Echarmion

It's not about return on investment though, is it? This thread is about how humanity can keep growing. The answer to this is obviously space. Of cours...

Our space isn't actually all that limited though. The resources of the solar system are already in range with today's technology, it's mostly a questi...

I am not sure. The question is whether it's possible to avoid an is-ought-fallacy on the one side and an infinite regress of moral stances on the othe...

I am not certain it's possible to describe how reason works. There are arguments to be made about whether murder should be wrong. Those arguments must...

The question that comes to mind here is, if moral stances are expressions of emotional attitudes to some degree then what else are they? No, because t...

In that case, it seems to me unnecessarily confusing to use two different terms with very different connotations for the same thing. This sounds a lot...

It's reason-able because the statement is processed by a part of the brain that operates on a reason-ruleset, so to speak. A part that we use for thin...

If the will operates in all interactions of the universe, how does it differ from causality? You say that the will "decides", but deciding is a consci...

I would like to point out that there are also arguments against purely rehabilitative justice, both theoretical, drawing a parallel between rehabilita...

I mean being able to re-create the relevant brain-states in their own mind with sufficient accuracy.

That's fair enough. It's perhaps closer to validity. Or we could just call it justification. No, not exactly. But I think it's a defining characterist...

I don't think the "simply" belongs here. Moral stances may originate as feelings. But they have another dimension when other subjects enter the pictur...

Let's say your moral stances is "lying is always wrong". Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that this is merely an expression of what you feel. ...

I am saying that your justification for a certain brain-state is a useful distinction for different "classes" of brain-states. "Simple" emotions are n...

For a given definition of "feel", this may be accurate. It's not like you can somehow decouple your cognition from your feelings. But I think it would...

I feel like we are starting to talk past each other here. My argument in the last post, which to me seems more or less still unadressed, is that in or...

I think enotivism is just wrong as a matter of fact. Beyond the question whether a truth value for moral statements can be established, it seems obvio...

Not necessarily because it's too much to handle, but because this is how the human mind works. Caring for everyone is distinct from what we call empat...

The problem with empathy is that it does not multiply. Our sense of empathy can deal with maybe a handful of individuals at once. More than that just ...

But death doesn't really make events any rarer, harder to come by, or more transient. It makes life transient, but life isn't an event within life. Ch...

But life has no "terms". Life just is. Morality is a part of humans, and therefore also a part of life, that which is. To contrast it with some suppos...

Rejecting the world is only a delusion if you think the world cannot be changed.

I don't think our disagreement is due so much on having different concepts of ex-ante and ex-post, as it is due to the way one establishes mutual bene...

I don't see why that would be so, at least for a given definition of "eternal". According to our current understanding of the physical laws, eternal l...

I agree with your sentiments mostly, but there is one caveat: It is important to realize the specific experience of minorities or the ongoing effects ...

Do you know the story of the german policemen being sent to the east to shoot jewish men, women and children? Not SS men, not even battle hardened sol...

How does death give life value, exactly? Is this more than a mere platitude?

I don't see the connection between being responsible and "able to respond". This seems like a misapplication of etymology. Responsibility, the way tha...

Those are simply the economic facts. Their wealth decreased, their ability to make future decisions decreased, their comfort decreased etc. Are you cl...

This is frankly absurd. You're not "better off" if you sell your house for a loaf of bread. The next day, you will be hungry and homeless. Being "bett...

This is fair enough, and I have no problem accepting, at least in the context of this thread, your argument to this point. I think this is where my ma...

Yes, they are jointly exhaustive if formulated that way. But this doesn't tell me how the NAP ensures that burdens and benefits are distributed accord...

Who says slavery was morally right in the past?

Your claim was that, if all assets were divided equally among people, everyone would live in poverty. That is demonstrably false using any one of thes...

Obviously, because then the circularity would have been obvious. You didn't offer a specific definition either, and the form of your argument implied ...

I use "self-interest" intentionally here, as a replacement for the use (misuse, in my opinion) of the term "market" that is preferred by libertarians....

The number I found was 34.000. Having 34.000 dollars in assets is not "poverty" according to any definition I am aware of. It's also for every single ...

This is off-topic, but the GDP is the Gross Domestic Product, not the sum of all resources and "wealth" on the planet.

I do mean self interest in the sense of instrumental rationality - doing what seems best to further your own goals. Those goals can be altruistic, of ...

The question is not so much whether one is "anti-liberty" and more what one thinks constitutes liberty. Anarcho-socialists might consider wage labor n...

Your argument so far does not support this conclusion though. What you have argued is that human psychology has general flaws which make it difficult ...

I am not going to answer that, since insofar as the question does not require expert knowledge that I do not possess, the answer is obvious. If your p...

Because I am an individual and therefore individuals are undisputably real in a way that concepts such as family, tribe or humanity are not. Morality ...

For example, put competent and knowledgeable (about the climate) people in charge of environmental protection agencies. Support the work of these agen...

He's the president (with significant administrative and legislative authority) of the world's largest economy with some of the largest per capita emis...

How do we know what "actual" time is, if it's distinct from what we can measure? The reason Kant says the universe cannot have a boundary is that a bo...

Because things are only bad when you're literally as bad as Stalin or Hitler, right? No such thing as heading down a dangerous path.

The regimes of Hitler and Stalin were the result of long processes. Trump does not need to be "like Hitler" or "like Stalin" in order to lead the US t...

Your guess is wrong. Even Stalin could not just take out anyone without discussion. Just look at the conflict with Trotsky. The point of such comparis...

It depends on the context. When it comes to the physical world, you need justification just to positively assert an existence or a relation. This is u...