This reminds of Dennett's dig about "real magic": "real magic" isn't real, doesn't exist; the magic that's real (that you can see on stage) isn't "rea...
*black and right :rofl: I am not pointing fingers at absolutism in particular though. One can add a finite number of contingencies to a moral rule and...
By demonstrating herself to be accurately described, in part, by scientific models. If there was nothing "out there" underlying the phenomena we obser...
Ah, mea culpa. In that case, it occurs to me that I perhaps misunderstood your original "where are the oughts" as meaning "where are the moral imperat...
It's an interesting question, touching on something @"Mww" asked earlier. If I were to stab at an answer (and you should definitely attack this with b...
I had in mind our genetic bias toward certain social behaviours and capacities, but I don't see these as qualitatively different from any other part o...
I actually agree with your interpretation of the trend; it is a point I have made myself. However... you must be aware that local, temporary moral tre...
I don't think it's really relevant. The point is one can't simply compare similar methodologies and expect one to be justified because the other is. S...
Other than the specifics of the mechanics, is there anything particularly different about the scenario to object to? Physically, you are differently c...
It is not that I want them to be predictive. It's that this quality is what makes theoretical models compelling contenders for (partial, with limited ...
But it would not be reasonable to deduce from this that a) we can therefore generalise from a single data point (or biased subset of data points) or b...
Certainly. Via discussion, two people can synthesise their independent conceptions to progress the beliefs of both. But that progress is still per per...
They're not even descriptions, but illogical abstractions. A description ought to be of something, but the only moral subjects are minds and, says the...
Sure, but the timescales of that cultural variation are typically generational, maybe millennial. But 100,000 years of staying in group sizes of 20-50...
Yes, religion in itself has terrible effects. I do think it is immoral to produce people who cannot discern between fantasy and reality. I consider th...
And that's the point. Objective nature is inferred from generalisation, not a single data point. I have repeatedly said quite the opposite of this, th...
But my point was that something is present to my consciousness, just not anything like a priori knowledge. It is not a rational thing present, but emo...
Yes, I agree: homogenous socialisation is a necessary condition for unambiguous social behaviour, and small group sizes is a necessary condition for h...
Individual observations do not speak to the efficacy of a belief in an objective reality. Is the the regularity, the predictability that suggests such...
I acknowledge that something is present (the banging at the door). When I see an apple, feel an apple, taste an apple, even though these are all indir...
Yes, Anglicanism is not what Christianity once was. (Worth remembering that Christianity was the moral revolution of altruism and empathy, until it it...
For sure, I just disagree with prior restraint as the best way of winning the fight. If you could snuff out racism this way, I'd be all for it. But it...
Well said. I agree with the worry about the ramifications of non-empirical moral metaphysics. I think that understanding what we are, and why we are t...
But this is describing individuals. It does not describe objective "oughts" and "ought nots" but rather those arising from the experience of each pers...
Yes, I feel the crux upon us. So this is the rationalist view of morality: I am presented with a situation, I rationally deduce what the good outcome ...
Yes, I agree it must be cultural in part. It might also be modal. Large groups subdivide, hence rankings. Relations within ranks might have been more ...
Because you are a socially-inclined human being. If your pre-social drives were dominant, it might seem that "harm" and "opportunity" were synonyms, o...
Ah I think I misunderstood you and covered this elsewhere in my response to you. Yes, I agree, having a biological social drive cannot tell you how to...
I have yet to argue that causality is real. I am arguing that science works fine (insofar as it does) whether causality is real or not. It does not ne...
If you ban an idea, you also ban universal reaction to that idea, letting legislature take the place of public opinion. But legislature only tells you...
Gray, who I linked an article by earlier, seems to think that reverse domination and the like are socialisations rather than particularly selected for...
Yes, discomfort is the problem, and I recognise that in myself too. I think hypocritical values and a history of guilt are a heady mix. But people cal...
Thanks! Yeah I ended up doing a physics simply because I couldn't get past the mathematics of the physics books I wanted to read. For the love of gawd...
I didn't say we were biased to be deterministic per se, although Kant would agree, just that we're biased to establish patterns, often when they're no...
This still presumes there must be an external validation of it, which is erroneous (albeit understandable) in my view because the morality itself deri...
Not at all. In fact, we are biased the other way. We see patterns in empirical data because we are pattern-recognition machines. We see them erroneous...
Actually not quite. In fact, one of my preferred interpretations of QM has precisely this backward causality, along with normal forward causality. The...
So science cannot avoid metaphysics... according to metaphysics. I can quite easily drop balls ninety-nine times and predict that on the hundredth tim...
There are no longer single, small, homogeneous social groups for which our social drives were developed. We have a different kind of environment now. ...
I think this is an interesting example because, as noted in e.g. Paul Bloom's Against Empathy, which argues for rational compassion, we are supposed t...
This is still predicated on the assumption of a top-down moral objectivity. The question is meaningless in a bottom-up naturalistic description. What ...
I think you've got a really good area for examination here. I'm not going to treat your experiences head-on as they are yours, rather I'll look for so...
Yes, this was a mere accident. An unusable data point. For the record, I also said 10 cents. Most do. It would be redundant in the same way that a ver...
I think this is quite untrue. We don't even need someone else's conclusions to have our own moral reactions. We are prone to empathise even with ficti...
Hi Isaac. Even saintly people must walk past the homeless. It is unfeasible to try to help everyone -- that's precisely the problem with having an out...
I like this wording of it a lot. "Readiness" is a good way of thinking about a moral position because it might be "I have a pre-prepared rational answ...
Oops! I should have reloaded the page before responding yesterday. Now I'm superfluous! :rofl: The bat & ball example was the sort of thing I had in m...
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