apokrisis

Yep. As I say, you are appealing to trancendental values in talking about pleasure, pain and empathy in the dualistically disconnected fashion that yo...

You are ignoring the fact that an introspective level of awareness is based on the semiotic mechanism of grammatic speech. Self-consciousness is a soc...

The quantum vacuum is hardly nothing. It might be cold, flat and extremely featureless, but it is still a sizzle of quantum fluctuations spread out in...

That's why I don't defend a notion of the "good". This thread shows that folk can't in fact define it except in terms of other more measurable things....

Well, that's not going to be an empirical discovery, is it? And I've argued why it is not a rational discovery either. Dissipation might be final caus...

That's the naturalistic fallacy. Just because pleasure is what a machine creates as its value, doesn't mean that pleasure is transcendentally good. Of...

I had already explained that in posts at the start of the thread and then re-explained it to you - and you continue to talk past that. To repeat once ...

But then if you don't accept that our biology and sociology expresses natural principles, then that seems to leave you with only the options that eith...

I wouldn't get too hung up on what entropy "actually is". Like the notions of force or energy before it, the more we can construct a useful system of ...

So you are denying that the primary definition is about intentional action within a social context context? The fact that you complain when I use psyc...

Not sure where you get your definitions from. :)

Yet you are committing the "naturalistic fallacy" in claiming that because pleasure is what is, then pleasure is an ought. As I keep saying. Or a sarc...

So why do inanimate things now "behave". Why do you find yourself continually using psychological terms to describe what you appear to believe are non...

My argument is that all regularity is the product of constraints. So for entropification to "keep happening" there has to be a global prevailing state...

You're smart enough to know how weak that is. You object to my imputing intention or purpose to a physically simple level of being. And yet you happil...

Yep. Ecological thinking is systems science central. It is synonymous really.

The advantage of it being a basic precept is that it can then be developed in more particular fashion. So are your examples all revealing further natu...

So the relating is the relating which promotes growth or flourishing?

What could be more question begging than saying the material world acts a certain way because it is the law?

When you follow the story of thermodynamics through to the level of complexity represented by a social system, you can see that its fundamental dissip...

It is easy to see what proximity relates. So what does the good relate?

If the most general propensity of nature is to entopify, then we can consciously consider our moral precepts in that light. If your notion of "the goo...

Natural philosophy is about taking finality seriously, but in ways that are suitably deflationary. So finality is seen in nested hierarchical fashion ...

Or rather I am saying there is what is. And it has its reasons. And that frames our choices. We can either go with nature's flow or - for some reason ...

You remain confused about this. It is Darth who is advancing the naturalistic fallacy here in suggesting that pleasure, pain and empathy are natural p...

Well put. The "good" is never going to be found so simply in personal feelings. Otherwise chocolate and beer would be the highest good. :) It makes se...

Yep. You want to believe what you believe and being asked to substantiate your claims becomes an inconvenience.

Again there is a difference between saying morality just is social organisation that works and taking the stance that morality is somehow optional or ...

You are still talking right past my naturalistic approach.

And yet the domestication of the planet, the curve of fossil fuel exploitation, and the overall human population, ride right over all that. You are te...

It "feels right" because rational/empirical investigation supports that. So the feeling of which you speak is called a reasoned belief - a demonstrabl...

I hardly need to admit what I already say is basic to my position. Of course, the further notions of hierarchical constraint and propensity are then a...

So the anti-natalist suffers from the ought-isn't fallacy, Nice. :) Fortunately my own argument is something quite different. I say it is obvious that...

But I didn't argue that. What I have argued is that we can expect that in a successful organism, the historical constraints will be well organised. Th...

Thanks for repeating what I said. It is fundamental to organicism that history only acts as a (historical) constraint and so spontaneity or degrees of...

But it is this notion of "one unit of suffering" that is in question. It relies on the creaking philosophical apparatus of mind/body dualism. As I say...

Darthbarracuda. So yes, I should have said DB. :)

It is natural behaviour in the sense that the group benefits from all its members having equal opportunity. That maximises the group's degrees of free...

Great. Then we agree and it is the qualification that DC has been denying.

And so if there are degrees of sentience, then there can be degrees of impact?

What is this "good" that you keep harking on about? I'm sure you must have a clear definition of it as you talk about it so much. But what is it in te...

You switched your example for some reason. But I'm not seeing a problem with coming up with rational arguments for why human societies ought to protec...

In fact I said DC was wrong in claiming that human suffering and animal suffering ought to be presumed to be equal as we have good reason to believe t...

I doubt that "we" would get the choice. And we know the answer. If things get tight, fairness doesn't have a hope. So the best ethical response is to ...

We can easily conceive of things that don't work. I mentioned marxism and flower power as examples. So that doesn't help your case.

Not really as what you wrote was self-contradicting and so made no sense to me. You said: "The discussion was about ethical justifications for treatin...

Respond to the argument already made. Don't be a dick. Or rather I show why its future prospects would be self-limited for the same reasons. As usual,...

This is getting very silly. The is-ought fallacy is your hang-up, not mine. My argument is that morality is simply an encoding of the organisation by ...

But your claim that it reduces to "survival" is taking a "survival of the fittest" rhetoric overly seriously. Ecologists and other systems thinkers ta...

I made that proximity argument at the beginning of this thread. Stuck. Record. Why do they deserve it? I give the natural reasons. You talk about your...