1701. Fleabytes

Comment #143620 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 8:55 am

What I trying to say is that animals probably have enough internal representations of the world (including themselves, and others) to anticipate and reflect on pain (which was what this is about).

I would agree with anticipate - through conditioned association of certain sensory inputs (scents, sounds, movements) with certain emotions (such as pain). Don't think we need to postulate anything we would recognize as 'reflection', though. (I know I'm using the 'anything we would recognize as'-expression a lot today... just trying to be more precise, I hope you don't mind.)

Monkeys and apes have mirror neurons, which seem to be involved in empathy. I don't see how you can have empathy (what it is like for others to feel) unless you have an understanding of what it is like for oneself to feel.

I think that empathy doesn't involve conceptual understanding either - I think it's 'merely' that mirror-neuron activity elicits emotions that are similar to those experienced by the observed individual. The behavioural expressions of certain feelings (like pain) are rather uniform (gestures, facial expressions, sounds etc - especially within one population, but even across... seems to be evolutionary hard-wired at least to some extent)
so no real conscious interpretation is needed. The neural network recognizes the input as being similar to one of it's own output-possibilities and can elicit the associated emotional response.

Seems to be a good parsimoneous and testable hypothesis as to empathy.

Empathy surely implies a dislike of pain to an extent that we should not inflict it.

That involves a moral judgement that something ought not to be inflicted upon other creatures when we have good reason to assume that they are averse to it.
While we do not have justification to assume a non-natural property ('ought not to be done') from a natural one (this is so and so) - I don't disagree with the sentiment expressed by that proposition.

I am however no vegetarian - I think there are quite painless ways of killing animals for food, and they should be employed... I think we shouldn't act with deliberate cruelty toward them, such as raising and keeping them in a way that is cruel (you know what I'm talking about...)

But we have no justification to assume that animals fear death, ie nonexistence instead of pain, which they certainly are averse to - and react negatively when presented with stimuli that are conditioned to act as warning signs for subsequent pain (and this is the extent to which I would say animals have 'fear').
So I see no reason not to kill them for food - but I think we should attempt to minimize the pain they experience.

1702. Fleabytes

Comment #143601 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 8:36 am

...before I'm off...

deception, yes - that's fascinating. It shows something functionally similar to planning.

But I think while (and possibly partly because) humans used to underestimate other animals' faculties, complexity of behaviour etc - people do anthropomorphize a lot, over-attributing metal capacity. Certainly we should try neither to under- nor to over-attribute here.

The evidence shows that certain animals can plan and interact socially on a complex level... but this can be explained more parsimoneous than by attributing a mentality nearly as complex as our own.

The most complex mental tasks we know (such as developing and discussing theories, including science) are vastly more complex than any animal behaviour we can observe. And these all necessitate language.



annabanana,

Harry is a better 'Jesus' than Jesus.

lol - indeed! :)

1703. Fleabytes

Comment #143588 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 8:14 am

Well, I'll have to leave soon for a short while - be back later.

Have fun - but tell me about it when I'm back :)

1704. Fleabytes

Comment #143585 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 8:13 am

I love Harry Potter, too - and find it a great series...


... but we do have to take into account that her broadly christian belief did influence the story immensely. The willing sacrifice of hiss life to save others and subsequent 'rebirth' at the end of the seventh book are a prime example.

1705. Fleabytes

Comment #143582 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 8:11 am

annabanana,

I would even go as far as saying that we do not know how complex their thoughts are, or if they even have anything we would recognize as thoughts. Emotions, yes - empathy, yes - complex behaviour, yes. Something similar to what we call 'understanding' - yes. But I guess this really is a matter of semantics - I would reserve the term "thinking" for the linguaformal part of what goes on in our minds.


Sargeist,

identifying these noises as words seems to be unwarranted to me. A word is something that refers to something, either a thing, an action, an attribute - or something that has only a syntactic function (ie expressing a connection between other elements in a sentence).

What they have are expressive sounds, expressions of feelings.

It is hard to find an equivalent...hmm, yes.

Think of when we cry out in pain: "aaah" - this sound is an expression of that pain, and most would recognize it.
Or think of certain gestures we make to elicit a certain response. I think animals do have sounds with such functions, but nothing that corresponds exactly to what we would identify as a word.

The mentioned negatioation between chimps seems to me can be explained entirely with inner states corresponding to representations, feelings, desires and the expressions thereof.

(annabanana, if this is what you want to call thinking, then I have no objections whatsoever :)

1706. Fleabytes

Comment #143575 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 8:01 am

Chimps show complex social behaviour without such language - surely. But this didn't (as far as I can see) answer my question.

Fact is - the more complex the tools one can produce and/or use are the more functional abilities one has.

Such language is indeed the ultimate tool - and we use it mentally, constantly.

Our language is so vastly more complex than anything animals use in that respect - it enables us to interact on levels entirely inaccessible to animals.

For example what we're doing here - constructing, discussing and modifying explicit hypotheses.
This seems to me to be something very revolutionary, a quantum leap if you will of ability that does set us apart in terms of mental faculties from all other animals - and quite vastly so.

Theoretical physics - philosophy, mathematics - I do think this is a quantum leap from the 'negotiation' you mentioned in chimps.

btw, please note that I am not implying in this any moral value judgement.

1707. Fleabytes

Comment #143558 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 7:50 am

What I mean by language is (preliminary definition):

A systematic, grammatical structure based on (in the end) arbitrary symbols agreed upon by convention.

By grammatical I mean: having a syntactical structure that enables potentially infinite recombination (and thus potentially infinite construction of "new" propositions) and serves to express the logical structure of the state-of-affairs that is being expressed.

1708. Fleabytes

Comment #143549 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 7:43 am

I can conceive of animals doing this without human language, yes.

How?

Notice that by inquiry I do not mean something like a mother-cat producing a sound that elicits in the cub a similar response where this whole procedures serves to inform the mother where the cub is...

1709. Fleabytes

Comment #143545 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 7:39 am

Addendum:

So yes I do think the evidence justifies us entirely in hypothesizing that grammatical language revolutionizes the functionality of minds.
And (note, this is not meant to be an appeal to authority or numbers, simply information) nearly everyone I know who has dealt on a theoretical level with philosophy of language or some other field that throws its light on this subject have a similiar position.

Communication of ideas in a way other than behavioural imitation, inquiry, consciously making hypotheses, defining them, reflecting on them and modifying them - science, complex technology (that depends on science) and most of what we call culture (theater, film, opera etc) - all impossible without complex language, and all say something about the power of the human mind.

1710. Fleabytes

Comment #143536 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 7:32 am

Steve,

What can fulfill the role of adverbs is mental states.

You don't seem to get my point... for certain mental states to even be possible, the mind needs to have certain "tools" at hand.

A face-recognition neural network could not analyze the mathematical attributes of musical compositions - it doesn't have the "tools" for that.

How could there be such mental states fulfilling the role when there is no tool, no mechanism that can produce them (which language and using language can and do)? You will need some interpreting mechanism (which you would have to specify before we can try and find out whether it exists) that can do this.


Also, you didn't deal with my example of asking questions, of inquiry. Can you even conceive of a non-linguaformal way to do this?

I am sorry, but I don't see evidence for your position.

1711. Fleabytes

Comment #143522 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 7:24 am

I'm rambling again... maybe a philosopher could pick up on this?

Gladly.

Such thought-experiments (including also "Chinese Nation", "Zombies" and "Mary the colour blind colour scientist" etc)
Do not contain explicit, convincing arguments - they are what Dennett called "intuition pumps".

A good intuition pump lets us understand a problem and possibly some forwarded solutions better by also giving our intuition something to hold on to.

A bad intuition pump will get the unsuspecting reader to overlook serious problems with the argument hidden in the story - mostly it will get the reader to assume that he 'gets' the premises and their important implications when that is a really difficult thing indeed.

Concerning the chinese room - you could of course substitute the man with a machine. This intuition pump is bad, because it hides an equivocation fallacy.

Can the room be considered a chinese-speaker?
We usually conceive as a speaker a person who speaks a language, and we associate with that such aspects as what is being spoken having a certain significance to the speaker, being linked with memories, feelings, other sensory input etc.

In this intuition pump, the input language goes through only one process - that of translation - it doesn't get processed by a system that has experience, other sensory data etc - the system is too small. What we usually call a speaker includes all of that - it is a quite holistic conception.

If we mean by 'speaker' nothing more than something that can produce an output grammatical sentences that can be interpreted to express certain propositions, then yes, the room/box is one.

But this is not what we usually mean - equivocation fallacy.

On the subject of consciousness, while I do not want to start another open discussion here, I just wish to say - for the sake of having more than one position presented :) - that it is my opinion that consciousness and conscious experience is not something new that comes into existence when certain neuronal structures work, but is identical to the processes that happen.

1712. Fleabytes

Comment #143510 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 7:10 am

I just think we aren't in a position to deny that other animals reflect on such things.

I think to a very large extent, we are.

I think we are perhaps putting too much weight on the ability to express things in words.

I happen to have a very visual mind, and often find it hard to express in words some ideas I can picture.

Well, it's a tautology that only things and relations that can be visually observed can be pictured, even mentally.

This is an important point that cannot be overstated.

You cannot mentally picture (in the visual sense you mentioned) things or relations that you couldn't see if they were "out there".

You cannot picture questions without language either. You cannot picture "Why did he/she do this and that?" for example.

And I still say we cannot conceive of how concscious reflection (which includes such inquiries) should exist in a non-linguaform way.

You couldn't even test for that, since you would need something functionally similar to heterophenomenology - which in turn requires something functionally equivalent to our languages - ie a language with enough expressive power.


As I mentioned elsewhere some time ago - imagine you grow up knowing only a language that knows nothing that fulfills the grammatical function of adverbs (that can be either 'proper' adverbs, vocal inflexions, suffixes, prefixes or other systematic variations of the same basic verb etc). You could have no concept of two actions being essentially the same (being described with the same verb), but still being qualitatively different.

You could observe walking slowly and walking fast, and also know that there was a difference, but without anything that fulfills the role of what we call adverbs, you couldn't conceptualize that.

1713. Fleabytes

Comment #143503 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 6:56 am

It seems to me that we tend to assume that other humans think like we do and experience things like we do, just because they look like we do. I don't think I really have any more evidence that my girlfriend is in pain when she makes "painy noises" than a dog is when it does the same.

These are the kinds of observations that led to the development of the hugely influential movement in psychology and philosophy of mind called behaviourism, which basically states that there is nothing more to any mental phenomena than behaving in a certain way.

See for example:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/

(I don't hold this position, just thought I'd mention it)

Also, as for "evidence", you might want to take a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterophenomenology

and this:

http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/hreconsidered.pdf

1714. Fleabytes

Comment #143493 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 6:49 am

Steve,

I don't doubt the observations - and that they share very similar behavioural mechanisms and dispositions. I was merely saying that our emotions have an additional quality through our conscious reflection that increases what we would call "suffering"^.

Have you ever had a broken heart with the associated symptoms of "thinking in circles", asking meaningless questions to yourself or other, or questions to which you know you cannot get an answer, of having to go through the memories again and again, of trying to make sense of what happened (ie integrate the events into a coherent conceptual scheme and conception of you as a person including your history)... and all that increasing your suffering. I know I've had, I know many who have... I doubt anyone hasn't experiences at least something extremely similar.

1715. Fleabytes

Comment #143481 by MPhil on March 14, 2008 at 6:39 am

Yes, it's a knotty problem. Mammalian brains share the same basic structures. It's reasonable to assume that other mammals feel quite as we do.

Hmm... I'm not so sure. It seems to me that much of what we call suffering is not just the mere physical pain, ie stimulation of C-Fibres, but also the associated reflection on one's situation and feelings, including despair, hopelessness, also the realization of the moral dimension (which it seems happens mostly in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) etc that create (so to speak) a feedback enhancement loop and thus give the pain a whole new quality.

Our highly developed prefrontal lobe and the entire neocortical structure is quite different in complexity from most animals.

And since reflection is dependant on conceptualization and grammatical language, it seems to me that animal feelings are different.

I would say that they have "limbic-system"-pain, while we have additional and qualitatively different suffering stemming from our conceptualization faculties.

1716. Fleabytes

Comment #142879 by MPhil on March 13, 2008 at 7:05 am

epeeist,

On wiki it says

MacIntyre converted to Roman Catholicism in the early 1980s, and "now does his work against the background of what he calls an Augustinian Thomist approach to moral philosophy."

So I guess he converted shortly after, since "After Virtue"'s first edition got printed in '81.

But concerning Scanlon and 'books to add to the cart'... Scanlon is nice, but if I had to name one book of 'recent' moral philosophy that anyone should have read, I'd definitely go with "Ethics - Inventing Right and Wrong", wherein the late, wonderful John Leslie Mackie first makes a very convincing case for moral skepticism and error theory, and then goes on to develop a sketch of how a first-order ethical theory taking the aforementioned into account could look like.

No book on (meta-)ethics has shaped my thinking on the subject as much as this one.

Of course he also wrote the definite book on the philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God and the assumption thereof: "The Miracle of Theism". He positively destroyes all the arguments that were around back then - with absolutely clear thinking and valid philosophical argument. He even takes on Hans Küng in the book.

1717. Fleabytes

Comment #142825 by MPhil on March 13, 2008 at 6:03 am

epeeist,

concerning one of your posts on page 99 - are you aware that McIntyre turned Catholic Thomist in the 80s?

Also - do you know T.M. Scanlon's "What we owe to each other"? It's a Rawls-ian contractualist approach to morality... and very nice.

But not only do they need to show that the can provide a 'better' theory than Aristotle or McIntyre (before he turned nuts), they would need to show show that there are objective moral values and that there are real alternatives to consequentialism.

1718. Two More Fleas

Comment #142661 by MPhil on March 13, 2008 at 1:26 am

WHAT??? Behe, Dembski and Berlinski tutored Ann Coulter on what they call 'science' for one of her books??? Are my eyes deceiving me? I hop so.

This is the epitome of bad publicity for them. I mean, Ann Coulter? That evil, know-nothing, spiteful hag? That deluded "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" bitch?

Wow - who knew even Behe and Dembski could sink that low!

1719. Two More Fleas

Comment #142657 by MPhil on March 13, 2008 at 1:10 am

GordonYKWong,

Yes - I know they fall back to any ad hoc reinterpretation that they think has a chance of evading the criticism.
But at least any concept of God(s) that involves contradictory properties and ascriptions is disproven.

And I do think Dennett's analogy is quite for - but for characterizing the difference between wishy-washy moderate religion (such as central European Christianity) and more literalist position.

Why would I take offence at a pun? :)

Anyway, have fun reading. And yes, I studied and still study philosophy, philosophy of science and logic - my main interests at the moment are in neurophilosophy (and other philosophy of mind) and of course - philosophy of religion/atheism.

1720. Two More Fleas

Comment #142643 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 11:30 pm

I experience some kind of spasm whenever I see a hooter, I mean a wooter post and have to press the troll button, It must be the devil who makes me.

It is a waste of time to try to reason with him/her. I don't see the point of deconstructing his inane arguments the nth time unless you are doing this as an exercise to improve your writing skill.

:D

1721. Two More Fleas

Comment #142642 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 11:29 pm

Except that "omnipotent" is usually defined among theologians as having the power to do anything that does not imply a contradiction.

I know, at least by apologists/theologians in general it is. The average believer doesn't even think about such things. :)

Anyway - that definition either doesn't give theists what they want or leads to other contradictions.

I have analyzed this problem here:

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2285,Fleabytes,Paula-Kirby,page50#136661

Basically: Even I can create an object to heavy for me to lift (the fact that I'm not brining it's smallest parts into existence is of no importance) - I can e.g. weld together a piece of iron too heavy for me to lift. Since this is possible then, it cannot be logically contradictory. But I am not calling myself omnipotent.
It's more a problem of superlatives and self-referentiality. If God can do what I can do - then he cannot lift that object, weak god! Yet someone much stronger than me could probably lift that, so lifting it is no contradiction either.
If he cannot - incompetent God. I can do it, so that isn't a contradiction.

The problem seems unavoidable.

Take a look at the post I've linked - I hope you'll like it.
Also, I've discussed 'omnipresence':

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2285,Fleabytes,Paula-Kirby,page62#138081

1722. Two More Fleas

Comment #142639 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 11:20 pm

Has anyone provided a proof of God's inexistence?
No,...

Have you read my last post?

_________


As for Descartes' 'cogito' - well, it could be said to be a truism, ie

There exists a thing which thinks and which every speaker calls 'me' or 'I' and that thing exists.

It could also therefore be said to be using 'exists' as both a quantifier and a predicate.

I don't think it is necessarily untrue - it just doesn't prove anything. It's trivial, as I said a truism.

We can't get around self-referring - but that alone is not begging the question. Let's put it this way:

"Something is producing this sentence. Whatever produced that last sentence exists." This is a truism, and not questionable - it has nothing to do with an immaterial mind however.

And then of course there is the issue that the Cartesian "doubt everything" leads to a meta-level regress of being deluded about the existence of one's mind.

1723. Two More Fleas

Comment #142622 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 10:02 pm

bOOOOOOORing... please see FSM, celestial teapot, unicorns, et la.

I know I am repeating myself - but I hope one day we can all agree that specific claims to the existence of God can be disproven!

How? Easy.
Evidentally, God isn't something you can point at, it's nothing that your senses detect like a bowling ball or a plant or another human.

An entity is defined by its attributes. So when theists forward a description of what they believe in, they have to give descriptions, ie they have to name attributes.

If the description of something is contradictory, either explicitly or implicitly, meaning if one or more attributes inherently lead to a contradiction or of two or more contradict each other, there can be no thing that would fit the description! It would be a logical impossibility - just like a square circle!

The God of Biblical literalism is easy to disprove. Remember, one contradiction is enough - there are a lot in the bible. So the god of the biblical literalist cannot possibly exist, it is therefore disproven.

But even those who yell "metaphor" every time you point out an inconsistency cannot completely escape this. Ask: "Metaphor for what?" Either the answer will conform to feasible semantic interpretations, in which case we're back at the original contradictions, or they won't, in which case that is another point of critique.

Furthermore, as long as the theists claim their God is "omnipotent" - they have already lost. Omnipotence is a contradictory concept. It is an attribute that nothing could have. Therefore, any omnipotent God (under any interpretation of the word I have seen) is impossible.

Also, the concept of "omniscience" might involve a hidden Russell's paradox: It would be like the set of all sets that do not include themselves - there can be no such set.

In addition to that, the concept of a "person" "outside of time and space" is contradictory under any feasible interpretation of "person", since that would involve agency - which can only happen in time. Much the same is true for omnipresence.


In short: Yes, the God of Christianity, any omnipotent God, even any interventionist God is disproven (conservation of energy and momentum), and under any feasible interpretation, so are any omniscient, omnipresent, and metaphysical 'person'-Gods.

Cheers,
-Mike

1724. Fleabytes

Comment #142419 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Somehow I'm not quite sure how to interpret the usage of the present tense in "It pays not to live near Germany, no doubt"...

It also paid not to live in Germany back then. Because of that regime, the injustice of the treaty of Versaille that gave the NSDAP something with the critique of which (among other things) they could bait the people, and the people and institutions supporting them (including the churches) - almost ever major city got destroyed, huge loss of cultural treasures... and not to mention that some of the bombings (Dresden eg) were not essential in winning the war and had no other effect than killing thousands of civillians and destroyed cultural artefacts of immesurable value.

Still, I think I know what you're getting at - and you do have a point.

1725. Fleabytes

Comment #142387 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 12:34 pm

mlearnedfriend
NB also, just because something is only mentioned in one historical writing doesn't mean that it's not true. It would just be nice to have some corroboration.

Did he just call the bible 'historical writing'? Did he just say that this source is to be trusted - corroboration would be nice but is not required for its historical claims to be taken as true?

Err...

1726. Fleabytes

Comment #142384 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 12:31 pm

I think the point was that the US don't really have experience with having enemy tanks rolling through their cities, with enemy armies sweeping through the country, Bomb raids through their cities, long range artillery blasting away towns, a large part of the civilian population witnessing first hand such events... I think you're making it a little easy for yourself by condemning surrender. If an enemy army of such power as that of Nazi Germany when it was invading France is going to blast you into oblivion, surrendering can (I'm not saying it was definitely, that's idle speculation, but that it could) be the only option if you want to save your population.

And let's not talk about using the armed forces for colonialism/imperialism... Neither France, nor Germany, nor Russia, China or the US are free from blame in such matters.

1727. Fleabytes

Comment #142360 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 11:42 am

mlearnedfriend,


please, have a look at these:

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html

(included: God's water-canopy above the earth, clearly showing that the writers had no idea how the water that falls from the sky as rain got up there. Which is no surprise, because it's a poor attempt at explaining by myth something which science has to (and did) investigate.)

and this:

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/abs/long.htm

1728. Fleabytes

Comment #142356 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 11:35 am

Well, that first comment seems quite unsubstantiated.

They at least have the courage to stand up for their rights and have mass demonstrations if their elected leaders try to abridge their rights...
Also the derogatory use of "communist" sounds a bit McCarthy-ish. Don't get me wrong - I think every single actual communist regime was despicable, but they were far from what Marx and Engels would have wanted. I don't agree with Marx and Engels either, mind you.

Sartre - a few good points but too dogmatic
Foucault - many unwarranted conclusions
Derrida - to obscure and also too many unwarranted conclusions.

Concerning that last sentence, the "had" hurt a litte :) It's not entirely true, but German philosophy definitely isn't what it used to be. Still, Wittgenstein, Popper (Austrian, I know), Carnap, Stegmueller etc were giants in their fields.

1729. Fleabytes

Comment #142352 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 11:17 am

al,

I don't have to be a strict deconstructionist to obliterate the bible.

Definitely not - you don't need to be a deconstrictivist at all; just someone who can spot inconsistencies :)

IMHO French philosophy took a wrong turn somewhere... much bla bla, little to no analytical thinking, a few good points, much too much dogma.
Of course that's just my opinion, as I prefer the analytic tradition.

1730. Fleabytes

Comment #142348 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 11:11 am

Al,


don't get me started on Derrida - if you wanted to go through with deconstructivism, you'd end up without standards for truth and evidence, and we don't want that, do we? :)

1731. Fleabytes

Comment #142346 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 11:09 am

mlearnedfriend,


The problem is, most religious folk take their holy text of choice to be "true by default", and even most scholars who are religious think it can be assumed true unless conclusively proven false.

This is not how things work in history. I can make up a story about a man living in ancient egypt. There isn't enough evidence to positively disprove such a claim. The fact is you need independent sources of evidence to support any such claim.

Fact is, there isn't even any historical evidence for the existence of Moses outside of the partisan religious "holy book". Even traditionalist Rabbi's recognize that:

Orthodox Rabbi Shalom Carmy of New York's Yeshiva University grants that historians have so far found no documentation on Moses apart from the biblical writings.

1732. Fleabytes

Comment #142281 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 8:52 am

On the subject of Music,

epeeist, Richard Morgan,

have you ever heard of David Cope? He has written a program that can analyse the composing-style of a composer by analysing his music - and then emulate that style. I've listened to his Experiments in Musical Intelligence and I must say it's absolutely superb!

Listen to examples here:

http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm


(oh yes, incidentally, the program can also combine styles and thus create new music.)

It's a wonderful, astounding achievement in my opinion.

1733. Fleabytes

Comment #142212 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 6:45 am

Oh yes, I forgot:

v)the answers we have can be extremely complex and require real effort to understand.

1734. Fleabytes

Comment #142207 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 6:40 am

Well, I don't think religion really provides answers for problems - it provides an excuse not to have to live with the facts that
i)we have as of yet no answers to many of such problems
ii)the answers we have do not fulfil the need some people have for 'mystery'
iii)the answers we have do not fulfil the need some people have for 'intrinsic meaning' and being the centre of attention in the entire universe
iv) some of these problems are based on asking the wrong questions, having concepts without a real referent.

1735. Fleabytes

Comment #142162 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 5:19 am

If Mr Sands was to be consistent he would have to believe that David CAN define anything the way he wants for, after all, all moral values are relative.

*cough*idiot*cough*

Unable to distinguish between methodological requirements and moral values? Between standards of rationality and of morality?

1736. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #142149 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 4:34 am

Russell Blackford,

While I completely agree with you that no philosopher has managed (or could IMO) to show that objective moral values exist, I would say that we can construct a first order ethical-theory that does not rely on emotion, ie that does not point to emotions as the guiding principle. This does not mean that it cannot or should not take into account that emotions do have motivational power.

Utilitarianism or contractualism (to which I subscribe) are a prime example I think.

1737. Fleabytes

Comment #142146 by MPhil on March 12, 2008 at 4:22 am

One further remark on the morality issue:

My my, David... shifting around a lot, are we?

First you said that morality was a "sense of right and wrong", now you're saying it's having a "concept of right and wrong".

Under the first definition, moral behaviour based on empathy without conscious reflection on concepts clearly counts as morality - and this is what certain animals are shown to posses.

So yes, certain animals show moral behaviour based on empathy.

"Morality" derives from latin "mores", which means social conventions pertaining to what behaviour is accepted and what is not.

I have no problem with stating that while animals only have moral behaviour as per having behaviour governed by empathy and social conventions, only humans through the faculty of highly complex language can reflect upon those, form concepts, study and modify them and even reflect upon meta-ethics.


What are moral values? Are they metaphysically objective entities that some that have a connection (as per what mechanism is the metaphysical connected to the physical?) to certain actions and intentions?

You seem to claim that - what else would "objective, absolute moral values" mean?

Demonstrate their existence! You cannot - as Steve rightly said, no one in the entiire history of philosophy has managed that. What has been done is it has been shown that that the concept of metaphysically objective values is both highly problematic and superfluous. (vid. "Ethics - Inventing Right and Wrong" by John Leslie Mackie)

It does not conform to metaphysical parsimony: since the existence of metaphysical entities cannot be demonstrated either directly or indirectly, since per definition they do not need a causal explanation, we must not assume the existence of more metaphysical entities than are absolutely required to explain the empirically observable.

If you do not accept metaphysical parsimony, their assumption becomes arbitrary and you would have no justification for opposing a view that says that there are 13 metaphysical fairies at the core of each star that cause gravity to lead to the fusion of hydrogen to helium, or any other metaphysical claim.

Furthermore, you seem to be unaware that the "divine command theory" of morality is not ethical objectivism, but ethical subjectivism - since the morality is subjective to (dependent on) God's will. Thus, moral values are not absolute in divine command theory, they are merely absolute for us. That is, unless of course you claim that absolute moral values are ontologically prior to and higher than God, so that he was bound by them.



Really, your view of moral justification is (like that of most apologists) so incredibly narrow and unnecessarily restrictive it's quite comical. You think that absolute moral values are required to have justification for opposing certain actions and supporting others. And what's even more bizarre, most theists I know assume that metaphysically objective moral values can only be coherently conceived from a theistic point of view, which demonstrates incredible ignorance of the history of philosophy. Ever heard of Plato to name just one?

Fact is that there are numerous coherent first-order ethical theories that do not depend on metaethical moral realism. Contractualism is one, utilitarianism is another - in fact, any consequentialist position is, and so are some deontological positions.

So in conclusion, the view that
i)absolute moral values exist,
ii)are necessary for a coherent ethical position and
iii)are only coherently conceivable within theism

is infantile and wrong on all three counts.


Cheers,
Mike

1738. Fleabytes

Comment #141930 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 12:05 pm

This is the economist's definition of rationality, which involves maximizing utility rather than "truth". If you get what you want by subscribing to a fiction who is to say it is not rational in that sense?

Hmm, but whether it actually is rational as opposed to merely perceived as rational but in fact only costly on resources (time, energy) depends on the actual utility.

This seems like some kind of Pascal's Wager.

In order to maximize the utility, wouldn't we have to pray to all gods? Or only to the ones that don't fight each other?

But no utility of praying has been observed except for the placebo-effect. You could invest that same time and energy into something more effective, I'd say.

1739. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141920 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 11:45 am

Well, the question when human life can be said to begin, or from what developmental stage on it becomes ethically untenable to end the development - these are real problems, and should be discussed.

A decision cannot be made a priori - we need justification either way. And that can be discussed.
I have no problem with granting women the right to aborting an embryo before it develops a functional nervous system, because this is where I -after long consideration- draw the line non-arbitrarily.

Yes, you can take it too far - when valuing human life becomes declaring a 128-celled blob human life and then assigning inalienable rights to it, or when we extend it to include the right to live as we want including driving other species into extinction.

Of course, I don't think we should value the life of animals more than human life either - but that should go without saying.

It's complicated - I was merely stating that placing a pretty high value on human life should still be part of everyone's ethical code. What I mean by that should be apparent.

1740. Fleabytes

Comment #141903 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 11:00 am

epeeist,

yes, sadly - it's astounding how someone who did introduce some very interesting psychological notions, who is mentioned in the same breath as Freud and Adler, could be such a nutjob.

1741. Fleabytes

Comment #141902 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 10:55 am

Ouch!

:)

1742. Fleabytes

Comment #141898 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 10:45 am

"Look, I know I can't prove the existence of God or provide a shred of empirical evidence. And yet I do believe."

I come across this very often... they simply say something to the effect of ''God' has nothing to do with evidence' or 'God cannot be known, his presence can only be felt'...

1743. Fleabytes

Comment #141896 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 10:43 am

The difference is that some of us are prepared to have our world-model changed and discard previous views.

True, but a complete coherence may not even be possible, given that we have to take into account implicit beliefs as well (inferences from explicit beliefs) and that our belief system is incredibly huge. We may a attempt to minimize the incoherence, but it seems impossible to avoid it altogether.

1744. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141894 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 10:35 am

Valuing human life is never a bad thing IMO... you just have to distinguish between this and granting someone the final legal right to decide over his/her own.

I don't want to set up a straw man here...but I'll say it nevertheless: I doubt you would want a society where the people do not value human life.

1745. Fleabytes

Comment #141891 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 10:28 am

Peacebeuponme,

agreed :)

Verylee,

verily!

1746. Seven new deadly sins: are you guilty?

Comment #141885 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 10:17 am

Peacebeuponme,

I think the motivation can be, is often and possibly should be both.


Ed-words,

As I happen to be a German citizens, I know that sadly it's still not really legal...

(and I wasn't referring to the antisemitic genocide btw, but the euthanasia of the physically and mentally sick)

1747. Fleabytes

Comment #141880 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 10:13 am

epeeist,

(I know we've had this before, but I think this warrants reiteration)

Indeed - Scientists usually take a correspondence theory of truth (as do I for that matter, as evidenced above - while I acknowledge that we cannot have second-order knowledge, ie knowing for sure that we know something for sure).

Religious people seem to do so as well - until they are cornered, when they try to weasel to a coherence-theory of truth... which won't do them any good, since they most likely entertain some scientific beliefs and logical beliefs as well which are not coherent with their beliefs in the truth of their dogma.

1748. Fleabytes

Comment #141874 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 10:05 am

Shayne,


Well, we know that physical pain is identical to C-Fibre activity and the corresponding activity in the somatosensoric cortex with associated activity in the limbic system and the frontal cortex. Purely emotional pain is at least evidenced by increased activity in the limbic system and the frontal cortex (mostly, since emotional pain is reinforced by 'loopback' thinking about one's situation).

But that's not the issue here - I was merely reporting my own observations. And I cannot detect among the instances I observe(d) a significant difference in guilt between non-religious and religious people when it comes to how they should have treated a person who has recently died.

I may have no justification for generalizing these experiences - but I thought I'd report them nevertheless.

1749. Fleabytes

Comment #141862 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 9:58 am

How about:

Truth = conforming to actually obtaining states of affairs

Knowledge = belief in a true proposition, justified by a causal connection known to be sufficiently reliable, such as empirical evidence or conceptual necessity where the concepts are themselves shown to be accurate by independent corroboration.

1750. Fleabytes

Comment #141859 by MPhil on March 11, 2008 at 9:53 am

In roulette, there is no reason to think it will. It could easily be "Red" all night long. It's 50/50 and the roulette wheel has no "memory".

I know what you mean - but disregarding the black fields for a moment, the chance for red or green at every turn is equal when there are exactly the same number of red or green fields and we disregard imperfections of the physical system.

With sufficiently long trial run... the overall average will approach the 50/50 distribution of the initial likelyhood. This is in no way contradictory to the possibility that it could be Red all night long

:)