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It exactly does. Organisms that understand the world have a distinct survival advantage over those that don't.
Undoubtedly,but its only possible to understand the world because matter is stable and the laws of physics are regular. As it is, we can rely on that if B follows from A today, it will also do so tomorrow. If the world was totally chaotic it would be impossible to understand.
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@drafterman
i don't think that works, DM! Understanding the world is beneficial, but that doesn't seem to explain why the universe is understandable in the first place.
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@Fallaneze
Not quite. If there is no such thing as morality then we shouldn't talk about things begin morally good or morally bad. That is to say that child rapists are not 'bad' and non-rapists are not 'good' - how could they be if there is no such thing as 'good' and 'bad'?
So it is not morality (which does not exist) that decrees that children should not be raped. The fiction of morality is replaced by a battle of wills between those who would rape children and those who would not. Obviously (I hope it obvious) I am on the side of the non-rapers; but for my will to prevail the child-rapists have to be defeated by me and people like me because there is no 'moral force' in the universe protecting children.
That could be easily proven by not entering into such battles. The old adage is 'for evil to succeed it is only necessary for good men to do nothing'.
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@Fallaneze
Sometimes reality is counter-intuitive.
I'm used to the idea that the complexity in the world stems from the action of mindless processes - it is now my intuition that it is so. I probably did think otherwise a long time ago, but now I'm comfortable with it and uncomfortable with the idea of a 'grand plan'. I'd say its a matter of psychology.
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You seem to think that not drawing wild conclusions from insufficient information is 'sitting on the fence'!
I'd say he's a martyr by definition, but I doubt he wanted to be one! But he was a mug to think it was a good idea.
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@Fallaneze
So if a pedophile's mental response reacts positively to raping children, but your mental response is negative, neither of you are more right than the other in determining whether raping children is morally good or morally wrong?
You are getting the wrong end of the stick. If a child is raped then that child suffers mental and physical damage. Rape does not have the property of evil (or of immorality) because 'evil' and '(im)morality' do not exist.
Rape causes suffering, and our brains recognise that. It reacts by secreting hormones which cause us to feel negatively towards rape (I'm talking about non-rapists here for simplicity). We erroneously ascribe our negative feeings towards rape as being due to rape possessing the property of immorality, as if evil/morality was an actual thing or stuff that attaches to acts such as rape and murder and 'good' is stuff attached to charity.
That is to say the harm caused by rape is real - however the immorality/evil of rape is not real; it just seems to be.
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I think it a good idea to have a concrete example, such as 'Hearts exists to circulate the blood'.
F is asking how a mindless process would 'know' it would need hearts and set about evolving them.
It was Darwin (mainly) who answered that puzzle. He pointed out that because things reproduce imperfecly natural selection will achieve similar looking results as a planned, conscious
If you look at a highly evolved organism (such as a human) and work backwards in time it can appear that everything was aimed at producing a human begin as the end point. But if you begin at the start and work forwards, there are countless branch points which could have gone a different way. If things were a little different this post may have beem written by an intelligent dinosaur and it would appear that the aim or goal of evolution was to produce 'Tyranosaurus Sapiens'.
The other aspect is that having no goal seems to rob life of its 'meaning and purpose'. That nihilistic conclusion is not psychologically appealing but I think it can be viewed postively. What it means is that our fate and destiny isn't determined by anything 'out there' - we can choose our future - we can set our own aims and goals. I think that is as exciting as it a terrifying! I can imagine how nice it would be to have someone or something to do the thinking and planning for us - all we have to do is follow orders and leave the responsibility to the boss.
But there is no boss - we have to make the decisions and suffer or enjoy the consequences of our choices. It's just a pity we aren't very good at it.
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@Fallaneze
I would put it this way; morality is not a 'thing' nor is it a 'property'. That is murder does not manifest evil and charity does not manifest good. Rather 'good' and 'evil' are labels for our mental responses to such things as murder and charity, which reflects the level and mix of hormones that
perception and/or conemplation of murder and charity induces in our brains.
That is morality does not exist in the same way colour does not exist - they are both purely perceptual.
I am not saying that is the best way to put it!
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People have been using ordinary language to constructively discuss ontology and epistemology for millennia.
But how successfully? I seems to me that many threads on DA degenerate into trading dictionary definitions.
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I wish ordinary language was easer to use... unfortunately it was invented to deal with hunting zebras and gathering nuts not for doing ontological epistemology!
It seems to me we have true/real/exists on one side and false/unreal/'un-exists' on the other. We use those words but I don't tremember ever learning what they mean how they relate to each other. I've never looked them up in a dictionary. So what is the difference between something that is true and something that is false? More to the point, perhaps we don't need seperate words for true, real and exists if we can define term in terms of each other, along the lines that 'the true=the real=the existing' and 'the false=the unreal=the non-existent'.
It's just an idea to kick around - I'm a bit bored with the current threads!
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@Stephen
You have not shown not a single piece of evidence to support your opinion that Jesus was not a Priest or King.
Being a descendant of priests or kings does not make someone a priest or a king - as the linked article explains everyone in the world is descended from a king - you are a descendant of Charlemagne!
Any royal or priestly heritage seems to be lost on Jesus' parents:
Luke 2:46-49
46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
But why would anybody bother?This is a problem with ELO in general. I don't mean to insult Mikal's debating skills or temperament by the comparison, but Mikal was at the top on DDO despite the vast majority of people not seeing him as the best debater, a mantle that many would give to Whiteflame or Bluesteel. Because of the way that ELO works, you can make it to the top relatively easily by just having a lot of time to waste and strategically picking debates that you know you will win. In a site with a small and largely inexperienced debating pool like this one, it's very easy to shoot enough fish in the barrel and rise to the top, provided you don't have much use for your free time in real life. Mikal was at least a skilled debater, if not the best, so he rose through the ranks of the leader boards of DDO while it was filled with competent debaters. I think that in these early stages of this site's development it would be even easier to do what he did, with a far more impoverished skillset.
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@Mopac
You [ie stephen] are very rude.
I sometimes wonder if posters are as obnoxious in real life as they are on line! Either they are and so are forced to go on line to avoid getting continually punched in the mouth or.... they aren't, I suppose. ;)
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@Mopac
That seems to imply that 'ordinary' truth can sometimes be false. A statement can switch between true and false ('Today is Thursday', for example) but 'true' is aways true and 'false' is always false. What does adding the word 'absolute' to 'truth' do, other than make it seem very grand and important!
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I deliberately wrote 'any thing' not 'anything' because it's obvious statements expressing falsehoods exist - 2=2=5 for example. But there is no actual case or instance of 2 plus 2 making 5 in the universe - ie 2+2=5 does not describe any actual 'thing'.
The true exists, the false does not exist. Discuss!
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@Mopac
Nobody seems willing to say what the difference between 'truth' and 'absolute truth' is. I know 2+2=4 is true, but I don't know if it is 'absolutely true' or whatever other sort of truth there is supposed to be (ie what is 'unabsolute truth'?). I think the OP is saying all truths are 'absolute truths', in which case why bother to say 'absolute'! My issue with G is that he seems to have posted first and thought about it after.
There are things that are true, things that are false and things where it isn't that simple!
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By a mathematical quirk, there are so many generations between jesus and david that it is almost certain jesus was david's descendant - but so was every other jew alive then.
Luke indicates that jesus' family was poor in Lk 2:22-24
The law relating to the purificaton of a woman after giving birth refered to is given in Lev 12:-8
6 ... she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering ... 8 But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons,
Luke wants to indicate that Mary was too poor to pay a lamb so she was forced to go for the cheaper option.
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@Stephen
So tell me , you clown, how could Mary remain a "virgin" after the birth of Jesus, when your own New Testament scriptures categorically state different. Were all these siblings immaculately conceived too?
Minor point - Jesus was not immaculately conceived; Mary was.
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@Fallaneze
I thnk its more to do with how your brain responds to the notion of cheating/rape/murder/charity that matters. Maybe when you think about infidelity in the abstract you dopamine level rises?
I'm going to have to think about this!
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@TwoMan
6 months ago I would - and probably did - have supported Harris' position. I've certainly defended obective morality vigorously in the past, if not on DA then on DDO. Nowadays I am not nearly so sure.
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@Fallaneze
In this framework there is no such thing as morally right or morally wrong. Following 3RUs chemical version, if cheating on a spouse causes your brain to secrete one homone you will judge it as moral, screte a different hormone and you'll judge it as immoral. And that is all there is to 'morality'.Under this framework, would it still be morally wrong to cheat on your significant other if you could get away with it and weren't bothered by your conscience?
Anythng else about morality is imaginary or may be wishful thinking.
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@3RU7AL
Dopamine (in high doses) = EVILSerotonin = GOOD.These are quantifiable substances.
So inside our heads is a bunch of neurones that picks out certain features of things and - depending on the inputs - pumps out either dopamine or seratonin. Over millions of years it has evolved to pump dopamine when it picks up what is negative (from a Darwinian perspective)and seratonin when it recognises something as positive.
Morality is the subjective manifestation of the objective dopamine/seratonin level in our brain.
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@Fallaneze
I still don't see how evolution, or any other mindless process, can have aims or goals. When we discuss things that are the result of evolution we can't say that those things have certain aims or goals.
You are correct of course. Evolutionists do use idioms suggestive of aims and goals which are dead wrong if taken literally. The problem is that avoiding such idioms can result in prose that is turgid and pedantic. Eyes did not evolve to allow critters to see, but I defy anyone to express things in a more technically correct, non-telelogical way that is not a drag to read or write. I could describe the evolution of eyes avoiding aims and goals here and now, but I really can't be bothered!
I suppose some less well informed people - including some 'evo-fans'- do think Darwinism is literally teleolgical and things evolve 'to' or 'for' some future purpose and using teleological idioms can muddy the water. But the use of teleological language is due to its convenience and is never technically correct. Unfortunately It can be avoided only by writing a lot more words!
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@Fallaneze
I can imagine quantifying (or semi-quantifying)well-being more easily than i can imagine quantifying 'love'
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
Were any words exchanged? Did she warn him?
prima facie, i think she was probably justified - it is the automatic assumption of justification (or thr non-requirement for justification) i have a problem with.
Here in the UK such cases are very rare.
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@3RU7AL
i'd conclude - tentatively - that modern life is not what humans evolved for. What worked for small bands of hunter-gatherers does not work for a global village of 7 billion.
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
....if you were in her position...
What was 'her position'?
The liberal position is that people have an automatic right to use reasonable force to protect themselves and their property. The key is 'reasonable' - the use of extreme or lethal force is not prohibited but it must be justifiable.
For example it would not be ok to shoot someone who accidentally walked away with a pen from your desk at work. If that is granted then it just a matter of where to draw the line.
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@3RU7AL
If someone stole your pencil I would not care at all.If someone stole my pencil I would be absolutely filled to the flipping brim with moral outrage.
Refreshingy honest, 3RU! How do you feel about you stealing Fallaneze's pencil? :)
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@Fallaneze
I don't think the brain would evolve a neural circuit that tries to quantify 'pure love gained or lost' - I prefer to say estimates harm/benefit as seen from the Darwinian perspective.If you could quantify that amount of pure love that is gained or lost, relative to our level our awareness of how our thoughts and actions affect other living things, I think this is the hidden measure for determining whether someone acted morally or immorally and to what extent.
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@Fallaneze
Raping someone is more immoral than lying about stealing a pencil.
But what is about raping someone that makes it worse than lying about stealing a pencil? Of course I'm not denying that "it's obvious" but philosophy - if it anything at all - is all about deconstructing the 'obvious'.
To quote Betrand Russell, "the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it”
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@MagicAintReal
Is Maryland typical in this regard? it seems the creationist threat is overblown!
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There is a possibly useful parallel. When we look at differently coloured objects we don't perceive the difference as a difference in [objective] wavelength; we perceive it as a difference in [subjective] colour. We see the differnce in colour innately; we have to discover that wavelength is involved.
Similarly [i am suggesting] that [most normal] people innately perceive a [subjective] differnce in the morality of murder and giving to charity - this thread has moved towards suggesting that morality is to colour what wavelength is to harm/benefit.
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@MagicAintReal
What, if anything, do you teach about ID?
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@3RU7AL
Are you suggesting it would be unanimous?
You don't seem to get what I'm thinking about. I think maybe morality does not exist - there are only moral judgements. Our brains have evolved to un/subconsciously estimate the harm/benefit of something heuristically; that estimate is then passed to consciousness where it is experienced as the morality of that something. That is an efficient system because it avoids actual thought - we don't have to think about whether murder is good or bad; we have neural hardware to do that.
That frees up the thinking parts of the brain for other tasks, which is good. But it means we only estimate the objective harm/benefit of stuff via a subjective sensation (we call it morality) derived from a neural net in our heads.
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@3RU7AL
The AP is ok, but I'd prefer something a bit stronger.... there might not be a better explanation but i can still hope forone!
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@3RU7AL
I'm not ignoring anything.... if historical and cultural norms play a role in morality then let's examine how exactly that works. it seems 90% of 'debates' are down to disgreements about what words mean. I have my own ideas but I'm open to other ideas too.
Re the relative harm of rape and murder, it is not immediately obvious which is more harmful and/hence it is not immediately obvious which is worse morally. My developing idea is that brains have a circuit that make a 'ballpark' estimate of the harm/benefit of stuff. That circuit evolved because it helped to modify behaviour in ways advantagous to the individual and species.
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@drafterman
i like what i think you're saying; that morality (or rather immorality) of something is roughly proportional to the harm it causes.... so the morality of something is related to the good is does. That seems like a tautology, but one can think of ways to quantify 'harm' (reduced life expectancy, pain induced etc). Harm and benefit are not completely arbitratry.
Morality then is a way to express an estimate of the harm/benefit of something...
Bear with me.... I'm not pushing an agenda; i am genuinely trying to get a handle on what it is we end up debating so endlessly!
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@Analgesic.Spectre
Again, this doesn't belong in this thread.
you wrote
For example, a race with an average low I.Q. doesn't belong in high I.Q. professions, such as law or university research.
in post #34 of this thread, creep.
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@MagicAintReal
Is creationism affecting pupils' attitude to biology at your school?
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@MagicAintReal
If morality depends on god then if there was no god then there would be no difference between murder and giving to charity.
But I would say there is a big difference between murder and giving to charity whether god exists or not! Ergo, morality does not depend on God.
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@drafterman
I think the issue here is you're treating it as a quantifiable and discrete measure of something. It's more like health or humor we can say something is healthier than something else or something is funnier than something else but they're not discrete measurements of anything.
I have to dispute that. I think 'healthier' or 'funnier' are measurements of something - it is however not easy to pin down in a simple phrase what it is that 'health' or 'funniness' measure or consists of.
Weird scenarios aside, an Olympic athlete is healthier than a cancer patient but describing the basis of that ranking is a lot harder than making that ranking in thr first place. The Simpsons is funnier than Hamlet, but while we can make that judgement in milliseconds it would take a long time to say exactly why the Simpsons is funny and Hamlet isn't.
Why is giving to charity more moral the murder? It's 'obvious', right? Just as its obvious to that the Simpsons is funnier than Hamlet. But what 'obvious' means is that we use instinct rather than reason to make the call. I want to get beyond the instinct to what that instinct is being triggered by.
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@Ramshutu
Not the most transparent of your posts, Ram!
As I understand it the theory of 'eternal inflation' suggest an infinite multi-verse continually spawning new big bangs and new universes with their own laws of physics. If that is so then the AP applies and i don't have a problem with that.
I do have more of a problem with the AP if this universe is the only universe. Obviously the AP applies there too, but to me it seems an enormous slice of luck if the universe just happened to be what was required for me to exist! I'd like a 'theory of everything' that tell us why the universe is as it is.
I think the apparent fine-tuning of the universe is fascinating, but I don't normally think of a god being involved - except when being facetious! perhaps reality is held together by mathematics or by the force of pure logical consistency - I really have no idea. One day it will be all explained in words of several syllables and greek symbols in Scientific American... but probably only after i'm dead.
I hope you will contribute to this thread:
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@3RU7AL
I think we don't know enough to say exactly why the universe is as it is, but we do know enough to say that no gods were (necessarily) involved.
Technically, you're right.... but we know it really! :)
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@3RU7AL
I think we don't know enough to say exactly why the universe is as it is, but we do know enough to say that no gods were involved.
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@drafterman
Because it occupies more space.
You may wish to consider the snarcity of an object as being the measure of its snarcity, snarcity being unrelated to any other property or quality of the object. How would you rank a circle and a frog in order of snarcity?
Morality cannot be a measure of morality.
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@Mopac
I don't judge God as bad; I judge God as a figment of theistic imagination. Many theists explain how evil exists in the world despite God being good by blaming it on human free will. The atheistic explanation for the existence of evil boils down to 'shit happens'.Judging God as bad because you don't like what goes on in the world is kind of like judging gravity as bad because it causes people to trip or fall.
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@drafterman
But they do rank them. If X is ranked as more moral than Y then there must be something about X and Y that makes people rank them as they do. It's fairly universal that murder is ranked as less moral than theft. It won't really do in the philosophy forum to say that murder is ranked as less moral than theft because murder is less moral than theft...that's not getting us anywhere!
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@3RU7AL
Some people believe that even the slightest infraction dooms you to eternal hell fire.Not much "scale" in that case.
Abortion is an interesting case - some people place it way over on the left, others much more towards the right. I am sure you place abortion somewhere on the line.
People must be making a judgement or estimate of something to determine where they place it on the morality scale - what I want to examine/uncover is what it is we are estimating when make a moral judgement.
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@drafterman
Space.
The point being that we do assign things to points along a morality scale.
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