas, not Lucy Allais, apologies, I tried to cite from memory, always a risky. Anyway, he doesn't reconcile it at all, he's pret...
Lucy Allais wrote a good piece about the problems of extending deontological ethics into the future and the past. Essentially, the person whose rights...
Yes, reading your response to Descartes, I think I see where you are going now, something like "for a capitalist, what should capitalism look like mor...
I'm sorry if I've offended you. I have been called just about every derogatory name under the sun in this thread just for asking the question about wh...
Absolutely. One day (soon I hope) we will look back at the way we treated children with the same baffled abhorrence as we now have for the way we trea...
Yes, I think so. I'm a little confused about exactly what you're aiming at here, but is it something like asking whether capitalism makes moral statem...
I'd say the primary problem is here. How do we account for the means of production in this rule? The means of production cannot become available throu...
I haven't said that (at least not deliberately). I said that tithing is a moral issue, the decision about whether to tithe is one of that group of dec...
It is as specified, the total death toll "from the imposition of colonial export crops", not the Indian famines alone, and it comes from calculations ...
Absolutely agree with you about the main points of contention. Personally I see them as indicators of a systemic failure that they do not seem to be r...
Well I'd be interested to hear if you come up with anything. Personally I think it's a crime at the heart of democracy and goes straight to the hypocr...
How so? I'm arguing that science can determine the answer to moral problems, not that science can decide what words we use to describe what type of th...
Putnam was arguing against Scientism, I wasn't defending his quote I was arguing that it was unfair of him to characterise the definition he gave in a...
The main cause of the famines listed by Ajit Ghose's study were the Raj's implementation of free-market pricing on corn which meant that as corn becam...
Just as one example, the Indian Famine of the late 19th Century, caused directly and with full knowledge by British colonial policy, killed 29 million...
I expect that's what he meant. He's a good physicist, but he's not a very good philosopher (in my opinion). I don't think he's got used to how careful...
Sorry. Tithing is a moral issue because it is an example of that class of decisions most people agree to label 'moral'. What I'm interested in as an e...
Did you not read the statistics I summarised? The largest loss of life by a huge margin caused by deliberate human activity was the advertising and co...
No, not quite. It's a philosophical position, but it does not follow that saying science can answer all the questions of philosophy requires me to sho...
Yes, I think that would be an interesting debate, but of course the first argument would be about the appropriate way to measure 'best' and you'd be l...
I just heard an interesting interview with Alex Rosenburg (professor of philosophy at Duke University) in which he says that he's decided to start acc...
"The decimation of Native Americans was a result of diseases accidentally brought from the Old World, they weren't murdered by Whitey." - gurugeorge "...
Indeed, but what stood out for me looking at the figures, was how the genocides were eclipsed by the famines. Simple inequalities of resource distribu...
Wikipedia (my favourite philosophy textbook apparently) has lists of mass killings from all sorts of anthropogenic causes, together with mean, lower a...
Have you not read @"gurugeorge"'s comments in the other JP thread (The politics of responsibility). Apparently early Americans didn't massacre the nat...
Yes, we may well differ at that point, but a relaxing change to have agreed with someone thus far. I do think that we can say with some certainty that...
Just to play devil's advocate, although I agree that saying most of tradition is superfluous will require quite some weight of evidence to convince me...
Yes, that's why I put that example in, for interest. By my belief, the same moral motivation would be at play in a society which hates gay people, as ...
My stats is definitely a bit rusty, but at 45 million with a confidence level of 95%, I think it comes to 600. Are you sure there's not been any non-r...
The probability of getting a non-random sequence of numbers should be very small (but non-zero) whereas the probability of getting a random sequence s...
To the extent that it can be ascertained at all, yes. Hypotheses can be formulated, based as much as possible on existing knowledge, and these can be ...
But this is obviously not just about facts. JP is not presenting a history lecture, he's making a political argument, so what matters is not the verac...
Sorry, I should have been clearer, the 'how' I was referring to was the one in the question title... how non-linguistic creature's minds work. What wo...
Then I think more work needs first to be done on what would constitute 'knowledge' in this respect, otherwise I think the debate will simply dissolve ...
I think the issue here can quite easily be expressed in terms of the Trolley Problem. I agree with T Clark, that our morals derive irrationally, but t...
No, I wouldn't want you to think that I thought that of you personally, I'm just arguing against the pejorative use of the term which seems to me to b...
I've raised this issue elsewhere recently, so I'm not sure if you will have encountered them, apologies for the repeat if you have, but surely we alre...
You might be interested in the work of Paul Bloom, who I think covers something of what you might be getting at. I agree with Wayfarer that it's a bit...
Yes, to be clear, I would make that claim, particularly in the fields of mind and ethics. Despite SLX's protestations that I explain every position I ...
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