Terrapin Station

Say what? Whether one agrees with a claim is irrelevant to whether someone is saying what something is. If Mr. Jones says that water is H2O, but I don...

Sure. And when there's no truth to Yay Red Sox or Yay vanilla, it's not a mystery to you why people care about it--sometimes very passionately--is it?

Even if that were the case, what relevance would it be?

We've said, but you don't agree.

Would you say "There's no truth value in 'Yay Red Sox,' so why root for them? Red Sox or Yankees--it makes no difference"? With your flavors analogy, ...

Why "no context"? Who is proposing anything like that?

In general, not just re morality, because it can, and there's nothing (namely a survival-until-procreation disadvantage) to effectively deselect it.

Evolutionarily, we have a physiological response that produces positive feelings in response to foods with high fat content, etc., because it wasn't e...

So, for me, first you might have noticed that I don't buy that meaning is objective. And I've stated a number of times, including in this thread, and ...

What sort of empirical research have you done for claims like that, and logically, what do you believe the upshot of that fact is, assuming the empiri...

I see it as lying/dishonesty if one isn't forthright about what one has in mind, and one instead diverts, manipulates, etc. But, I don't see lying as ...

Although I don't agree with this: And I don't see the "runaway railtruck" dilemma as much of a dilemma. Ceteris paribus, I'd not have to think for a m...

Excellent points.

The support is the fact that morality is simply an expression of individuals' preferences of interpersonal behavior. There's zero evidence that it's a...

False. False. False. False. At least without arguing towards any of those better, defining the terms better, etc.

Nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Things are relatively right or wrong, and one of the things that's relative to is individuals. (It's also relati...

So again, the challenge to you would be to present any evidence whatsoever of moral stances, normative stances, etc. being anything other than prefere...

Good points.

I'm not sure exactly what "semantic information" would amount to. Presumably with "knowledge" you don't have "justified true belief" in mind?

Well, only if/because you might do something to someone else in response. That's questioning an accusation that could land someone in prison, because ...

Good to know. Now how do we change legal conventions?

Well, so we need to address the messenger, too, not just the message, and many things we might need to say to the messenger could be seen as an insult...

I don't think that any widespread demographic needs to explain that they're not characteristically criminals, psychopaths, etc. Anyone who makes a has...

I find it more problematic to assume that people are "ideal(ly rational) agents," so that we don't address why they might believe what they believe. P...

True, but I'm not a fan of it being sufficient evidence to convict anyone of anything, even in conjunction with other testimony.

Right. What was his response there anyway? I didn't understand what he wrote.

I'm not a fan of complainers, moaners, naggers, moralizers, etc. I try to avoid them in "real life." For the most part (I'll avoid detailing this for ...

It's actually even "less" than that in these experiments. The two observers are not observing the same thing and reaching different conclusions about ...

We set up a computer system, including a camera/microphone and a robot arm, in a small room, so that there's also a tree, a totem poll and a bookcase ...

That's because you probably have an incorrect ontology of meaning, too. You're thinking that someone says to you, "Murder is wrong," for example, and ...

Ah, re "creation." Why would creation be any more of an issue there than it is for music or the other arts?

Yeah, they are. And just in the same way. One refers to making an evaluation--stating how you feel about something, whether you like or dislike it, wh...

Just as with "opinion," there are different senses of "judgment," and you're conflating them. At any rate, we can just ignore that and pretend they're...

I don't understand this response, unfortunately, especially in context. If it's individual judgments it's going to be relative to the individual makin...

You're creating it for yourself in the sense of you making the judgments or decisions. Morality is those judgments. You can't literally receive them f...

Well, but in the metaphysical sense, the point is that the music you're hearing on the album is a creation of the Beatles and not simply something the...

? No. You mean to tell me that you don't understand what people are referring to when they say that "the Beatles created the White Album"? Hopefully w...

You mean that he was saying in conjunction with individuals? Yeah, I meant that. I wasn't being that persnicketty about the wording there, I was just ...

Right, but there's a manner in which it makes sense to say that the Beatles created the White Album themselves, rather than saying that what created i...

Would you say that the Beatles created the White Album by themselves?

There are a number of problems here: (1) You're treating "morality is relative" in the manner of "everything is relative." The two claims are not the ...

No problem. It's a vast wonderland to get lost in once you go down the rabbit hole . . . as are most philosophical topics.

To me that seems like you're positing something additional to what I posit. Because on my view the relation in question is a property of the "associat...

So the reason I don't usually write long posts, especially to particular people, is exemplified here. I addressed all of that, but you just ignored it...

The expert on apt language usage thought that liking and admiring things might be what we're talking about in this context: "Morality consists primari...

So does argumentum ad populum refer to claims that people like or admire? The expert on apt language usage thought that liking and admiring things mig...

Re the etymology of "popular": "late Middle English (in the sense ‘prevalent among the general public’)"

Yes. Maybe you should trying learning more than one sense of a term?

This underscores your philosophical Achilles' heel. You formulate views based on popular belief, popular behavior. Conformity to the norm, to the stat...

Nice attempt to cover not understanding context. This amounts to forwarding an argumentum ad populum. Basically, "It's the answer because it's popular...