Echarmion

But we're turning that ignorance into a probability without further information. That is impossible. If we're ignorant about what graph we are on and ...

It's not a named bias as far as I am aware. It amounts to magical thinking though. It's very similar in that regard to the "fine tuning" arguments. Ma...

It's easier to get an audience to engage if you don't make an effort to make yourself harder to understand (well, some audiences might find it mysteri...

Well the CI is based on reason, so reason is prior to it. I can kinda see where you are coming from here. Yes the CI is not like a moral code, e.g. th...

Yes, as I have already mentioned above there are maxims that concern anti- social behaviour yet do not lead to a self-contradiction. The most famous o...

How is it "very different"? Could you provide a clear rule as to what conditions are and are not allowed? Perhaps Kant simply did not want to choose o...

Murky? What's murky about it? Is it unclear what I mean by "common ability to reason" or "human society"? But sure, not everyone agrees on the details...

That would be a contradiction in terms, but it's not what I said. Maxims aren't rules (though their structure is very similar) and they aren't univers...

There's a lot to unpack here. The "categorical" in the CI refers to the way you form your maxims, not to their content. You're supposed to be "motivat...

Well but the thief does value "property", in the sense that he values having secure access to material goods, or else what would the point of stealing...

Yes, in a way that is how Trump (and by now his entire administration) operates. To his followers though, truth is still important, they just feel tha...

I don't think people really "fall for it". Rather, people who have existing views that are in some way not acceptable to current society (be it not sc...

Not everything that seems impractical is a contradiction in terms of the CI. It's not like being rude to customers, for example, is the only way to pr...

So a couple of points: First, this isn't a contradiction in terms, just a contradiction. Secondly, not all maxims "pass" the CI. "I will lie when it s...

If the CI works, there should not be a hierarchy of maxims, since a maxim that can be universalized cannot conflict with another maxim that can be uni...

Could you elaborate on that? How so? There are maxims which can also be described by a more general, abstract maxim, but in less detail.

But that raises another issue: If evil is necessary for good to exist, and God created evil, then she cannot have been good. So, the God that created ...

Why would God need to either eliminate the tuberculosis bacteria or allow humans to suffer? An omnipotent being could just create a world were all bei...

Denial is neither rational nor healthy though. Responsibility flows from the ability to act and the duty to do so. An omniscient and omnipotent God ha...

Omnipotence is a defining characteristic of God in the context of this problem. Which means that God isn't really a god after all, since she's neither...

She does. That's at the heart of the theodicy issue. If you are all-knowing and all-powerful, it follows that you are also all-responsible.

I very much enjoyed "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder. accessible and clever.

Perhaps you'd be interested in actually engaging with the substance of my post? You did say this:

I struggle to see the point of discussing a philosophy on the basis of wilful ignorance of the details of said philosophy. That doesn't matter though,...

I think if we include non-human beings in the equation, the problem becomes bigger, not smaller, since most creature's lifes are even worse than ours....

A maxim of benevolence / friendlyness can be universalized, I think. Of course, this is different from a maxim that includes forcing people to be frie...

Well the "Groundwork" is not that long, and I found it enjoyable to read (in german at least). I don't think it really matters so long as you are actu...

Both the brain and electrical impulses are already part of "constructed reality", so the question seems confused to me.

No, I think you are mistaken here. Kant's moral philosophy is not at all context insensitive. I think you're misunderstanding how a maxim works in gen...

But you decide to raise your arm. Every time you make a decision, you experience yourself as free. Otherwise, making a decision would be impossible. Y...

Again, how do you know that? In a deterministic universe, can not everything be expressed as an algorithm?

Not relevant to adult language, but language shapes belief. How people say things matters, because human psychology is sensitive to it.

The point is that you know what free will is, because you experience it. You can claim that this experience is an illusion, but we know what free will...

The obvious counter argument is that human brains also just follow a well written software. You say we can "alter our decision making system", but thi...

I don't see how that's a complication. The concept of "self" would obviously be different for an entity that could, say, copy itself. But that seems u...

And what makes you think humans do not have these limitations? The way our brains function and create new connections is based on a fixed set of rules...

Which is to say you have a problem with the motives of that control. I am just saying that to label that motive "enforcement" is not appropriate, sinc...

So we should overthrow the capitalist system in favor of anarchy (in the sense of "no gods, no masters, no employers”)? Because if you have the proble...

But in order for it to be "enforcement" the people doing it must be doing it to actually "enforce" something. But I contend that, usually, the negativ...

I am fairly certain you have direct experience of free will. It's what you experience when you act. But only for empirical questions and only because ...

But these actions are just decisions these people make as part of their freedom of action. It's not as if they follow a government mandate. It's not "...

While I dislike this kind of reaction to statements that are merely controversial, I don't think it's accurate to call this "enforcement". Mostly, it'...

But the meat industry is how most people eat meat, so you cannot separate the two that easily

This is an idea almost as old as philosophy itself. "How real is reality" has been a central question through the ages, and there are lots of threads ...

It's worse in any number of ways. In terms of resource usage, energy efficiency, climate impact, general ecological impact. Health is debatable, but a...

This is possible, but it's not a necessary process. If, for example, red grasshoppers had a significantly higher chance of mating (perhaps grasshopper...

The theory of evolution does not assume that. That would be a subset called natural selection. Other selection mechanisms, like sexual selection, are ...

But what is the definition of truth? Saying "it's objectively true that there is no objective truth" is an obvious contradiction. But what if I define...

The prison population as such does not tell us much. We'd need to account for factors like sentencing bias, and the different ways society treats men ...

This is pure speculation though. There is no data suggesting it, and as speculative psychology it's not terribly convincing. Possible, yes, but I woul...