ToothyMaw

But it could have some utility in the crappy, narrow hypothetical posed.

Yes, but you have to weigh the pleasure gained from an act and the suffering incurred against each other to justify it. If the act provides more pleas...

I disagree; according to the greatest happiness principle more people in this example (the rapists) are potentially deriving more happiness than if th...

The OP. I think he is just fishing for certain answers or is trying to be inflammatory.

If you mean that maybe one person should be raped for the pleasure of gang-rapists without considering what allowing such a thing in general would do ...

This seems like bait to me.

I can respect that.

If we are talking about distinct beliefs and not duplicated beliefs then what I said applies I think.

It can, but it doesn't result in an infinite number of beliefs is what I mean. You just keep adding the same elements over and over again with each ne...

Not to mention how is the entire set B1 a singular proposition? It is a collection of elements - the elements God, Self, and Set. B2 = {God, Self, Set...

Yeah, I understand your post now and see what you are saying. But why on earth is god necessary? edit: the belief in god I mean

Although I will get a book on set theory when I can.

I know next to nothing about formal set theory; I'm working at a very basic level here, and I'm just going to go with the orthodox view that infinite ...

I see no reason to get god involved, and whether or not there is an infinite set of beliefs is also not relevant, which you would know if you had read...

Apparently it is indeed pretty dubious, Deepak Chopra uses the term, and while that does not immediately discredit it, it goes a long ways towards rai...

Obviously I don't know much about it. It sounded smart to me.

No, it doesn't have to be the case that decisions are made based on the words but rather that the words accurately express a belief that can be readil...

I need to specify: my idea is that if one is complicit in the forming of a belief and act on it then they are morally culpable; if they were not compl...

I just need a way of expressing beliefs as a set that can be selected from. I'm trying to axiomatize the chain resulting from someone's beliefs that t...

That doesn't matter; I just need to have a means of selecting beliefs from a set. Whether that set is finite or infinite doesn't matter, and whether t...

That actually doesn't matter; one can simply find out the conditions under which a belief is formed by a person.

That is all very interesting stuff. Never would have thought of postulating a consciousness field (but of course I'm not a physicist; I don't know how...

I knew of the mind-body problem, yes. I grant all of that, but I think belief is different. Unless I'm mistaken we can actually model belief in the br...

I actually thought we were getting somewhere.

If beliefs don't exist in the brain then where do they exist? And whether or not brains are conscious seems to be a different problem.

Okay, that makes things clearer. I don't think that beliefs need to be separate in such a way in order to count them as a brain state, or a quality of...

Furthermore, if there is a finite number of brain states brain states could potentially repeat I think. edit: Actually even if there is an infinite nu...

What exactly do we mean by separate? Separate from other phenomenon in the brain? Or never repeating and identifiable? I used the word because you did...

If they exist as part of the mind I would see the beliefs as existing as a brain state or change in brain structure. Sure - maybe the brain states are...

Who would you trust?

Studies?

When did I say I was aiming to do that? I am just trying to start a discussion, if only to see where people's "common sense" lies.

I was specifically referring to death threats. I don't quite know what I think about them yet (other than that they are horrible).

But in this case I think the slippery slope arguments are valid. Consider a left wing nationalist. Such views exist but are really not all that common...

Yeah, I'm having trouble with this one. Maybe death threats should be allowed some of the time. And all speech communicates meaning, yes. I would say,...

Absolutely true. Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that social media platforms would allow the common person the ability to be heard unlike ever before; it w...

The way I understand it is that it's more so that censorship is suppression of speech/ideas considered objectionable, harmful, etc. The intentions beh...

A noise complaint is valid, but I don't think it should matter that it's on a Sunday. But yes, I think the Westboro Baptists should pretty much be abl...

We can't have people living their lives in fear, can we? It can be traumatic for someone to get doxed and have their life threatened. It directly caus...

I wouldn't put it in terms of good and bad people, but rather good and bad speech. Everyone is capable of sifting through the news and ascertaining th...

Trust me, I know how odious speech can get - I deal with odious speech on a regular basis. And yes, even the Westboro Baptists should be allowed to sp...

There are definitely a number of people who disagree with me on this one.

But others in power can use their own speech to defend against the slander and oppression, can they not? Just because one might be able to use free sp...

I actually think religion was probably the very first way of explaining reality and its mysteriousness; cavemen didn't have science or philosophy. Wel...

No, I definitely am disagreeing with you, but not over anything particularly important - just that religion doesn't really borrow from secular ethics ...

What? They are pretending to the morals of humanists? Really? Humanists and the religious disagree on so many things, so vehemently. While it appears ...

What is this, some kind of quiz? I think Christianity according to POC is pretty much the same as Christianity according to whites.

I said "I wouldn't". And yeah, I just mean the cultures of any POC.

I would. There is nothing wrong with black culture imo, and I wouldn't want to see it disappear. As far as religion goes, idk.

Whatever moral commands god gives us would be morally obligatory since "moral" in this context boils down to "what one ought to do". Thus, any command...