Echarmion

If you are petting a cat right now, that's clearly a conscious experience. If you remember petting a cat, that memory is also a conscious experience, ...

Last I checked, Guiliani was a private individual and Trump's lawyer. Whatever the position of the US State Dept. (part of the executive branch), his ...

People do argue with it, though. Where do you take the certainty that they must all be wrong from?

The problem is that conscious experience is so basic that there is no way to give examples. If I gave you an example, like petting a cat, that example...

I don't see how these claims require reconciliation. Is an explanation using language constitutive for knowing what something is? But thinking is the ...

This all seems to presuppose materialism, that is that thought is a product of brain and body. But it's also possible that brains and bodies are repre...

Thought is not a behaviour. Do you claim that you do not know what thoughts are? Your requirements for "knowing" seem to presuppose materialism, in th...

I don't know if this is a thing where you live, but the US Constitution establishes the "separation of powers" as a core principle. You might want to ...

I don't think there is anything nebulous about "conscious experience". It's very clear what we refer to when we use that term. It's just difficlut to ...

I did not say that. I did not say that either. No, I don't realize that. Rather, it looks to me it's you, and only you, who keeps insisting that this ...

In what sense can empathy be said to be objective?

If it's an immoral fact, then there must be some facts that are moral and some that are immoral. That is, immorality needs to be established in additi...

Is this because we use "objective" to mean an impartial or fair assessment? Objectivity as the absence of undue personal bias? But that applies to peo...

It's not really possible to argue based on how "regular" an "abuse" of power is, because all tribal societies already have religion. So we cannot make...

Now I get it. I was referring not to individual use of force, but use of force by the tribal community, the chief, the king, the state etc. Something ...

No, it's not. You're welcome to provide evidence for this claim, if you have it. There are now three people in this thread who you misrepresent. I sug...

But this requires that we ascribe to eliminative materialism, which is a metaphysical position that requires justification.

I am not an anthropologist. But you can probably look at every culture on earth and find strong, usually conceptually unalterable, social rules based ...

It is social and political development. I think calling it "moral development" implies something about the people living in a system that is not warra...

But correlation is not causation. There are other factors unique to western Europe. The stratification of society differed throughout history. In gene...

When did I ever speak about development? That was indeed the point. Obviously all humans have a "moral sense", or else morals wouldn't ever form. The ...

Ok, but this seems completely unrelated to anything I wrote.

So it seems obvious, but at the same time eludes strict proof. It seems to me like Hume's scepticism is thereby validated. It's difficult to vouch for...

What does this have to do with racism? Religious law was important in all societies around the globe. The specific paths it took from there differed. ...

And philosophers are not regular men? This is a nice fiction, but it's not true. Wars have been fought with a broad majority supporting them. People a...

So, if you think it's absurd that our observations are just in our minds, where do you think they are? That there is an observer in all our observatio...

Sure, we can say that, but we'd be applying the very specific definition of "good" you have just outlined. We need to first define "good" before we ca...

According to the principle that preventing harm is the most important thing. But, as you note, we can disagree about how important different principle...

Consent being binding for a later version of yourself that is then unable to form a legally binding will is not unusual. You can make binding preparat...

Who knows. Those were legal commentaries, so a lot of different authors work on them, and they get overhauled every couple of years. It's possible the...

The thing is, there has been, and still is, very little substantive criticism of the EU. Much of what is touted as "criticism" is, in fact, either nat...

If we look at the working of the judiciary specifically, I don't think whether or not verdicts are just is strongly connected to democracy as such. It...

Reason, for example. I see that this is not your position, but you're certainly aware that plenty of philosophers argued that there are truths about l...

What I am thinking of when I refer to principles is things like the rule of law, fundamental human, political and social rights. Those are things that...

That option exists in every government that is run by people. Historically, plenty of societies made decisions that ended up being severely detrimenta...

Yes. That's absurd though. Kant is not some deity brainwashing you through time and space. If you read Kant's arguments, you either find them convinci...

It's a fundamental physical law so far as we know. You might as well ask why the speed of light is not a different number. If particles could occupy t...

They can, just not at the same time. That only applies to fundamental particles though, of course you can still e.g. be in a house.

I find Kant relatively easy to understand. He repeats his main points a lot, in different ways. Maybe it helps to speak German. Or maybe I'm deluded a...

Using the search function is hard. And also, you have this really unique spin on the topic, and you really want people to respond.

You're not wrong. In a world where everyone adopts universalizable behavior, no immoral acts would happen. It's just that I don't think Kant assumed, ...

I have an anecdote about that. I once discovered a citation circle. Several publications referenced each other for support, but none actually containe...

I think this is a misunderstanding. Kant's morals are personal. The goal of acting morally is not primarily to make society a better place. Rather, Ka...

Yes, I think Hume was correct here. Causation is valid as an inductive principle, but causation itself cannot be deductively proven. To add to this, t...

How do we actually know this though, given that you acknowledge we don't actually observe causation, but merely correlation?

Where do you get the idea that only absolute, abstract maxims pass the categorical imperative?

I said I would accept the argument for the purposes of this discussion. Now, what next?

They're not free to do so under Kantian morals. But we are not responsible for making them into moral beings.

Kantian ethics is not really concerned with making society "better off" in some material sense. Rather, it's about being free in a positive sense, whi...

Nothing of much value, I'd agree. But at least someone had to stand there and tell lies, knowing they were telling lies, by looking people in the eye....