Philosophy Now Forum

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:56 am

Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 8:09 pm Facts do not objectively exist.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/09/03/w ... EFOp77uATo

This is why I challenged Peter Holmes, you and PantFlasher,
i.e. from the ultimate perspective there are no absolute fact, i.e. fact-in-itself.

But facts do exist as qualified within a Framework and System of Knowledge.
Peter Holmes, you and PantFlasher did insist such facts exists but not moral facts.
Thus my point is, facts as qualified to a FSK in this case, moral facts do exist just like Scientific facts.

But no one accepts your silly FSK, because it is so subjective.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:21 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:05 am Fuck it, Skepdick has inspired me to make this double annoying for you.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 5:34 am

• P1 All mental states are facts
  P2 All moral states are mental states
  C1 All moral states are facts, i.e. moral facts.

From the above, moral facts exist.

• P1 All mental states are facts
  P2 All RELIGIOUS states are mental states
  C1 All RELIGIOUS states are facts, i.e. RELIGIOUS facts.

From the above, RELIGIOUS facts exist.

Your own argument proved not only that there is a God, but that all religions are true. The good news is that you have consistently avoided committing yourself to any view that mutually exclusive facts cannot be true at the same time, so by your own reasoning, even all those religions which openly assert that hey are the only one, and all others are false ... those are all true.

This is great. Now everyone is happy.

Which makes you doubly stupid.
Note my earlier response to you.

As I had stated, the moral mental states must be verified empirically and philosophically.

That is contradictory though. If the argument that all moral states are facts is correct, then they are facts in all cases. If they are merely some sort of putative fact that requires verification before becoming real facts, then the argument that all moral states are facts is false.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am Statements about the many facts which change with time are only mutually exclusive within their own frame of reference.

That's incoherent. Conceptual conflict is only possible at coinciding spacetime coordinates.

Things change with time. Nobody and nothing stands still through time. Even minds and reference frames.
But I will try to gleam through your "stupid"...

Many brains = many reference frames = many facts.
Which reference frame decides that the facts of other reference frames are invalid?

You want me to give you examples where a different reference frames recognise different capital cities?
Here is one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_of_Jerusalem

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am Aside from (definitively contingent) facts about the present state of changeable objects, what other mutually exclusive things are you proposing can be true by virtue of different time and spacial location?

First you have to explain to me your conception of "truth".

Is it the unified/eternal/timeless/Kantian noumenon (bullshit) one?

Disagreement is the norm, and yet consensus is (eventually) possible - the algorithms exist.

Either you want to apply it or you don't. Maybe you only want to apply it sometimes. Maybe never. Up to yo.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am As always, I don't care what you think on the matter and you don't care what Vaginal Aqualung thinks.

Nor do I care that you don't care.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am If Vegetable Aquarium is looking for a state of affairs where mutually exclusive 'facts' are true because they are in different heads at the same time and being in a head is all that is required for a thing to be fact, then he is welcome to go for it. At that point, every incel who thinks women deserve to be raped has as much claim over fact as anyone who thinks rape is bad.

Exactly. If I wanted to butt-fuck you - I will. Just so it happens the risk of prison-time (or an STD) isn't worth it.

I guess a whole bunch of people with widely different reference frames had the foresight to incorporate and make non-consensual butt-fucking a crime. What are the odds?

At the very least, I am pretty sure you'd violently object to surprise buttsex.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am All those conflict resolution options exist because the thing you and Voluble Eggnog have paid no attention to is what 'facts' are for.

You don't really get to prescribe what "facts are for". Different people use facts for different things.

For example, I am using the fact that people have incorporated to outlaw non-consensual butt-fucking as evidence of reference frame overlap.

Consensus.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am With all your shared obsession for trying to make them be what you want them to be (thus allowing you both to claim total shit is fact) you have lost sight of why we have the notion and what we expect it to do.

For somebody who doesn't believe in moral facts you sure like insisting that your expectations matter. Almost as if, you know what facts OUGHT to do.

The rest is self-organization/spontaneous order at play.

This is the mess that we find ourselves in as. It looks immoral. OK - it looks that way. So what?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:37 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am Statements about the many facts which change with time are only mutually exclusive within their own frame of reference.

That's incoherent. Conceptual conflict is only possible at coinciding spacetime coordinates.

What are you talking about with this "conceptual conflict"? Is it something I am saying is inherently not about facts?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:37 am Things change with time. Nobody and nothing stands still through time. Even minds and reference frames.
But I will try to gleam through your "stupid"...

Many brains = many reference frames = many facts.
Which reference frame decides that the facts of other reference frames are invalid?

That's the sort of question that results in some stuff not being considered a valid fact claim at all. Yet we still have the language for, the need of, and the social practice of sorting claims into those which are plausibly described as fact claims, and those that are mere opinion. At this point you and I are destined to diverge because I am obviously going to take the natural language philosophy approach here, and you are going to do your thing that you do.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:37 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am Aside from (definitively contingent) facts about the present state of changeable objects, what other mutually exclusive things are you proposing can be true by virtue of different time and spacial location?

First you have to explain to me your conception of "truth".

Is it the unified/eternal/timeless/Kantian noumenon (bullshit) one?

I have no particular interest in false-precision, none of the explicit models of defining knowledge will ever work any better than any of the explicit models of defining morality will. You never take me at my word on this sort of thing though. I tell you over and over again that I hold that X ($TRUTH, $MORALITY, $FACT, $IDENTITY) is a concept we define together as we are using it and it will change and should change as our uses for it change. Then you tell me that NO, Skepdick has a special and certain logic for dealing with uncertainty so nobody else is allowed to accept uncertainty, blah blah blah. Your repeated refusal to grant me the right to have the contents of my own head is just one reason why I always get bored of these conversations.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:37 am Disagreement is the norm, and yet consensus is (eventually) possible - the algorithms exist.

Either you want to apply it or you don't. Maybe you only want to apply it sometimes. Maybe never. Up to yo.

Well, there's no denying that this very clever Scott Aaronson fella understands some stuff about maths that I don't. So forgive me if I am missing something here - but does that paper not describe a state of affairs where agreement to disagree is intollerable for fact claims, and in fact prove that resolution to a specific fact is always possible? If so, then that seems to have little to do with proving that incompatible fact claims can both be right.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:37 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am If Vegetable Aquarium is looking for a state of affairs where mutually exclusive 'facts' are true because they are in different heads at the same time and being in a head is all that is required for a thing to be fact, then he is welcome to go for it. At that point, every incel who thinks women deserve to be raped has as much claim over fact as anyone who thinks rape is bad.

Exactly. If I wanted to butt-fuck you - I will. Just so it happens the risk of prison-time (or an STD) isn't worth it.

I guess a whole bunch of people with widely different reference frames had the foresight to incorporate and make non-consensual butt-fucking a crime. What are the odds?

So you agree with me. By your own prior argument, the mere existence as a mental state of conception that butt fucking is so much fun that nobody has the right to deny their arse to you creates a moral fact that nobody has the right to deny their arse to you. The existence of a law against it is just some other fact of limited relevance.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:37 am At the very least, I am pretty sure you'd violently object to surprise buttsex.

That is a mental state of my own which says that you don't have the right to take advantage of my sweet juicy come-hither bunghole. In my view, it is a fact incompatible with your right to ravage my anus from the previous... But apparently the incompatibility of these facts isn't a problem, every passing mental state is a fact and every passing mental state about morality is a moral fact. So you have the right to bugger me, and I have the right to wish you would take your dick out of my butt.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:37 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am All those conflict resolution options exist because the thing you and Voluble Eggnog have paid no attention to is what 'facts' are for.

You don't really get to prescribe what "facts are for". Different people use facts for different things.

For example, I am using the fact that people have incorporated to outlaw non-consensual butt-fucking as evidence of reference frame overlap.

Consensus.

Sure. But that means that for thousands of years, the majority opinion that slavery was a right and proper institution and that the enslaved had no right to object was moral fact. In other words, it is right today to say that "slavery is wrong", but it is wrong today to say that "slavery was wrong".

Furthermore that conseus, exactly how wide does it need to be? Within the territory controlled by ISIS slavery is still right and appropriate by consensus. Beyond their borders and in the world at large, it is considered naughty. So is slavery both right by consensus locally, and wrong by consensus globally, with no contradiction?

I don't understand the insistence on moral fact if all you are going to do with it is moral relativism? Again Visible Aerobics won't find you assistance useful (boo hoo).

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:37 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:40 am With all your shared obsession for trying to make them be what you want them to be (thus allowing you both to claim total shit is fact) you have lost sight of why we have the notion and what we expect it to do.

For somebody who doesn't believe in moral facts you sure like insisting that your expectations matter. Almost as if, you know what facts OUGHT to do.

The rest is self-organization/spontaneous order at play.

This is the mess that we find ourselves in as. It looks immoral. OK - it looks that way. So what?

I'm not in charge of what facts are for. We're using a shared language and THAT is definitely a thing constructed from consensus, and which changes over time, and is often very fuzzy and the concepts contained therein are imprecise. Nonetheless, within the language we all use, there is no sense to the proposition "It is both true and false that that this sentence is true". As for whatever special language of ultraprecision you intend to use instead of the languages people actually speak, go right ahead and express yourself in that one, then we can find out if it is untranslateable.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm What are you talking about with this "conceptual conflict"? Is it something I am saying is inherently not about facts?

The same thing you are talking about re: incompatible truths.

Reference frame A: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
Reference frame B: Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel.

They are both true from their respective reference frames. Do I have to explain perspectivism to you?

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm That's the sort of question that results in some stuff not being considered a valid fact claim at all. Yet we still have the language for, the need of, and the social practice of sorting claims into those which are plausibly described as fact claims, and those that are mere opinion. At this point you and I are destined to diverge because I am obviously going to take the natural language philosophy approach here, and you are going to do your thing that you do.

The validity of factual claims is contextual! A collection of reference frames could classify Jerusalem as capital. A different collection wouldn't.
A mixture of reference frames would result in conflict. That's how echo chambers work.

Notice, however that you are appealing precisely to social dynamics to (eventually) arrive at some sort of consensus on the issue.
Which is exactly my point/argument, which you are suddenly trying to claim as your own under the banner of "Natural Language approach"

I am glad I could persuade you...

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm I have no particular interest in false-precision, none of the explicit models of defining knowledge will ever work any better than any of the explicit models of defining morality will. You never take me at my word on this sort of thing though. I tell you over and over again that I hold that X ($TRUTH, $MORALITY, $FACT, $IDENTITY) is a concept we define together as we are using it and it will change and should change as our uses for it change.

So the concept exists (like unicorns and abstractions) but the definition changes? YEAH!

That's what I am saying.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm Then you tell me that NO, Skepdick has a special and certain logic for dealing with uncertainty so nobody else is allowed to accept uncertainty, blah blah blah. Your repeated refusal to grant me the right to have the contents of my own head is just one reason why I always get bored of these conversations.

Then you clearly don't understand how self-organization works... We are participating in the social processes by which spontaneous order/consensus emerges right now.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm Well, there's no denying that this very clever Scott Aaronson fella understands some stuff about maths that I don't. So forgive me if I am missing something here - but does that paper not describe a state of affairs where agreement to disagree is intollerable for fact claims, and in fact prove that resolution to a specific fact is always possible? If so, then that seems to have little to do with proving that incompatible fact claims can both be right.

You are a tad confused.

The paper merely indicates that diverging viewpoints can come to a consensus through interaction. That doesn't mean either claim was "right" or "wrong". It only means that the interlocutors end up seeing the world the same way.

Either they converge on "Jerusalem is a capital"; or converge on "it isn't". Whatever answer they converge on becomes fact within that collective.

Entire countries agree that Jerusalem is capital of Israel. While entire other countries disagree. But within each country/collective reference frame there is a "fact" on the matter.

Eventually one of those world-views would get tired/murdered/silenced and one will dominate.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm So you agree with me. By your own prior argument, the mere existence as a mental state of conception that butt fucking is so much fun that nobody has the right to deny their arse to you creates a moral fact that nobody has the right to deny their arse to you. The existence of a law against it is just some other fact of limited relevance.

I thought you were going to take the "Natural language" view here?
"rights", "facts". "mental states", "arguments" and "denying arses" doesn't even feature as input into the decision-making process!

Surely the issue is far simpler than your overly-sophisticated analysis.

If a rapists wants to help themselves to your arse then they will, what's there to stop them?
If you don't succeed at stopping them, and the law doesn't succeed at stopping them - I guess your arse will be sore...

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm That is a mental state of my own which says that you don't have the right to take advantage of my sweet juicy come-hither bunghole. In my view, it is a fact incompatible with your right to ravage my anus from the previous... But apparently the incompatibility of these facts isn't a problem, every passing mental state is a fact and every passing mental state about morality is a moral fact. So you have the right to bugger me, and I have the right to wish you would take your dick out of my butt.

Exactly!

One those moral facts will become manifest reality.

If your arse gets violated, you can open a rape case at your nearest police station. And you can lick your wounds about the fact that you couldn't manifest your moral facts into reality.

Too bad. So sad. Try again.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm Sure. But that means that for thousands of years, the majority opinion that slavery was a right and proper institution and that the enslaved had no right to object was moral fact. In other words, it is right today to say that "slavery is wrong", but it is wrong today to say that "slavery was wrong".

And then a different reference frame became manifest reality. Might is necessary for right.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm Furthermore that conseus, exactly how wide does it need to be? Within the territory controlled by ISIS slavery is still right and appropriate by consensus. Beyond their borders and in the world at large, it is considered naughty. So is slavery both right by consensus locally, and wrong by consensus globally, with no contradiction?

Time will tell which reference frame becomes manifest reality.

Given historical trends on moral progress, I am betting against ISIS/slavers.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm I don't understand the insistence on moral fact if all you are going to do with it is moral relativism? Again Visible Aerobics won't find you assistance useful (boo hoo).

Where is the moral relativism in pointing out the mechanisms of moral progress? It's messy and takes a long time, but there's a clear trend in one direction and away from another.

I believe that the world in 2020 is a better place to live in than the world in 5000 years ago.

A relativist cannot make a claim of "betterness" - a relativist can only make a claim of "difference".
I do make this claim of betterness, ergo - I am not a relativist.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm I'm not in charge of what facts are for. We're using a shared language and THAT is definitely a thing constructed from consensus, and which changes over time, and is often very fuzzy and the concepts contained therein are imprecise. Nonetheless, within the language we all use, there is no sense to the proposition "It is both true and false that that this sentence is true". As for whatever special language of ultraprecision you intend to use instead of the languages people actually speak, go right ahead and express yourself in that one, then we can find out if it is untranslateable.

Surely you see yourself straw-manning me?

The general trend of moral progress I am pointing at spans thousands of years and across the globe.

I am trivially, broadly and imprecisely saying "the future has generally gotten better than what the past was".

Humans have improved circumstances. That's an objective fact in the "Natural Language" way in which we use the words "better" and "worse".

Where do you see "ultraprecision" here?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:26 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm What are you talking about with this "conceptual conflict"? Is it something I am saying is inherently not about facts?

The same thing you are talking about re: incompatible truths.

Reference frame A: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
Reference frame B: Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel.

They are both true from their respective reference frames. Do I have to explain perspectivism to you?

Tehre's little need, you seem to have accidentally conceeded the point.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:26 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm That's the sort of question that results in some stuff not being considered a valid fact claim at all. Yet we still have the language for, the need of, and the social practice of sorting claims into those which are plausibly described as fact claims, and those that are mere opinion. At this point you and I are destined to diverge because I am obviously going to take the natural language philosophy approach here, and you are going to do your thing that you do.

The validity of factual claims is contextual! A collection of reference frames could classify Jerusalem as capital. A different collection wouldn't.
A mixture of reference frames would result in conflict. That's how echo chambers work.

Notice, however that you are appealing precisely to social dynamics to (eventually) arrive at some sort of consensus on the issue.
Which is exactly my point/argument, which you are suddenly trying to claim as your own under the banner of "Natural Language approach"

I am glad I could persuade you...

Yes, there is a way in which we as the collective who speak this language and understand each other because we mean broadly the same thing when we use the same terms. When we use the word "fact" there is an implicit exclusivity requirement, and thus a conflict which rquires resolution, and if there is no sign of data with which to resolve said conflict that meets the standard we describe as "objective" even if we often shouldn't, then we don't use the word fact properly when we use it at all and thus certain claims of fact, while often made, are overstated.

This is all complicated of course by the human tendency to what we think of as cognitive dissonance in which a single person can beleive as truths and facts multiple things which cannot rightly coexist. Rigth in there in that mess, is this belief we probably all have about our own moral thinking being something worthy of describing as fact, while others, who we know think just the same way we do about that sort of thing, but whose moral beliefs are disimilar to ours, are mistaken and their thing is just belief.

Think about this way ... all of the peopel who have proposed moral facts on this forum, have all beleived that moral fact, once discovered, will natually align perfectly with what they personally believe.

Now I am aware that you have no use for the fact/opinion distinction. But that's something you have no chance of getting consensus on, so at least for all the rest of humanity, I'm afraid we use and have use for this distinction and the concepts of belief and opinion, as well as for fact.

There is no sense in claiming I am borrowing any of this from you, it's completely stolen from Wittgenstein, and perhaps a little from Strawson, and then all muddled up with any mistakes of interpretation I have made.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:26 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm Well, there's no denying that this very clever Scott Aaronson fella understands some stuff about maths that I don't. So forgive me if I am missing something here - but does that paper not describe a state of affairs where agreement to disagree is intollerable for fact claims, and in fact prove that resolution to a specific fact is always possible? If so, then that seems to have little to do with proving that incompatible fact claims can both be right.

You are a tad confused.

The paper merely indicates that diverging viewpoints can come to a consensus through interaction. That doesn't mean either claim was "right" or "wrong". It only means that the interlocutors end up seeing the world the same way.

Either they converge on "Jerusalem is a capital"; or converge on "it isn't". Whatever answer they converge on becomes fact within that collective.

Entire countries agree that Jerusalem is capital of Israel. While entire other countries disagree. But within each country/collective reference frame there is a "fact" on the matter.

Eventually one of those world-views would get tired/murdered/silenced and one will dominate.

There was a fairly solid risk of me not getting it.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:26 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:04 pm So you agree with me. By your own prior argument, the mere existence as a mental state of conception that butt fucking is so much fun that nobody has the right to deny their arse to you creates a moral fact that nobody has the right to deny their arse to you. The existence of a law against it is just some other fact of limited relevance.

I thought you were going to take the "Natural language" view here?

I am. My point is that by YOUR argument, which in case you have forgotten, becuase we both knwo you never really mean any of these things, held that all mental states are facts, and all blah blah blah, therefore all mental states about moral stuff are moral facts... that makes it a fact in your argument that the rapist's view that he has a right to claim sexual intercourse by conquest makes it a moral fact that he does indeed have such a right. This called argument to an absurd conclusion. It's also a clear recipe for relativism.

This is all getting messy and it seems to be pointless again.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:59 pm Tehre's little need, you seem to have accidentally conceeded the point.

I have? Well claim your prize at The Internet Head office.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:59 pm Yes, there is a way in which we as the collective who speak this language and understand each other because we mean broadly the same thing when we use the same terms. When we use the word "fact" there is an implicit exclusivity requirement, and thus a conflict which rquires resolution, and if there is no sign of data with which to resolve said conflict that meets the standard we describe as "objective" even if we often shouldn't, then we don't use the word fact properly when we use it at all and thus certain claims of fact, while often made, are overstated.

Horseshit, not all conflict requires resolution.

You say Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
I say it isn't.

Lets not resolve it.

What happens next? Nothing. Storm in a teacup.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:59 pm This is all complicated of course by the human tendency to what we think of as cognitive dissonance in which a single person can beleive as truths and facts multiple things which cannot rightly coexist. Rigth in there in that mess, is this belief we probably all have about our own moral thinking being something worthy of describing as fact, while others, who we know think just the same way we do about that sort of thing, but whose moral beliefs are disimilar to ours, are mistaken and their thing is just belief.

And then there are those that recognise that the severity of "conflict" is severely overstated.

Many of those who speak out, or speak against don't turn their words/opinions into actions. Is just taking sides for side-taking sake.

As the saying goes: no harm, no foul.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:59 pm Think about this way ... all of the peopel who have proposed moral facts on this forum, have all beleived that moral fact, once discovered, will natually align perfectly with what they personally believe.

I don't care if you align. If you aren't actively practicing the behaviour which transgresses the moral boundary your disagreement is irrelevant.

It's just grunting noises.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:59 pm Now I am aware that you have no use for the fact/opinion distinction. But that's something you have no chance of getting consensus on, so at least for all the rest of humanity, I'm afraid we use and have use for this distinction and the concepts of belief and opinion, as well as for fact.

Both facts and opinions may (or may not) feature as inputs into decision-making and influence decision-making to various degrees. I don't need to get consensus on this - that's how humans think. We make trade-offs in the face of uncertainty.

You are stuck in some idealist paradigm where facts are always and forever superior to informed opinions.

Go tell your lawyer or your doctor that you are paying for (and therefore demand) professional facts, not professional opinions.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:59 pm I am. My point is that by YOUR argument, which in case you have forgotten, becuase we both knwo you never really mean any of these things, held that all mental states are facts, and all blah blah blah, therefore all mental states about moral stuff are moral facts... that makes it a fact in your argument that the rapist's view that he has a right to claim sexual intercourse by conquest makes it a moral fact that he does indeed have such a right. This called argument to an absurd conclusion. It's also a clear recipe for relativism.

Looks like you are struggling with drawing distinctions to escape the corner you've painted yourself in.
I am not arguing about conclusions. I am not even arguing. I am pointing equifinality.

Different narratives/arguments: equivalent outcomes.

What is the difference between getting raped by a rapist who believes he has the right to rape you, and getting raped by a rapist who doesn't have the right to rape you but does it anyway?

I am pointing out the impotence of philosophy to tackle the practical concern.

There's a dispute over your anal cavity. "Who actually wins" vs "Who should win." are different things.

I am yet to hear your "argument" for what happens when your pants go around your ankles against your will.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:59 pm This is all getting messy and it seems to be pointless again.

The outcome is the point. Despite all the narratives.

Humans resist rape.
Legal systems outlaw rape and prosecute rapists.
Rape is socially unacceptable.

That doesn't stop rape from happening, but actively investing human capital at the issue reduces the risk.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 5:34 am Moral-facts-deniers [like Peter Holmes, Sculptor, PantFlasher, and the likes]

Can I apply to be added to that list, please?

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 4:23 pm I am not even arguing.

This shit again. Whatever.

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:39 am

KLewchuk wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:12 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 8:09 pm Facts do not objectively exist.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/09/03/w ... EFOp77uATo

Actually, what this is saying is that there is only one objective fact that exists; that no facts exist. The author is stating that "no facts exist" as an objective statement of fact.

This is what is known in philosophy as "non-sense" or cognitive disintegration.

No.
He's saying none of that at all.
He's pointing out a problem that exists with people that think in absolutes.
A problem I need to say that your foolish, and sadly predictable response is an example of.

As for your conclusion. Philosophy tends to use references to "sense" where matters impinge directly on matters of primary evidence from the senses. The whole point about "facts" is that your objection does not apply for that reason.
It's like objecting to criticisms of dogs by saying they are no fruit.

Got it, if today you say that Washington DC exists and I say it does not... we are both correct because there are no such things as facts. The paradox in that article is clear; the question is how people deal with such conceptual paradoxes. See Sokal for one view.

Sculptor wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:42 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:56 am

Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 8:09 pm Facts do not objectively exist.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/09/03/w ... EFOp77uATo

This is why I challenged Peter Holmes, you and PantFlasher,
i.e. from the ultimate perspective there are no absolute fact, i.e. fact-in-itself.

But facts do exist as qualified within a Framework and System of Knowledge.
Peter Holmes, you and PantFlasher did insist such facts exists but not moral facts.
Thus my point is, facts as qualified to a FSK in this case, moral facts do exist just like Scientific facts.

But no one accepts your silly FSK, because it is so subjective.

Here again,

• A fact is an occurrence in the real world.[1]
  For example, "This sentence contains words." is a linguistic fact, and
  "The sun is a star." is an astronomical fact.
  Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States." and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated." are both historical facts.
  Generally speaking, facts are independent of belief.
  
  The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability—that is whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means.

Surely a linguistic fact and other types of specific facts cannot have the same degree of veracity as a scientific fact.
Thus those specific facts are dependent on the specific FSK.

The Scientific FSK that produces scientific facts is subjective?
How can you counter this?

Btw, what is objectivity is a culmination of subjects' activities, thus inter-subjectivity.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:44 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:21 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:05 am Fuck it, Skepdick has inspired me to make this double annoying for you.

• P1 All mental states are facts
  P2 All RELIGIOUS states are mental states
  C1 All RELIGIOUS states are facts, i.e. RELIGIOUS facts.

From the above, RELIGIOUS facts exist.

Your own argument proved not only that there is a God, but that all religions are true. The good news is that you have consistently avoided committing yourself to any view that mutually exclusive facts cannot be true at the same time, so by your own reasoning, even all those religions which openly assert that hey are the only one, and all others are false ... those are all true.

This is great. Now everyone is happy.

Which makes you doubly stupid.
Note my earlier response to you.

As I had stated, the moral mental states must be verified empirically and philosophically.

That is contradictory though. If the argument that all moral states are facts is correct, then they are facts in all cases. If they are merely some sort of putative fact that requires verification before becoming real facts, then the argument that all moral states are facts is false.

It is known all mental states are facts.
How else?

Since all moral states are mental states,
then all moral states are moral facts.

Whatever that is claimed as a moral state rationally has to be verified empirically and philosophical as with any other claim of knowledge.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 5:34 am Moral-facts-deniers [like Peter Holmes, Sculptor, PantFlasher, and the likes] deny moral facts exist because they assumed moral facts are the same as the typical facts of external objects and external states-of-affairs.

But what they are ignorant of the facts of states-of-affairs that are going on inside their own brain and the brains of the 7+ billion of humans at present.

Morality is not about looking for facts outside one brain.
Morality and Ethics is about doing good which is avoiding what is evil [moral nor religious sense]
Morality and moral facts are confined to the mental states of the individuals, thus;

• P1 All mental states are facts
  P2 All moral states are mental states
  C1 All moral states are facts, i.e. moral facts.

From the above, moral facts exist.

Thus the moral fact 'all humans ought-not to kill another' is a mental state within each human being.

DNA/RNA wise all humans are "programmed" with the mental states of the potential to kill so as to enable them to kill animals for food and in self-defense. But such a potential is double-edged as it could possibly facilitate the killing of all humans.

As such all humans are also "programmed" with an inherent inhibitory mental states of ought-not to kill [unless necessary] within a moral faculty, framework and system.

All moral facts are reducible to non-moral properties. All moral facts are reducible and represented by various neural algorithms within the brain of all humans as evident in the brains of the 7+ billion of humans in the present and of those in the past.

Therefore moral facts exist.
This is indisputable.

Views?

It seems to me that all you are saying is that there is an aspect of human nature that we call morality, and that's a fact. Okay, let's agree; that is a fact. So where does that get us? Absolutely nowhere, as far as I can see. You are merely playing with words and definitions, whats the point of that?

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2020 3:54 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:44 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:21 am
Which makes you doubly stupid.
Note my earlier response to you.

As I had stated, the moral mental states must be verified empirically and philosophically.

That is contradictory though. If the argument that all moral states are facts is correct, then they are facts in all cases. If they are merely some sort of putative fact that requires verification before becoming real facts, then the argument that all moral states are facts is false.

It is known all mental states are facts.
How else?

Since all moral states are mental states,
then all moral states are moral facts.

Whatever that is claimed as a moral state rationally has to be verified empirically and philosophical as with any other claim of knowledge.

But they are mental states, so by your argument they are already verified facts. So why are they in need of verification when they are already fact? Likewise, all religious experience is mental states, and all religious experience is also verified fact.

Why are you filtering for falsehood AFTER proving fact status up front?

Harbal wrote: ↑Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:36 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Sep 07, 2020 5:34 am Moral-facts-deniers [like Peter Holmes, Sculptor, PantFlasher, and the likes] deny moral facts exist because they assumed moral facts are the same as the typical facts of external objects and external states-of-affairs.

But what they are ignorant of the facts of states-of-affairs that are going on inside their own brain and the brains of the 7+ billion of humans at present.

Morality is not about looking for facts outside one brain.
Morality and Ethics is about doing good which is avoiding what is evil [moral nor religious sense]
Morality and moral facts are confined to the mental states of the individuals, thus;

• P1 All mental states are facts
  P2 All moral states are mental states
  C1 All moral states are facts, i.e. moral facts.

From the above, moral facts exist.

Thus the moral fact 'all humans ought-not to kill another' is a mental state within each human being.

DNA/RNA wise all humans are "programmed" with the mental states of the potential to kill so as to enable them to kill animals for food and in self-defense. But such a potential is double-edged as it could possibly facilitate the killing of all humans.

As such all humans are also "programmed" with an inherent inhibitory mental states of ought-not to kill [unless necessary] within a moral faculty, framework and system.

All moral facts are reducible to non-moral properties. All moral facts are reducible and represented by various neural algorithms within the brain of all humans as evident in the brains of the 7+ billion of humans in the present and of those in the past.

Therefore moral facts exist.
This is indisputable.

Views?

It seems to me that all you are saying is that there is an aspect of human nature that we call morality, and that's a fact. Okay, let's agree; that is a fact. So where does that get us? Absolutely nowhere, as far as I can see. You are merely playing with words and definitions, whats the point of that?

The first contention with the moral-facts-denier is whether moral facts exist in general or not.
I have demonstrated moral facts do exist.

The next phase is to present what are the moral facts which must be verified and justified empirically and philosophically.

With these moral facts, all individuals are to first understand that such moral facts exist inherently within them. The individual's task is to enable [via self-development] all the morally related actions to flow in alignment with this inherent moral impulse.

Let's take the moral fact 'no human ought to kill another or oneself'.
This I had argued is represented by an inhibitory algorithm in the brain of all human individuals.

It is only when we recognize the fact of such an inherent natural inhibitory algorithm in us that we will strive to enable it to work efficiently. [note this is not possible for our present generation or the next, but likely for the next next].
If in the future, all or the majority of people has develop such 'no killing' algorithm efficiently, then what we have will be no killings of humans by another human.

Even if there are killing by humans, humanity will strive to remove the root cause that led to this killing instead of being resigning to it.

So you think the recognition of moral facts are leading us to absolutely nowhere?
Think again.