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Down The Rabbit Hole

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Agreed. With moral nihilism you can still have values, but with absolute nihilism nothing matters. That's a dangerous view.
December 20, 2022 at 22:22
No, I think the quality of content on here is more than reasonable. There are interesting discussions and plenty of knowledgeable members.
December 19, 2022 at 20:50
No, I think it's great for testing my beliefs and learning from others. And seeing pig pics.
December 19, 2022 at 13:16
I would say even on a materialist approach the memories themselves are part of our mind. And it seems okay to say that our body will not be the same, ...
December 18, 2022 at 19:59
I think the best way is to say that as soon you change it, it is not the same ship. This is contrary to the common way of identifying things, and woul...
December 17, 2022 at 20:37
That doesn't seem right to me. An object goes where its parts go. If the original parts were put back together, that would be The Ship of Theseus. And...
December 16, 2022 at 22:02
As you've alluded to, Ockham's Razor has a qualification that "all things being equal" the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Let's say,...
December 15, 2022 at 13:33
We can only be said to have "free will" in that we make choices. Our making of choices isn't really free though. Once a compatibilist, I now agree wit...
December 15, 2022 at 01:10
It makes sense that the fewer barriers to something being true, the more likely it is to be true. It is commonly used against belief in god, but I don...
December 15, 2022 at 00:00
@"Shawn" https://img1.etsystatic.com/054/0/10864511/il_570xN.748319315_ier2.jpg
December 05, 2022 at 11:51
"“Relentless cuts” to the health service could be behind 30,000 deaths in 2015, argued researchers in two articles published in the Journal of the Roy...
December 04, 2022 at 16:10
Attlee's government transformed the country with the NHS. The trouble is, is the NHS run by generations of Tory governments any better than U.S health...
December 03, 2022 at 17:24
Can understand classic Star Wars and Star Trek, but LOTR never done anything for me. I should correct what I said earlier. I was using the homelessnes...
December 03, 2022 at 12:50
He brought universal healthcare and free university to Australia? And introduction or extension of legal aid? Have these things been normalised in Aus...
December 02, 2022 at 15:18
Planck's principle comes to mind. "Planck's principle is the view that scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their min...
December 02, 2022 at 15:10
Have you become more optimistic or pessimistic about politics as you've got older? I've only just hit my 30s, and after being involved in politics thr...
December 01, 2022 at 21:04
Shelter's figure for England is about 0.43. Hard to believe we are worse than the U.S for homelessness.
December 01, 2022 at 19:39
My understanding was that dark energy, which expands the universe, gains proportionally from other forms of energy within the universe, and the total ...
November 23, 2022 at 12:38
:lol:
November 20, 2022 at 17:12
If I was to use "bad" in the loose sense, it would be for things such as this:
November 20, 2022 at 17:06
But, good, bad, negative, positive, are all value judgments. A preference is not. When you say it is bad/negative to unduly torture, is it bad/negativ...
November 20, 2022 at 16:27
Luckily people have learnt from history and wouldn't be taken in by a charismatic conman :grimace:
November 20, 2022 at 16:10
The proponents of both consequentialism and deontology having good intentions is different to consequentialism and deontology being good. I'm going to...
November 20, 2022 at 12:16
I use "morally right" and "morally correct" interchangeably. Are you using "right" to mean "good"? That's fair enough, but I still wouldn't say two co...
November 20, 2022 at 11:37
It is more academic than of practical consequence. I don't know if you're a consequentialist or deontologist, but my position would be that whichever ...
November 19, 2022 at 22:11
The problem is the foundation of your truth statement (your feelings) is the same foundation as the masochist and deranged people's foundation of thei...
November 19, 2022 at 21:49
Well, I agree with @"Moliere": I am strongly opposed to causing suffering irrespective of whether it is morally wrong.
November 19, 2022 at 16:50
Our feelings of what is morally right and wrong clash with other people's feelings of what is morally right and wrong. Who is right, the consequential...
November 19, 2022 at 15:20
That's only if you are asking different questions to each answer. If you keep asking why something is morally bad, eventually the answer to the questi...
November 19, 2022 at 13:50
Are you not misunderstanding what @"Leftist" is saying? Their position would be that murder and rape is neither good nor bad, and your say so doesn't ...
November 19, 2022 at 12:15
Just had a read of the article. It's completely different to what @"Bartricks" is saying but close to what @"Metaphysician Undercover" is saying (@"Me...
November 18, 2022 at 23:13
Thank God someone understood what I was saying. @"Bartricks" saying that it does not take energy for the spirits to be activated made my argument abou...
November 18, 2022 at 12:21
Yes, a ghost like Casper. If Casper started moving things in the physical world, but required no energy himself, he would be adding energy from nowher...
November 17, 2022 at 13:14
Yes, the immaterial is the spirit realm. According to @"Bartricks" immaterial things don't need energy to function. However, ghosts and minds would st...
November 17, 2022 at 12:24
Yes, fair point :up: Unless the evidence forces us there, believing in a spirit realm feels like giving up on science.
November 17, 2022 at 00:09
Like Sean Carroll I prefer the label physicalist rather than materialist. I'm not sure there is any real difference.
November 16, 2022 at 22:31
Yes, all of our thoughts stem from something that is not our thoughts. Even if thoughts stem from our other thoughts, the first thought was caused by ...
November 16, 2022 at 16:52
"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills". It seems pretty obvious to me, however Nobel Prize winning Sir Roger Penrose says quantum...
November 16, 2022 at 16:07
Even if it doesn't require energy itself, if something immaterial like a ghost or a mind acts on the material world, wouldn't this create physical ene...
November 15, 2022 at 11:47
In this case, does it not take energy for the mind to be activated? Where does this energy come from? Also, mental energy turns into physical energy -...
November 14, 2022 at 23:28
For clarity, what's an example of material event A causing immaterial event B? Is immaterial event B ever not caused by a material event?
November 14, 2022 at 18:22
Why do physicists believe it is then? When given the choice to throw out the conservation of energy or cartesian dualism, they tend to throw out the l...
November 13, 2022 at 11:10
It depends what definition of veganism you are using; philosophical of dietary. The Vegan Society says: "Veganism is a philosophy and way of living wh...
November 10, 2022 at 15:46
It doesn't feel right to me to cause animals to suffer and die just because we like the way they taste etc. I think we should be nice to animals.
November 10, 2022 at 13:04
Don't want to get @"schopenhauer1" banned but their posts helped encourage me to join. I was already familiar with the literature but didn't know the ...
November 05, 2022 at 22:38
That is a good question. How can we judge an argument, when there can be no correct answer. For one, I would say ability to convince. I don't know how...
November 05, 2022 at 16:35
It would be science as opposed to antinatalism that beats lives of unbearable suffering. Although this is likely to take hundreds of years. I wouldn't...
November 05, 2022 at 11:15
I don't believe there are right and wrong answers to moral questions. It could be argued, we ought to do what we feel is right. Thus, if one feels the...
November 03, 2022 at 21:32
Save for editing our biology to remove the ability to suffer (as promoted by David Pearce) there is only antinatalism. Everything else is mitigation o...
November 03, 2022 at 21:02
While the vast majority may live happy lives, the hundreds of millions with lives of unbearable suffering are the sacrifice for this. I think there's ...
November 03, 2022 at 08:25