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@Fallaneze
I'm sorry. I misread the second of your statements. I should have replied "those things are not morally good as they pertain to my moral standards". Is that where the confusion lies?In reference to the opinion that cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice and laziness were morally good you said:"I, personally, would find those things irrational if I wanted to be considered a good person. However, I cannot speak for someone else"Now, in reference to the same opinion that cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, are morally good are you saying this:"Those things are morally good as they pertain to my moral standards. It would not be irrational for a sadist or a compulsive liar to disagree with me."
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Those things are morally good as they pertain to my moral standards. It would not be irrational for a sadist or a compulsive liar to disagree with me.The opinion was that cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, and laziness was morally good. You found this to be irrational when taking into account your moral standards.
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@Fallaneze
I didn't say that a difference of opinion on morality is irrational.What I'm not understanding is why you've accepted that a different opinion on ice cream flavors isn't irrational but a different opinion on morality is.
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@Fallaneze
It does to that person at that moment. It may not appear rational to anyone else. They may also change their mind at a later time.If someone believes that their behavior is rational does that automatically make it so?
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@Fallaneze
Also, the difference between a preference for ice cream and a moral issue would be the effect the outcome has on others. The fact that both are subjective is not relevant.
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@Fallaneze
Because rationality is not universal. What is rational to me may not be rational to another.
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@Fallaneze
I, personally, would find those things irrational if I wanted to be considered a good person. However, I cannot speak for someone else.Is someone irrational for believing that cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, and laziness are morally good?
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@Fallaneze
Is someone who likes the flavor of vanilla ice cream better than chocolate irrational?
No. Please make your point.
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@Fallaneze
Haha okay, do you like a swirl of chocolate and vanilla ice cream or strawberry ice cream better?
Chocolate.
I imagine in about 20 more posts we will get to the point?
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@Fallaneze
Do you like the flavor of chocolate or vanilla ice cream better?
Actually, I like a swirl of both.
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@Fallaneze
Be compassionate, honest, courageous, diligent, etc.
All good ideas. It seems that our moral standards are in alignment.
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@Fallaneze
What behavior can be rationally endorsed as a universal principle to everyone?
Where are you going with this?
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@Fallaneze
Good luck with that. What is rational to one person may not be to another which is kind of the point here. I think murder is wrong. Someone else does not. That is about as basic a claim as you can make and even it can't be agreed upon.Correct. So in order to begin our inquiry about which one is real we must first be working from the moral realist perspective. It's a matter of determining which moral views corroborate the underlying facts. It's a matter of discerning which moral views are most rational.
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@Fallaneze
Well if none of them are what would it matter?
If none of them are then moral realism does not exist. If one of them is real, which one is it?
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@Fallaneze
So which moral standard is "real"? Yours, mine or theirs?
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@Fallaneze
Then what good is a theistic objective moral standard? Does everyone need to be on the same page that says it is a "good" thing to kill someone due to a lack of belief?Maximizing physical harm to you is good though according to their chosen standard. In any case, there's no moral highground between the both of you.
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@Fallaneze
They could only say that if they can articulate any harmful actions that my moral standards have caused. I can articulate many that they have caused. Harm can be interpreted as either mental or physical with physical being the most obvious. I suppose anyone could say that they have suffered mental harm by my apostasy so I'll just stick with physical harm to make my point.
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@Fallaneze
Well it's interesting you bring up moral beliefs. Aren't you against moral realism?
Yes, you could say that. I don't believe that objective morality exists other than that which is in relation to a predetermined moral standard(s). Hopefully those moral standards won't lead to irrational harmful actions.
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@Fallaneze
There is nothing wrong with trying to determine the most rational inference for an unknowable question. I and others only have a problem with that when it becomes the basis for unrelated irrational thought such as antiquated moral beliefs which in turn lead to harmful actions. An example would be jihadism.
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@Fallaneze
I suspect that the "evidence" is actually theoretical speculation based on what you can imagine to be the only logically possible answer to the question of how the universe was created. There is no testable physical evidence for or against the proposition. I and others do the same thing with topics like Free Will.Yes, but there's too much to say. Each argument would need to be its own separate topic.
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@Fallaneze
Can you articulate what available evidence are you using to justify your belief in God?
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@Fallaneze
A belief doesn't, this particular one does. It is arguably the most important belief there can be. I don't wish to be led into a belief this important by the slightest amount of nearly weightless evidence.Why does a belief need to reach a threshold of "incontrovertible" rather than simply "more likely true than false"?
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@Fallaneze
Well if the evidence hasn't met a threshold beyond a reasonable doubt, by definition, that is not enough to assume guilt. That was probably an inappropriate metaphor.
In the case of God's existence, I would hope that any evidence would be incontrovertible, meaning it can't be explained by any other cause. I also realize that may be too much to ask for, so as secularmerlin keeps saying, skepticism is the the way to go.
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Look at it this way - in a legal case, evidence can make an innocent person look guilty if a bit more has been discovered in the direction of guilt. It doesn't mean there isn't undiscovered evidence pointing to innocence. I would hope that, in this case (the existence of God), the evidence would be incontrovertible.
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@Fallaneze
Evidence varies in ways such as veracity, weight, relevance, etc. The evidence would need to be evaluated on its merits. The slightest bit of circumstantial evidence probably would not sway me especially with a subject as weighty as this. Evidence would need to be such that it can't be explained away by another phenomenon.
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@Fallaneze
But that means your position on the claim "God exists" is that it's neither more plausibly true nor more plausibly false.
Yes, I suppose it does mean that.
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My only argument would be that without evidence, there is no reason to believe in theism.
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Infinite regress is logically impossible. The beginnings of existence are beyond our epistemological limits. The paradox of existence could mean an action cased by free will, that is one of an unknown number of possibilities. We don't know. I think that we simply don't have enough information to understand the concept of time or cause and effect as it relates to existence pre-Big Bang or of existence itself. To insist on one of an unknowable number of unknowable possibilities, is hubris.
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@3RU7AL
Again, free only means free from impediment. If that sounds like what an insect or a robot does, you are entitled to that opinion.Ok, this doesn't sound like it's very "free". This sounds more like what an insect or a robot does.
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@3RU7AL
Thank you. Please feel free to modify your definition in any way during the course of our continued discussion.So any action you take after having a logical (rational) thought, but not because of that rational thought and in no other way directly related to that particular rational thought?
I'm not modifying definitions.
An action taken after, because of and directly related to that particular rational thought. There, I fixed that for you.
Not an uncaused action. Not random.
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@3RU7AL
(IFF) "rational thought" is logical (AND) logic is predetermined by initial conditions (THEN) "rational thought" is incompatible with choice
Can you prove that rational thought can result in only one outcome? I contend that rational thought provides the option of more than one possible outcome in some cases. I can't prove either proposition so where does that leave us? And please don't say that an outcome that didn't happen could not have existed because only one outcome does exist.
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@3RU7AL
I didn't say that. I said that choices based on rational thought are by definition free will.Please explain why you seem to believe that "rational thought" cannot exist without "choice".
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@secularmerlin
Neither love nor rational thought involves choice. Is it then not also possible that the feeling you refer to as freewill also does not involve choice but rather the post hoc justification of thoughts and actions that your brain makes for you before you are consciously aware of them?
It is possible but that would mean that rational thought does not exist. I don't maintain that notion.
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@3RU7AL
An action taken after rational thought and not because of internal or external influences is what I mean by free will.
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@3RU7AL
If you actually construct verifiably logical phrases and statements, then, at least apparently, you are (or were) capable of "rational thought".
If one is capable of rational thought, by definition one is capable of free will.
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@3RU7AL
If something falls outside of the scope of science, it is indistinguishable from pure imagination.
Do you believe that rational thought exists? If so, how can it be quantified?
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@Deb-8-a-bull
And your point being?You don't say that But Ok So.2 piles of sand plus 2 piles of sand equals 8 half piles of sand2+2 =416 quarter piles of sand.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
You get the amount of sand equal to 4 piles of sand.If you add 2 piles of sand to 2 piles of sand what do you get?
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@keithprosser
Do you take the "appeal to the stone" to mean that even kicking a stone is not proof of its reality?
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@secularmerlin
What is the practical observable difference? How would freewill differ from the illusion of freewill?
Keith's answer seems correct. You can ask that about almost anything. How would anything differ from the illusion of that thing? How does love differ from the illusion of love? How does rational thought differ from the illusion of rational thought? I don't see the utility in asking that question.
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@keithprosser
If concepts exist, do they still exist if nobody is thinking about them? I know, it's similar to the tree falling in the forest. If a unicorn only existed as a verbal description, meaning nobody ever wrote about or drew pictures of it, would the concept of it continue to exist if nobody ever thought about it again?You actually go further and ask if concepts even exist. I would say they do, but care is needed to avoid slipping from 'the concept of X exists' to 'X exists'.
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@secularmerlin
That is possible. As I've said, not all actions are based on rational choices.Yes it is almost as if we are reacting rather than choosing.
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@3RU7AL
Self-reporting is unreliable and unscientific. Self-reporting is inconclusive.
And yet that is exactly how we determine guilt and innocence in many cases.
"Did you fear for your life?"
"Yes I did."
"Not guilty!"
If free-will applies to all creatures, then morality applies to all creatures.
As I said, the definition of free will only applies to animals in the very loosest sense of the word. So loose that it is nonsensical. I have not redefined free will. You are attempting to redefine the word "choice".
A lack of free will, in some cases, is self evident. There is no way, in some cases, to prove the existence of free will without self reporting. We have a system of justice to determine that very thing using all available evidence (including self reporting). If you want me to give you concrete non-anecdotal evidence for the existence of free will, I can't do that. Anecdotally, 7.5 billion people currently experience the phenomenon.
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@3RU7AL
Yes, probably.So, would you say, "self-reporting" is the primary way to determine if someone made a "free-will" choice?
I'm merely pointing out that if you change the definition of "free-will" then you must also change the definition of "morality".
I disagree. It is not the definition so much as the existence of. If an action is made rationally (with thought), there may be moral consequences. If an action is made reflexively (without thought), there are none. The (current) definition of morality only changes when you say that free will does not exist.
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@janesix
That which exists is real. The only way to determine what exists is with perception. Even the use of science to quantify reality requires human perception.
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@MagicAintReal
As soon as the subject of free will is mentioned, any thread will explode.
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This type of scenario is played out in movies all the time. "Saw" comes to mind. The legal consequences, however, I don't recall seeing.
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@3RU7AL
Not being a dog, I can't answer how an animal's choice is different from a human's. Many animals are documented as using reason to achieve a goal.
An example of free will act : I choose to reply to your post on this thread.
An example of a non-free will act : I reflexively duck when I see a fouled baseball hurling at me.
Of course not all actions are as clear as those examples especially when intense emotion is involved.
And I still say that telling me what meaning (quaila) is applied to choices (quanta) is an opinion.
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@3RU7AL
It's not a matter of personal opinion if it is based on logic.If dogs and robots and fleas have free-will then they are capable of moral choices, and you'd have to completely revamp the concept of morality in that case.
Look, can we stick to people? Dogs only have what is defined as free will in the very loosest sense of the word and certainly do not make moral choices.
If I believe that humans have the ability to make choices and you say yes, but those choices are meaningless, that is an opinion. Are you able to scientifically quantify the meaning of choices?
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@3RU7AL
No. By prevented, I only mean no options. Your argument seems to claim that influences remove all options. I deny that.So, according to your definition, "impeded" requires a rational actor? I mean, "prevented" sounds intentional.
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