It is a form of pleasure else people would not be inclined towards doing it; we do things that are pleasurable to us (in the widest possible sense). A...
On the comical side, and you may have heard of it already, but there is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyi...
If it was going to give someone everything you could possibly want then we can say only stupid people making the wrong decision would get not get in. ...
The empirical evidence is that all the galaxies are moving apart, space is inflating, which suggests everything was colocated once. Everything has a c...
If anyone refuses to get it, then it cannot be maximising their pleasure. For example, the machine would have to give the occupant the illusion that t...
Very little certainty. Most of everyday life is based on induction. We cross the road because we were not run down the last time. We eat healthy food ...
How would you class 'philosophically rigorous'? Is inductive knowledge classified as philosophically rigorous? Maybe it is classed as philosophically ...
But the pleasure machine cannot maximise pleasure because it cannot give me a role in society which I value above all. So the thought experiment is co...
Interesting. "Nozick provides us with three reasons not to plug into the machine. 1. We want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of...
I believe our sense of right and wrong come from the need to maximise pleasure and minimise pain both as individuals but more importantly, across a gr...
I don't think I encountered them. You have a link? I guess to make a perfect moral judgement, you must first be in possession of all the facts. So you...
I think its based on pain and pleasure: - Completely right is maximum pleasure and minimum pain for the individual and group. - Completely wrong is mi...
Doing the right thing takes willpower because the right thing is often painful in the short term. Exercise, eating healthy, helping others are example...
I think morality could evolve as your community or sense of community evolves. I already mentioned the example of vegetarianism - including animals in...
Inductively, everyday experience says cause and effect hold. In the macroscopic world, we know of no other way than causality, so it seems a sound eno...
I think our moral compass is set by what we regard as our community - we do things that are acceptable (=moral) as defined by our community. The most ...
Agreed. There are other threads for that. I was just speculating on which is more natural. Many times the obvious explanations for reality have proved...
I think that is the case. Atheists get what religion provides from other sources (like science). How would a human would react to the world with no pr...
Burials with grave goods date back a long way - even the Neanderthals did it. So its probably safe to say religion was a very early development. I bel...
Yes, from Wikipedia: ‘Apparently, the first scholar who raised the "I" problem was Pierre Gassendi. He "points out that recognition that one has a set...
I guess that depends on how you interpret 'me': - If you interpret 'me' as your conscious mind and memories only then there are other entities. - If '...
You can tell by reading this sentence that it is produced by an entity other than your own conscious mind. So there is at least one entity in addition...
It is very simple: - things in time all need a cause - timeless things (IE the first cause) don't need a cause Then everything adds up; everything has...
The question I posed was: Then Demonstrate how anything in time can exist without a first cause please The first cause does not exist in time so is no...
But I'd argue he would enjoy eating people only in the short term - characteristic of a wrong decision. In the long term, S and his cannibalistic cult...
Eh? Showing something can exist without a first cause (which is impossible BTW) is not a prerequisite for showing there is a first cause. You are conf...
Cannibalism has consequences. The culture that is cannibalistic is doing the wrong thing so would be shunned and punished by other cultures. So in eff...
I, with obviously lots of help from Thomas Aquinas, have done that here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5577/was-there-a-first-cause-review...
Long term > Short term So Right is what is optimal for the long term (exercise, healthy diet, helping others) Wrong is what is optimal for the short t...
If spacetime was created, and it seems it was, then is it possible that spacetime is a continuum? It can argued that creating something infinitely big...
I would say if you could plot the distribution of simulations by size, our 'simulation' would be an extreme outlier. `To what purpose would a simulati...
Lets assume hyper-advanced computers that have had billions of years of development. Then we can use scale - assume the computer running the simulatio...
One very strong argument against a simulation is that every particle in the universe effects every other particle (via the 4 forces). How many particl...
What evidence? Maybe along similar lines: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4920/could-a-non-material-substrate-underly-reality/p1 In short th...
I argue that things can't 'always' exist: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5242/infinite-being I do not assume God exists, I do argue that a ...
But there is something in addition to space. If it were only space, there would be no movement. So time exists, is real IMO. I do not see space as ind...
Its more I suspect things are a certain way (finite, discrete) and I'm trying to analyse the evidence to see if there is support for it. I maybe wrong...
I think self-awareness at a basic level is the ability to differentiate oneself from the environment. No easy task. Imagine having to create a compute...
Is God Cruel? Even God cannot know if there is another greater god than him in existence somewhere. Even if you grant God omniscience, a future greate...
According to Einstein, you can slow down your progress through time by moving at close to the speed of light. So we have some control over time. So it...
A lot of consciousness is self-awareness. I read somewhere that self-awareness comes from the need to be able to differentiate between oneself and the...
I don't buy the Big Bang theory lock, stock and barrel. I believe a timeless God preexisted and caused the Big Bang rather than it was caused by quant...
I'm not sure what you mean by that? Past eternity is not possible - it can have no substance because it has no start. If we are in a simulation, then ...
You can't anchor anything at infinity it has no start: { ..., 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 } No start as indicated by the ... The start determines all the r...
Interesting. I would have thought there would be a 'top level' / base reality time and a top level first cause who is responsible for everything. Or d...
I think you can disprove the existence of THE GOD by showing the universe was not created. Or by showing it was not fine-tuned for life. That might st...
The problem is though if God has any sort of time means he is in an infinite regress which means he has no temporal start, no coming into being, which...
I am in agreement. I believe God could be non-material (see https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5606/could-god-be-non-material/p1) I am certain ...
But the logic we use is deterministic logic. We go from deterministic input data, through deterministic logic to deterministic output data. We can nev...
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