Philosophy Now Forum

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 1:12 pm

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 18, 2025 8:34 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Mar 18, 2025 8:03 pm

Does that not depend on what you intend by "meaning"?
The physical world as a whole has no intentions no purpose, true, but doesn't coherence imply meaning?

There need be no purposeful being e.g. God or e.g. intelligent beings for a system to be coherent.

No, all meaning is the experiences of a biological subject, there is no other source of meaning. The nature of apparent reality is such that it is an emergent property of a conscious organism. Arising from the inseparable union of subject and object. Take away the object and consciousness ceases to be, take away the subject and the object ceases to be. Life is intelligent, but the door is not completely closed on the possibility of Panpsychism. This means, there are possibilities of consciousness in areas not commonly recognized in inanimate nature. Coherence is the relation of subject and object as the foundation of apparent reality. Remember ultimate reality is a place of no things or unmanifested energies. Nothing in this world has meaning in and of itself, but only in relation to a conscious biological subject.

You and I are idealists(immaterialists) for whom man , not a revealed God, nor Nature a whole,is the source of knowledge.

I can't quite see how panpsychism could be the case. It's hard enough to know how another mammalian species thinks. It's incomprehensible to imagine how a lifeless lump of rock such as a mountain ,or even a volcano, can pertain to any concept or feeling. I'd prefer to limit individual psyches to the biosphere. Sure, individual psyches can't exist without chemical elements , however chemical elements can exist without psyches.

Would you say that chemical elements exist only as mental objects? If so there must be some objective existence that chemists systematise. I'd call this objective existence 'possibility'.

Possibility then , poetically speaking, is God 'before' He made the Cosmos.
We understand the Cosmos inductively. Deductive reasoning depends on axioms.

According to inductive reasoning the moral codes of all the great religions arose during the Axial Age. Therefore morality relates to the unitary overarching moral message of the great religions.

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 8:46 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 1:12 pm

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 18, 2025 8:34 pm

No, all meaning is the experiences of a biological subject, there is no other source of meaning. The nature of apparent reality is such that it is an emergent property of a conscious organism. Arising from the inseparable union of subject and object. Take away the object and consciousness ceases to be, take away the subject and the object ceases to be. Life is intelligent, but the door is not completely closed on the possibility of Panpsychism. This means, there are possibilities of consciousness in areas not commonly recognized in inanimate nature. Coherence is the relation of subject and object as the foundation of apparent reality. Remember ultimate reality is a place of no things or unmanifested energies. Nothing in this world has meaning in and of itself, but only in relation to a conscious biological subject.

You and I are idealists(immaterialists) for whom man , not a revealed God, nor Nature a whole,is the source of knowledge.

I can't quite see how panpsychism could be the case. It's hard enough to know how another mammalian species thinks. It's incomprehensible to imagine how a lifeless lump of rock such as a mountain ,or even a volcano, can pertain to any concept or feeling. I'd prefer to limit individual psyches to the biosphere. Sure, individual psyches can't exist without chemical elements , however chemical elements can exist without psyches.

Would you say that chemical elements exist only as mental objects? If so there must be some objective existence that chemists systematise. I'd call this objective existence 'possibility'.

Possibility then , poetically speaking, is God 'before' He made the Cosmos.
We understand the Cosmos inductively. Deductive reasoning depends on axioms.

According to inductive reasoning the moral codes of all the great religions arose during the Axial Age. Therefore morality relates to the unitary overarching moral message of the great religions.

Life itself is the source of meaning derived from its experiences of its apparent reality, this reality depends upon both the energies that surround us and how they affect our standing biology, so it is an emergent property of the union of subject and object, the object being the energies. Meaning however is the property of biological life never the property of the energy/object itself. Yes, I agree we are on the same philosophical wavelength.
Panpsychism I don't believe, supposes that a full-fledged psyche is the property of anything but a life form. Experience and feeling are the most elemental aspects of even life forms before the evolution of the brain. Panpsychism is just entertainment of basic aspects going all the way down to perhaps elementary particles Feeling the experiences of change. Religions are the biological extensions of the human psyche and the conditions of the human psyche at a given time in the history of the species. As these religions stand, it is time to move on, the conditions of the psyche of our ancestors are not quite the same as its present condition. The religions of our ancestors tend to be narrow-minded and divisive not a mythology that can carry us into the future in a healthy way. Chemicals certainly are manifested energies so for us they are in the category of objects, objects or energies that affect us and which we then know, in fact, energy forms that relate to our existence as energy forms.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 2:45 pm

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 8:46 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 1:12 pm

You and I are idealists(immaterialists) for whom man , not a revealed God, nor Nature a whole,is the source of knowledge.

I can't quite see how panpsychism could be the case. It's hard enough to know how another mammalian species thinks. It's incomprehensible to imagine how a lifeless lump of rock such as a mountain ,or even a volcano, can pertain to any concept or feeling. I'd prefer to limit individual psyches to the biosphere. Sure, individual psyches can't exist without chemical elements , however chemical elements can exist without psyches.

Would you say that chemical elements exist only as mental objects? If so there must be some objective existence that chemists systematise. I'd call this objective existence 'possibility'.

Possibility then , poetically speaking, is God 'before' He made the Cosmos.
We understand the Cosmos inductively. Deductive reasoning depends on axioms.

According to inductive reasoning the moral codes of all the great religions arose during the Axial Age. Therefore morality relates to the unitary overarching moral message of the great religions.

Life itself is the source of meaning derived from its experiences of its apparent reality, this reality depends upon both the energies that surround us and how they affect our standing biology, so it is an emergent property of the union of subject and object, the object being the energies. Meaning however is the property of biological life never the property of the energy/object itself. Yes, I agree we are on the same philosophical wavelength.
Panpsychism I don't believe, supposes that a full-fledged psyche is the property of anything but a life form. Experience and feeling are the most elemental aspects of even life forms before the evolution of the brain. Panpsychism is just entertainment of basic aspects going all the way down to perhaps elementary particles Feeling the experiences of change. Religions are the biological extensions of the human psyche and the conditions of the human psyche at a given time in the history of the species. As these religions stand, it is time to move on, the conditions of the psyche of our ancestors are not quite the same as its present condition. The religions of our ancestors tend to be narrow-minded and divisive not a mythology that can carry us into the future in a healthy way. Chemicals certainly are manifested energies so for us they are in the category of objects, objects or energies that affect us and which we then know, in fact, energy forms that relate to our existence as energy forms.

Do you have any thoughts about what possibility is, and how possibility relates to probability?

In particular, I stress that I do not wish to presuppose any particular theory about how people should behave nor any particular reasons why they should so behave.

Most people appear to restrict the application of the term "morality" to prohibitions on actions satisfying desires.

I disregard this convention. If desires must be held in check, then that will be a moral fact; and equally, if desires need not be checked but provide appropriate and rational reasons for acting then that will be a moral fact.

In other words, my defense of objectivism, while it says that there is at least sometimes a way one should behave, does not actually recommend anything in particular.

We want to know whether there are objective values (which I take for the same question as whether morality is objective). It may be asked, what shall we say if it turns out that some values are objective and some are not?

The answer I give, by stipulation, is that in that case objectivism is true and subjectivism is false; that is, I interpret "morality is objective" as "some values are objective". I might have made the opposite stipulation - viz. that "morality is objective" = "all values are objective" - but that would be less interesting since, at least on the most obvious interpretation, this would make objectivism into a doctrine that no one holds.

For instance, I don't think the value 'the right to punish slaves for disobedience' is objective because I don't think there is any such right. Similarly, any number of values could be enumerated that any given person would declare to be utterly non-existent and thus not objective.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 9:01 pm Moral Objectivism
by Michael Huemer

We want to know whether there are objective values (which I take for the same question as whether morality is objective). It may be asked, what shall we say if it turns out that some values are objective and some are not?

Okay, make this distinction yourself here. Which particular value judgments do you see as objective given your own interactions with others in which conflicting goods were confronted.

The answer I give, by stipulation, is that in that case objectivism is true and subjectivism is false; that is, I interpret "morality is objective" as "some values are objective". I might have made the opposite stipulation - viz. that "morality is objective" = "all values are objective" - but that would be less interesting since, at least on the most obvious interpretation, this would make objectivism into a doctrine that no one holds.

I'm afraid I'll still need a context. And what of the moral objectivists among us? Those who insist their own moral judgments -- God or No God -- come as close to embodying "all values are objective" as mere mortals can possibly get.

Finally, a "for instance":

For instance, I don't think the value 'the right to punish slaves for disobedience' is objective because I don't think there is any such right. Similarly, any number of values could be enumerated that any given person would declare to be utterly non-existent and thus not objective.

On the other hand...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/et ... n%2Dslaves.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/et ... ions.shtml

Existentially, I have come to believe that human slavery is wrong. But that's not the same as being able to demonstrate that it is.

So, would anyone here care to go about demonstrating that, in fact, slavery is inherently/necessarily/objectively/essentially etc., immoral.

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:50 am When people in this thread speak of objective morality, do they do so in the understanding of our inability to escape our subjectivity, and that humanity is the source of all its meanings? Moral relativism is confusion, it is chaos. Morality needs to be based on commonality, and what we all have in common is our biology. Any other foundation for morality is to create chaos/confusion/moral relativism.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 9:27 pm Is Moral Relativism Really a Problem?
Psychological research suggests it is not
By Thomas Pölzler at Scientific American

Suppose you believe abortion is permissible. Would that belief alone make it so? No? Then how about if most Americans believed it? Would that suffice? If you think the answer to either question is yes, then chances are you are a moral relativist. You may hold that generally, as Hamlet put it, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

This is morality that revolves by and large around what you believe in your head. Or around what the majority of citizens in any particular community believe in their heads. But here that can still be predicated on the assumption that what you and others do believe about permissible or impermissible behavior makes it moral. And how then is that different from someone like me who concludes that morality itself is beyond the reach of, among other things, philosophy.

Not only is morality relative historically, culturally and individually, but, in the absence of God, it can never be more than the existential embodiment of "moderation, negotiation and compromise" among and between mere mortals.

That's the quandary that continues to impale me. Even in professing to be a moral relativist, some are able to convince themselves that their own conclusions are still the optimal frame of mind...the "best of all possible worlds".

Moral relativism has as bad a reputation as any view about morality could. For example, in a 2011 interview for the conservative nonprofit American Enterprise Institute, then representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, “Moral relativism has done so much damage to the bottom end of this country, the bottom fifth has been damaged by the culture of moral relativism more than by anything else, I would argue. If you ask me what the biggest problem in America is, I’m not going to tell you debt, deficits, statistics, economics—I’ll tell you it’s moral relativism.”

On the other hand, moral relativism might be construed by some as downright constructive next to moral nihilism. The belief that morality itself is basically just a profoundly problematic [at times precarious] existential contraption rooted in the particular life that you lived and, given contingency, chance and change, always subject to reconfiguration given new experiences, new sets of circumstances.

Of course, those like Paul Ryan then insist that what must replace moral relativism is moral objectivism. And that necessarily would revolve around what he and his own moral and political ilk deem to be The Right Thing To Do.

And here, as they say, the rest is history.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175121

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:50 am When people in this thread speak of objective morality, do they do so in the understanding of our inability to escape our subjectivity, and that humanity is the source of all its meanings? Moral relativism is confusion, it is chaos. Morality needs to be based on commonality, and what we all have in common is our biology. Any other foundation for morality is to create chaos/confusion/moral relativism.

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 5:40 pm

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:50 am When people in this thread speak of objective morality, do they do so in the understanding of our inability to escape our subjectivity, and that humanity is the source of all its meanings? Moral relativism is confusion, it is chaos. Morality needs to be based on commonality, and what we all have in common is our biology. Any other foundation for morality is to create chaos/confusion/moral relativism.

The biology that we all have in common includes the human ability to reason. Our ability to use symbolic language allows us to abstract ideas from language. I mean for instance that humans do not have to have President Trump in front of their eyes or nose or within touching distance in order to talk about him. For another example, my son described his run in the park today and I conceptualised where he was talking about although I wasn't there.

Around 500 BC an enormous economic change happened across China,Persia, India, and the Middle East . The religious change that resulted from the economic change concerned the novel concept that morality applied to all peoples, and did not pertain only to tribes.

Christianity was in line with the OT Prophets of around 500BC plus some input from Greek thought. The result, today, is that most of us in traditionally Christian countries have moral codes very similar to the post-500BC religions in India, China, the Middle East, and Europe. (As well as the New World of course.)

Morality therefore is relative to vast swathes of the world ever since around 500 BC .

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 5:40 pm

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:50 am When people in this thread speak of objective morality, do they do so in the understanding of our inability to escape our subjectivity, and that humanity is the source of all its meanings? Moral relativism is confusion, it is chaos. Morality needs to be based on commonality, and what we all have in common is our biology. Any other foundation for morality is to create chaos/confusion/moral relativism.

The biology that we all have in common includes the human ability to reason. Our ability to use symbolic language allows us to abstract ideas from language. I mean for instance that humans do not have to have President Trump in front of their eyes or nose or within touching distance in order to talk about him. For another example, my son described his run in the park today and I conceptualised where he was talking about although I wasn't there.

Around 500 BC an enormous economic change happened across China,Persia, India, and the Middle East . The religious change that resulted from the economic change concerned the novel concept that morality applied to all peoples, and did not pertain only to tribes.

Christianity was in line with the OT Prophets of around 500BC plus some input from Greek thought. The result, today, is that most of us in traditionally Christian countries have moral codes very similar to the post-500BC religions in India, China, the Middle East, and Europe. (As well as the New World of course.)

Morality therefore is relative to vast swathes of the world ever since around 500 BC .

Phil8659 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 2:49 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 9:27 pm Is Moral Relativism Really a Problem?
Psychological research suggests it is not
By Thomas Pölzler at Scientific American

Suppose you believe abortion is permissible. Would that belief alone make it so? No? Then how about if most Americans believed it? Would that suffice? If you think the answer to either question is yes, then chances are you are a moral relativist. You may hold that generally, as Hamlet put it, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

This is morality that revolves by and large around what you believe in your head. Or around what the majority of citizens in any particular community believe in their heads. But here that can still be predicated on the assumption that what you and others do believe about permissible or impermissible behavior makes it moral. And how then is that different from someone like me who concludes that morality itself is beyond the reach of, among other things, philosophy.

Not only is morality relative historically, culturally and individually, but, in the absence of God, it can never be more than the existential embodiment of "moderation, negotiation and compromise" among and between mere mortals.

That's the quandary that continues to impale me. Even in professing to be a moral relativist, some are able to convince themselves that their own conclusions are still the optimal frame of mind...the "best of all possible worlds".

Moral relativism has as bad a reputation as any view about morality could. For example, in a 2011 interview for the conservative nonprofit American Enterprise Institute, then representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, “Moral relativism has done so much damage to the bottom end of this country, the bottom fifth has been damaged by the culture of moral relativism more than by anything else, I would argue. If you ask me what the biggest problem in America is, I’m not going to tell you debt, deficits, statistics, economics—I’ll tell you it’s moral relativism.”

On the other hand, moral relativism might be construed by some as downright constructive next to moral nihilism. The belief that morality itself is basically just a profoundly problematic [at times precarious] existential contraption rooted in the particular life that you lived and, given contingency, chance and change, always subject to reconfiguration given new experiences, new sets of circumstances.

Of course, those like Paul Ryan then insist that what must replace moral relativism is moral objectivism. And that necessarily would revolve around what he and his own moral and political ilk deem to be The Right Thing To Do.

And here, as they say, the rest is history.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175121

Actually, I have little respect for someone who is too dim to put any topic in the simple for KISS, keep it simple for I am stupid, is a rule I life by.

If you use the definition of a mind, the fact that it must, like all information processing, comply with binary recursion, i.e., in one of four speicific systems of grammar. And the fact that binary recursion can only produce a binary result, one might be literate enough to know that a binary cannot produce anything other than a binary result, No behavior, whatsoever, is a noun, it is a verb.
No result of reasoning can be based on some lame brain's lack of literacy.

As a life support system our mind has a well-defined biologically determined job to perform, and well-defined physically determined methods of doing our job. There is nothing, which is literate, a matter of opinion.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:40 pm

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:50 am When people in this thread speak of objective morality, do they do so in the understanding of our inability to escape our subjectivity, and that humanity is the source of all its meanings? Moral relativism is confusion, it is chaos. Morality needs to be based on commonality, and what we all have in common is our biology. Any other foundation for morality is to create chaos/confusion/moral relativism.

Morality either is or isn't objective. The fact that you think it "needs" to be objective has precisely zero bearing on that matter. You are arguing an is from an ought which is no better than arguing an ought from an is.

popeye1945 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 8:32 pm The objective is subjective creation.