Marchesk

We happen to be in agreement that torturing kids is wrong. But I'm sure we can find moral issues that we will strongly disagree with. What then?

What makes them wrong, though? Because the rest of us say so? Don't get me wrong, I think it's immoral in the extreme in the non-realist sense. I just...

Or because other human beings have similar aesthetic tastes? How do you get from people having aesthetic experiences to the object being aesthetically...

There do exist sado masochists. One particularly nasty individual in the early 20th century tortured and killed a bunch of kids. He got off on that st...

But what's your rationale for this? It just sounds like an arbitrary claim where you have no means of ascertaining the truth of the matter, since othe...

Are we not discussing the case for or against moral realism? I'm confused at your confusion. If morality is no better than beholding a beautiful objec...

Along with all other maps, official documents, governing bodies, etc? But it's not the best example of realism, because humans somewhat arbitrarily (f...

Realism - there is no real taste value. Similarly, there are no real moral or aesthetic values. Only subjective or culturally defined ones.

The point is that there is no objective truth of the matter about whether fruit cake tastes well. In fact, the taste of fruit cake is entirely a creat...

Shouldn't that tell you something? If I claimed that New York was the capital of the US, you could show me how I'm wrong.

No, consider taste: Me: This fruitcake is the best tasting stuff on Earth. You: fruit cake is disgusting. It should never have been made. It's an abom...

Right, and in some cases we have objective means of determining who's right. But this is not so with aesthetics or morality.

Even though people disagree with you? What makes so sure?

Because there is no other fact of the matter.

So you are the arbitrator of what's beautiful?

Those would be scientific, logical or mathematical methods. They're objective.

So when I find a movie or song to be beautiful and moving, and then other people, perhaps even friends or family, find it to be otherwise, who is righ...

For morality and aesthetics, I would say yes, because we have no other way of determining their truth than what people find moral or beautiful. It's d...

You behold them as beautiful because of the kind of creature and individual you are, not because they are beautiful. A turkey vulture likely finds the...

But where are they discovered from? Nature is no guide to moral behavior, plus the whole is-ought distinction. It's left to human culture, and human c...

Just to put this out there for everyone, as a counter to TGW's claim that torturing children is objectively wrong because presumably everyone agrees, ...

Yeah but the same can be applied to aesthetics, and the case for realism qua aesthetics is even less well supported than morality. It seems quite clea...

Sure, but that we can so profoundly disagree about what's right and wrong in many cases, particularly across cultures is what makes it questionable. I...

If evolution is the case, then it's really hard to see how there can be objective morality, in the realist sense. We're moral creatures because that's...

There's always hemp ;)

As long as we have enough oil to last until the world transitions to cleaner energies, then we should be fine on that front. Battery, solar, wind, etc...

Sure, and a computer moves electricity (or light) around when nobody is around to witness it.

But a computer is actually a physical device that we invented to do logical things with. You have to have electromagnetism and atoms to make an electr...

The world is a totality of fields?

I don't know that this works when it comes to physics, though, with it's universal laws, constants and particles and forces. You can't point to one el...

The world just is. Facts are something we create from our intersection with the world as part of forming knowledge. Facts are a knowledge construct, e...

Are planets robots? How about black holes? Plants? Fire? Physics and chemistry apply to everything physical. You've basically equated robotics with th...

Except that it is, like since you were a little school boy. Do this, don't do that. It's better to share. 10 commandments. A good person does this and...

Or Babylon 5: mind wipe the criminal and replace it with a new mind. I don't recall where they got the "new" minds from.

It would be like promising to get rid of money if you got elected. Now maybe one day in the future we'll be post scarcity and there won't be money or ...

Even if you were elected, you wouldn't get very far with abolishing punishment. Literally every society engages in some form of retributive justice.

Punishment is also for the victims and society's sense of justice. This even applies to studies where participants play a game that gives them a chanc...

Nah. The primary function of mind is to figure out how to survive and have (and rear in some animals) offspring. The accumulation of knowledge is a sp...

Plants don't count but horseshoe crabs do because ...? Wouldn't the statistics be heavily in favor of being some bacterium or virus overy any other li...

Of course it's not just deferring, since it's a philosophical position. But the term is physicalism for a reason, and that's because modern physics ha...

I think you have your own version of physicalism as evidenced by: As such, whenever I mention physicalism going forward, just ignore it, because it ob...

Really? You fall back on matter after rejecting physics? BTW, there is a reason it's called physicalism. And that reason is because physics has shown ...

Mind independent, natural stuff? It's kind of hard to specify a material ontology without being specific. Thus atoms and voids, or five elements.

Because of the Greek atomists positing that atoms and the void were all that ontologically existed. Everything else was made up of that. I suppose tha...

Well, what do you mean by "physical"? The world? What we sense? Reality? Because that's not saying much. Any metaphysical doctrine can do the same.

That is literally saying nothing whatsoever, since you're free to state whatever you want and call it physical. What would it even mean for physics to...

Okay, sure. But you can't argue for physicalism by positing something not part of the science of physics, and use that to defend physicalism. So panps...

No, no way. An instrumentalist is not making any ontological commitments.

So what? You need logic to make meaningful statements. If it's not, then there's more to heaven and earth than is dreamt of by physicalists.

Yes it does. Physicalism is predicated on the stuff of physics being what's ontologically fundamental.