Real universal rights

[Age]

You remind me of a strange guy I met in a Belgian city, a weird artist who claimed to have invented a perpetuum mobile. He asked people on the street, like me, "what is energy?" As a physicist, I responded: "a property that is conserved in universes that have time translation symmetry". But he didn't understand that, so he kept asking about the definition of energy...

And, did you FAIL to EXPLAIN, in a way that made sense, to that so-called 'strange' human being?

Yes, because 'energy' is a fundamental notion in physics, not reducible to something else. That means that guy could never be satisfied by any definition I gave.

Are you absolutely sure of this?

If I define energy in terms of something else, he could ask to define those other things.

Yes, "he" could do 'that', along with many other things that "he" could do.

If I said it is a fundamental notion, he replied that that is not a definition.

Is this what happened, or, what you imagined would take place?

I guess he felt like being really smart and wise when he could play a very simple socrates-style game of always asking "what is...?" and saying "that is not an answer to the question." He felt proud when he could continue with the next "and what is...?" I bet he would compare himself to Socrates.

Okay.

It sounds all rather trivial, but each to their own, as some say.

[Skepdick]

Beliefs cause action.

I [still] contend that it is belief-holders that cause actions,
which are generally aligned with the tenants of a belief.

Belief-holders execute the action, but beliefs cause it.

Had the same belief-holder held a diferent belief they would've caused a different action.

Any singular belief, isn't inherent to a reasoning being -
they can be removed, and the being can still exist.

Any single human being isn't inherent to an belief either.
You can remove a single being and the belief still exists.

Ideas are socially distributed.

However, the opposite: removing all reasoning beings,
erases any & all capacity for a belief to affect reality.

Erasing all beliefs has the same effect. We'll all just die.

Furthermore, beliefs aren't an inherent aspect to reality, by the above logic.
Beliefs are imaginary concepts, which on their own merit / 'feet',
cannot affect reality - as they are detached from reality.

"Detached" how? If there's a causal chain from beliefs to reality there's no detachment.

It is the belief-holders utilization of a belief that causes change.
Imaginary concepts used by belief-holders to their own ends.
The physical mechanisms, by which a belief-holder imagines a belief, are real.
These mechanisms are affecting reality and the belief holder,
but these mechanisms aren't the belief - they are the behaviour of the belief-holder.

Distinction without a difference.

Beliefs cause behaviour.
Different beliefs cause different behaviour.

I believe there's a misunderstanding here, likely due to my phrasing.
I was trying to say delusional beliefs, are a subset of beliefs which don't correspond to reality.

The belief "murder is wrong"; or "humans should be treated with dignity and respect"; or "democracy is a more desirable form of governance than tyrannical dictatorship" doesn't correspond to reality.
Surely you don't think those are delusional beliefs?

I was not trying to say every belief that doesn't correspond a physical aspect of reality is delusional.
If you re-read my above quote from this perspective, I hope you will see this distinction - even if poorly phrased.

I don't see the point of the label "delusional". People continue to use Newton's beliefs about gravity despite Einstein having falsified them.
Sailors continue to use the Ptolemaic models for navigation, despite heliocentric models being the cultural norm.

There's more to belief-selection than mere correspondence. There's also utility. Ease of use. Sufficient accuracy.

A belief that was previously held, but not longer held by anyone, would fit into this category - a non-held belief, that one is aware of.
We could be discussing why people once believed something, and no longer do.

Why would we focus on the past instead of the future?

Alternatively, someone could propose a belief system, which is yet to be held by anyone, in the process of analysation & testing.
This again falling into awareness of a belief, without holding the belief or giving it weight.

So it wouldn't be a belief because you aren't acting on it.

In reality, we cannot pick and choose whether gravity exists.
It exists, regardless of our beliefs regarding it.

Yes, we can. Gravity is absolutely mind-dependent/model dependent.

If you pick/choose Sir Isac Newton's account for why objects fall, bodies with mass attract each other etc. then gravity exists.
If you pick/choose Albert Einstein'saccount for why objects fall, bodies with mass attract each other etc. then gravity doesn't exist.

In reality, we can pick and choose which beliefs are held, including rights.

Precisely. If you choose to hold Einstein's beliefs over Newton's beliefs then gravity doesn't exist.

In this current reality, we can [theoretically?] discard any & all of them.
We certainly can discard particular ones.

We can discard all of them in principle. Language doesn't correspond to reality. Language corresponds to our experiences of reality.

Thus the weight / integrity of gravity in comparison to beliefs / rights,
is vastly different and I argue, ought be held at different heights.

Why? What does any of this have to do with integrity?

Things inherent to reality, demand a higher level of consideration.

Heh. So I was right... you are looking for an angle to commit special pleading.

Everything real is inherent to reality. Humans and human beliefs are inherent to reality.

as they will still play their role, regardless of our preferences regarding such.

In general terms and devoid of any pragmatic context everything plays a role through interaction.

Again, not the case for beliefs / rights - these can be discarded according to our will.

Laws of nature can be discarded and suspended according to our will too. We wanted to discard the effects of gravitational pull - we invented flying machines.

Thus, some assign objectivity to gravity, and subjectivity to beliefs.
Not held with the same regard.

Yeah. A lot of people suffer from this special pleading.

We cannot remove gravity.
We can remove humans.

Hence the "IF" part. You are working with hypotheticals and counter-factuals.

But more the point, we can alter our beliefs and rights.

We can alter gravity too. Surely you've heard of high-g training using large centrifuges.

Surely you understand that more mass == more gravity; and that mass is related to energy. So more energy == more gravity.

I meant beyond the attachments / preferences of belief-holders,
with respect to assessing the origins and merit of rights / beliefs.

Why are you assessing the origins? You could say that rights originate with humans; or you could point out that humans originate from nature - so rights ultimately originate from nature too. Where you choose to cut the causal chain appears to be entirely arbitrary.

One thing's for certain - having established different origins for different entities, you somehow feel justified to discriminate based on origin.

Why?

Not the case. I made the point of humans and their creations being natural a decade ago on ILP:
https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... 3#p2310033
Also made it earlier on an alt account, but it does not share the name - so I wont post that one.

So on that particular point, I think we're in agreement.

Well, if we are in agreement why are you trying to discriminate based on origin?

Why are you trying to demean human rights to a lesser status than physical laws?