Philosophy Now Forum

[quote=odysseus post_id=479462 time=1605112588 user_id=15698]
[quote]henry quirk wrote
choice, choosing, the capacity for, to, choose, undergirds a lot of my thinkin'

to be clear: I subscribe to the quaint idea that a man is an agent, not an event, that he is autonomous, a free will

oh no! now I've done it! I've outed myself as a proponent of that most pernicious, atavistic notion: libertarian agent causation (the only free will worth havin')...I'm utterly irrational! free will? free will! you're mad, Henry, stark-ravin'!

incidentally: it's my crazy, wackadoodle ideas about free will that led me to become a deist

so: let's start there...I say I have, am, a free will

what say you?[/quote]

Hmmmm Unabashedly simple. But then, it depends on how reasonable you can be. One can insist doggedly and keep insisting till the cows and all the farm animals come home, but this is not an argument. It's right up there with the cow just mooing and mooing. At any rate, we'll continue

Freedom, a free will: There are many types, and I won't name drop as that can be off putting (unless you want to). Just the ideas. Freedom ex nihilo is an impossible idea to defend, so I have to assume you don't mean this. I may not subscribe a strict determinist position (what IS causality, strictly speaking, anyway?) but whatever is to be believed in has to stand up to, say, certain coercive intuitions, like things don't move by themselves. Apodictically impossible and I think you just have to abide by this. You can SAY you do not, but it would be the equivalent, (no, far worse) of saying Mars is made of gum drops or grass grows in liquid nitrogen. I mean, thinking has to make sense.

But freedom ex nihilo is also massively boring. I have always argued that pool ball mechanics in no way can apply to mental activity and its matrices of decision making. I think something extraordinary happens in this kind of organic complexity. So freedom is not dead, but it is qualified. One cannot simply dismiss environments of will and choice and the possibilities they are presented with. Put it like this: I can at this moment, jump out the window. I am free to do this, among countless other things. But this is not a "live option" for me. It could be if I were suicidally depressed, but I'm not. Live options for me are sitting at the computer arguing, going shopping, getting more coffee, and so on.
[/quote]

The term "free will" refers to a real experience, but not all experiences have an external correlate, and not all are accurate with regard to measurable things. To say we experience freedom is true. To say that we have freedom is false. There is no sense in which we are free. The existence of measurement itself requires that the universe is constrained. It is only possible to experience freedom in the ways in which we are ignorant of the constraints. Everything that can happen, does happen; and that's exactly one perpetual is-ness. We are the tiny speck of a rider on the universal elephant and the elephant grows as our knowledge grows.

henry quirk wrote
let's test that standard...

do you think the assertion fire is hot could be false?

if so, how?

what would have to be different in reality for that assertion to be false?

pete sez If it couldn't be false, then there's no reason to call it true because it doesn't make a factual claim about reality that may or may not be true

This is what makes prepositions nonsensical (says you know who). It would have to be that fire being hot has a kind of stand alone truth, which would be the same as saying it is absolutely hot. Absolutes don't need contexts to be true, but the saying IS a context. Fire, heat, these are terms that are embedded in other "regions" of meaning that predelineate the encounter with an actuality. This is the problem of language and the world: language IS the world. There is no Truth out there; truth is propositional.

Of course, "out there" is also merely contingent. this is why phenomenologists are so attractive. All this loss talk! Better to conclude (as you know who did) that what is real is interpretatively bundled. But on the other hand, and it is a BIG other hand: the fire that is burning your flesh causing unspeakable agony, while this talk about agony is certainly language embedded ,and "agony" is not an absolute, there is that mysterious intuited counterpart to the concept that screams meaning.

This kind of thinking goes far down the rabbit hole. How far down are you?

Peter Holmes wrote
1 You seem to be criticising the early Wittgenstein, for reasons that he later recognised himself. His realisation that meaning is use meant the redemption of value-assertions from the non-sense bin. But that doesn't mean there's no difference between assertions of value and of fact - between their functions, which means their uses.

2 Your talk of 'underlying concepts' is, in my opinion, mystical nonsense. What and where are concepts, and in what way do they exist? In minds - more abstract fictions? The claim that an abstract noun is the name of a concept has no explanatory value whatsoever. So apply Occam's razor. The analysis of concepts is nothing more than the explanation of how we use or could use words or other signs. If you disagree, please provide an example of conceptual analysis that isn't precisely that.

As to Witt on value and ethics, I've read nowhere that he no longer regarded ethics as a transcendental matter. You find this in Lecture on ethics, in the Tracatus, in his insistence not to discuss metaethical issues among peers (turning his chair to the wall if the matter even came up at all).
As to the "use" nature of concepts, please note that Occam's razor itself is a concept. There is no way around this I'm afraid. To deny that a concept is an inherent part of meaningful events is more what mystical thinking would be. I mentioned freedom and dignity, These are by no means abstractions as their intuitive counterparts are redily found. There you are ready to start the car, you take the keys out, into the ignition, and nothing happens. There is no freedom in the successful execution, and it's pretty much routine, memory running through you as an agent of operation.This is what can be called "the world": walking, talking, using a pen, putting on your shoes, submitting the passwords, adn so on from dawn to dusk. A concept that refers to any of this is a designation of utility. But when things go wrong and one is NOT a, well, pawn of utility, blindly, passively and spontaneously moving through life, all things stop and there is distance between the habit-of-doing and YOU. Of course, you here is a tough cookie, so put it aside, but this "distance" is quite important.

It is the basis of one's not being "determined" by processes that otherwise claim all you do. It is where one's freedom is revealed.

That does it for now.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:28 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 4:21 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 9:49 am Claim: a woman belongs to herself (fact)...

{False, because it's an opinion, not a fact.]

... so it's wrong to use her as property or resource (moral fact).

[Invalid, because it doesn't follow from the premise. And false, because it's an opinion, not a fact, let alone a moral fact.]

Interesting implication: a woman belongs to herself, so it's wrong for anyone to use her body as property or resource without her consent.

To repeat: whatever facts or opinions we use to justify a moral opinion, it remains an opinion; and others can use the same facts differently, or different facts, to justify a different moral opinion. That's our inescapable moral predicament. And it's why our moral values and rules can and sometimes do change over time - examples being our attitude towards slavery, racism, sexism, sexuality and gender difference, and so on.

You are very deceptive and rhetorical.
The argument here is specific to slavery.

The moral fact is
'no human ought to own another human as a chattel slave',

This is NOT a fact. It's an opinion. And for most of human history, we had the opposite opinion.

I have already explain a "1000 times" a fact is specific to a Framework and System of Knowledge.

A Moral fact as stated above is one that is justified as true from with a Moral Framework and Knowledge.
If you insist that is an opinion, then, you are implying scientific facts are opinions in your sense.

I believe you are ignorant due to the following.
What you understand as fact is merely a linguistic meaning which merely a statement.
Example the dictionary define fact [googled] as;

• fact = a thing that is known or proved to be true.

what you have ignored is the imperative preceding methods the thing is known or proven before it is justified as a fact.
Whatever the fact, it is always conditioned upon a specific Framework and System of Knowledge.
Thus a moral-fact is a fact that is conditioned upon a Moral Framework and System.

Btw, you have not yet prove to me a fact-in-itself exists absolutely and unconditionally without interacting with the method it is known or proven.

Btw, you are ignorant of the reality of particles in Physics??
In particle Physics, there is no reality that is absolutely independent of the human conditions. What there is of reality is always a Model-Dependent-Reality.

In the case of chattel slavery, an enslaved person is deprived of his/her basic rights and freedom.

That 'no person ought to be deprived of her basic rights and freedom' is also NOT a fact. It's an opinion.

It is a moral fact that is justified empirically and philosophically within a Moral Framework and System.

The proof is inferred inductively that no normal person would want to be enslaved as a chattel slavery i.e. as property at the full disposal of the slave owner.

This is your original mistake. It may be an inductively inferred fact that no normal person would want to be enslaved. But that fact doesn't and can't entail the conclusion that slavery is morally wrong. That DOESN'T FOLLOW, deductively or inductively. And I and others have explained this to you countless times.

What you blatantly deny is,
whatever is fact is specific to its Framework and System of Knowledge.

Can you define what you meant by "morally wrong"?
I believe you are mess in this.

What is "wrong" is when an act is not in compliance with the standard of a Framework and System.
If the standard within any Framework is say;
all signatures must be signed on the bottom right of a page,
then any signature signed on the left is wrong.

It can be the standard of any FSK, e.g. if any act did not comply with a legal standard, then it is legally wrong, .. culturally wrong, linguistically wrong, scientifically wrong, and so on.

In a moral Framework and System the moral fact and standard is;
"no human ought to enslave by another" [as justified],
then enslaving another human - which is against the moral standard- is morally wrong.

This is not individual[s]' opinion nor beliefs but it is inherent in the nature of any human being just like any scientific facts about human nature.

Again. It may be a fact of human nature that we don't normally want to be enslaved. But so what? Suppose we normally DID want to be enslaved. By your criterion, that would mean slavery is not morally wrong. Just to be clear - is that your argument?

If it is justified that inherently ALL humans want to be enslaved, then yes, slavery is not morally wrong. As such there should be no laws to ban chattel slavery.
But as evident and justified, no 'normal' human would volunteer to be enslaved by another human.
Show me proofs [inductive is sufficient] that ALL 'normal' humans want to be enslaved [as a chattel] by another human.

odysseus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 3:35 pm Peter Holmes wrote

This is NOT a fact. It's an opinion. And for most of human history, we had the opposite opinion.

I haven't read all in this tread, but a couple of things come to mind.

It is a fact that torturing young children is wrong! Note that such a thing is SO wrong that it makes Witt look silly. Clearly the fact that my shoe is untied is, in a very real sense, not even in the same galaxy as torturing young children being wrong. And yet the former gets called a fact, the latter does not.
........

Chattel slavery certainly IS a matter underdetermined compared to an untied shoe, but the "wrongness" of the moral issue tells us there is something greater, not less, than the injunction against it. Why would this be discounted an no factual?

I believe the point here is whatever claim is a fact, it must be grounded on and preceded by solid justification processes that are based on the empirical and the philosophical.

Intuitively all 'normal' humans will realize 'torturing children for pleasure' is not right regardless of whatever Framework and System it is subsumed under, e.g. legal, psychology, psychiatry, cultural, social, MORAL or others.

However if such acts of torture are to be termed 'morally wrong' it must be justified within a Moral Framework and System.
There is an argument and justification why 'torturing children for pleasure' is morally wrong, but I have not yet presented a detailed argument and justification for it.

I have presented reasonable detailed arguments and justifications the moral facts,
-no human ought to kill another'
-no human ought to enslave another as a chattel.'

Point is for every claim that is claimed to be a moral fact, each claim must be individually justified empirically and philosophically. There are no generic universal rule that is applicable to all moral facts.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:08 am

odysseus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 3:35 pm Peter Holmes wrote

This is NOT a fact. It's an opinion. And for most of human history, we had the opposite opinion.

I haven't read all in this tread, but a couple of things come to mind.

It is a fact that torturing young children is wrong! Note that such a thing is SO wrong that it makes Witt look silly. Clearly the fact that my shoe is untied is, in a very real sense, not even in the same galaxy as torturing young children being wrong. And yet the former gets called a fact, the latter does not.
........

Chattel slavery certainly IS a matter underdetermined compared to an untied shoe, but the "wrongness" of the moral issue tells us there is something greater, not less, than the injunction against it. Why would this be discounted an no factual?

I believe the point here is whatever claim is a fact, it must be grounded on and preceded by solid justification processes that are based on the empirical and the philosophical.

Intuitively all 'normal' humans will realize 'torturing children for pleasure' is not right regardless of whatever Framework and System it is subsumed under, e.g. legal, psychology, psychiatry, cultural, social, MORAL or others.

However if such acts of torture are to be termed 'morally wrong' it must be justified within a Moral Framework and System.
There is an argument and justification why 'torturing children for pleasure' is morally wrong, but I have not yet presented a detailed argument and justification for it.

I have presented reasonable detailed arguments and justifications the moral facts,
-no human ought to kill another'
-no human ought to enslave another as a chattel.'

Point is for every claim that is claimed to be a moral fact, each claim must be individually justified empirically and philosophically. There are no generic universal rule that is applicable to all moral facts.

If you think a fact needs justification, you must be referring to a factual assertion, because a feature of reality - a thing that is known to exist or to have occurred - obviously needs no justification, because it just is or was.

So the facts you're referring to are linguistic expressions, such as: no human ought to kill another; and no human ought to enslave another. And you think these assertions can be shown to be true empirically and philosphically.

Now, we can sack philosphical justification, because all that means is valid argument with true premises - and there's nothing specifically philosophical about that requirement. Calling it 'philosophical justification' is sound and fury signifying nothing special.

So we're left with the need for empirical justification for a moral assertion: real evidence from experience for the truth of a claim such as: no human ought to kill another.

What and where is that empirical evidence? To my knowledge, you (VA) and others have failed to produce any such evidence. Every putative example has turned out not to be evidence of any kind - let alone empirical evidence. But, perhaps I've been blind, stupid, ignorant, deluded by my logical positivism, and so on.

So, tell you what, please be patient and enlighten me once and for all by producing your best piece of empirical evidence for the truth of your favourite moral assertion: no human ought to kill another. Empirical evidence, mind, not argument. Why is it true, and what would have to be different for it to be false? What in reality would we not experience if it were false?

Since VA will either misunderstand or ignore this request - offers from any other convinced moral realist or objectivist also welcome.

odysseus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 5:36 pm

henry quirk wrote
choice, choosing, the capacity for, to, choose, undergirds a lot of my thinkin'

to be clear: I subscribe to the quaint idea that a man is an agent, not an event, that he is autonomous, a free will

oh no! now I've done it! I've outed myself as a proponent of that most pernicious, atavistic notion: libertarian agent causation (the only free will worth havin')...I'm utterly irrational! free will? free will! you're mad, Henry, stark-ravin'!

incidentally: it's my crazy, wackadoodle ideas about free will that led me to become a deist

so: let's start there...I say I have, am, a free will

what say you?

Hmmmm Unabashedly simple. But then, it depends on how reasonable you can be. One can insist doggedly and keep insisting till the cows and all the farm animals come home, but this is not an argument. It's right up there with the cow just mooing and mooing. At any rate, we'll continue

Freedom, a free will: There are many types, and I won't name drop as that can be off putting (unless you want to). Just the ideas. Freedom ex nihilo is an impossible idea to defend, so I have to assume you don't mean this. I may not subscribe a strict determinist position (what IS causality, strictly speaking, anyway?) but whatever is to be believed in has to stand up to, say, certain coercive intuitions, like things don't move by themselves. Apodictically impossible and I think you just have to abide by this. You can SAY you do not, but it would be the equivalent, (no, far worse) of saying Mars is made of gum drops or grass grows in liquid nitrogen. I mean, thinking has to make sense.

But freedom ex nihilo is also massively boring. I have always argued that pool ball mechanics in no way can apply to mental activity and its matrices of decision making. I think something extraordinary happens in this kind of organic complexity. So freedom is not dead, but it is qualified. One cannot simply dismiss environments of will and choice and the possibilities they are presented with. Put it like this: I can at this moment, jump out the window. I am free to do this, among countless other things. But this is not a "live option" for me. It could be if I were suicidally depressed, but I'm not. Live options for me are sitting at the computer arguing, going shopping, getting more coffee, and so on.

I wonder where you are in this so far.




Then their

please, continue

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:59 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:08 am

odysseus wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 3:35 pm Peter Holmes wrote


I haven't read all in this tread, but a couple of things come to mind.

It is a fact that torturing young children is wrong! Note that such a thing is SO wrong that it makes Witt look silly. Clearly the fact that my shoe is untied is, in a very real sense, not even in the same galaxy as torturing young children being wrong. And yet the former gets called a fact, the latter does not.
........

Chattel slavery certainly IS a matter underdetermined compared to an untied shoe, but the "wrongness" of the moral issue tells us there is something greater, not less, than the injunction against it. Why would this be discounted an no factual?

I believe the point here is whatever claim is a fact, it must be grounded on and preceded by solid justification processes that are based on the empirical and the philosophical.

Intuitively all 'normal' humans will realize 'torturing children for pleasure' is not right regardless of whatever Framework and System it is subsumed under, e.g. legal, psychology, psychiatry, cultural, social, MORAL or others.

However if such acts of torture are to be termed 'morally wrong' it must be justified within a Moral Framework and System.
There is an argument and justification why 'torturing children for pleasure' is morally wrong, but I have not yet presented a detailed argument and justification for it.

I have presented reasonable detailed arguments and justifications the moral facts,
-no human ought to kill another'
-no human ought to enslave another as a chattel.'

Point is for every claim that is claimed to be a moral fact, each claim must be individually justified empirically and philosophically. There are no generic universal rule that is applicable to all moral facts.

If you think a fact needs justification, you must be referring to a factual assertion, because a feature of reality - a thing that is known to exist or to have occurred - obviously needs no justification, because it just is or was.

So the facts you're referring to are linguistic expressions, such as: no human ought to kill another; and no human ought to enslave another. And you think these assertions can be shown to be true empirically and philosphically.

Now, we can sack philosphical justification, because all that means is valid argument with true premises - and there's nothing specifically philosophical about that requirement. Calling it 'philosophical justification' is sound and fury signifying nothing special.

So we're left with the need for empirical justification for a moral assertion: real evidence from experience for the truth of a claim such as: no human ought to kill another.

What and where is that empirical evidence? To my knowledge, you (VA) and others have failed to produce any such evidence. Every putative example has turned out not to be evidence of any kind - let alone empirical evidence. But, perhaps I've been blind, stupid, ignorant, deluded by my logical positivism, and so on.

So, tell you what, please be patient and enlighten me once and for all by producing your best piece of empirical evidence for the truth of your favourite moral assertion: no human ought to kill another. Empirical evidence, mind, not argument. Why is it true, and what would have to be different for it to be false? What in reality would we not experience if it were false?

Since VA will either misunderstand or ignore this request - offers from any other convinced moral realist or objectivist also welcome.

offers from any other convinced moral realist or objectivist also welcome.

did all that...now I'm dealin' with...

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 5:24 pm pete sez: A factual assertion is one that can be true or false. Do you think the assertion 'torturing children is wrong' could be false? And if so, how? What would have to be different in reality for it to be false?

let's test that standard...

do you think the assertion fire is hot could be false?

if so, how?

what would have to be different in reality for that assertion to be false?

pete sez If it couldn't be false, then there's no reason to call it true because it doesn't make a factual claim about reality that may or may not be true

pete?

Advocate wrote
The term "free will" refers to a real experience, but not all experiences have an external correlate, and not all are accurate with regard to measurable things. To say we experience freedom is true. To say that we have freedom is false.

There is something to this "we experience freedom but freedom is false". It wants to be taken seriously, and that means giving it analysis. On the subjective end there is the experience of freedom: I say I am free, and proceed wave my arms, do this and do that as actions clearly issuing from the desire to prove my freedom. I say (non verbally) MOVE! and the arm moves. Simple as that. It is not unlike Diogenes proving to Parmenides that movement actually is a fact. He just walked across the room, and said there, movement is real!

But to move an arm requires impulse. How is it that this simple principle of sufficient cause works its way into things at the level of human motivation? It is VERY insistent. Causality is not some empirical principle. It is intuitively insistent. Can't even imagine spontaneous causality, while I can imagine easily things defying gravity. The Real problem though goes unnoticed, and this is where philosophy steps in. Causality is about things in the world, but it is an intuition, and intuitions are what WE do and since causality is about things in the world, that puts things in the world in an admixture with the way we understand them.
Welcome to Kant and phenomenology. When I "choose" to make my arm move, I really have actual claim on what things are doing "out there". It's just what m mind imposes on them.
This kind of thinking is a very deep rabbit hole, but because it works, that is, idealism like this makes such sense, I am no longer a simple minded causationist, to give it a name. The more I investigate this kind of thinking in existential theory, the more I realize messy the matter is.

There is no sense in which we are free. The existence of measurement itself requires that the universe is constrained. It is only possible to experience freedom in the ways in which we are ignorant of the constraints. Everything that can happen, does happen; and that's exactly one perpetual is-ness. We are the tiny speck of a rider on the universal elephant and the elephant grows as our knowledge grows.

I don't know about the elephants, but you're right, I think: freedom is freedom from and freedom to vis a vis things in the world to do. But there is philosophy that goes far beyond this simplicity. Freedom can be seen away from "context boundness", and context simply mean what you said, but the "saying" is in language and our various affairs, and these are in time. Here I am, in time, anticipating, planning, expecting, not expecting, all learned responses from deep in infancy till now. It is the sustained flow into the future possibilities that makes for the lack of freedom, because the world is just a living out of affairs THROUGH us. But when we stop this production, terminate the stream of mental events, and stand before all things without the anticipations, the presuppositions, VERY interesting things happen with this mundane idea of freedom.

From here, any more discussion would require your interest in such things; otherwise, it would be a waste of writing.

henry quirk wrote

please, continue

It is an argument that requires your participation. Either you agree so far or you have issues. Which and why to both.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 4:33 pm

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:59 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:08 am
I believe the point here is whatever claim is a fact, it must be grounded on and preceded by solid justification processes that are based on the empirical and the philosophical.

Intuitively all 'normal' humans will realize 'torturing children for pleasure' is not right regardless of whatever Framework and System it is subsumed under, e.g. legal, psychology, psychiatry, cultural, social, MORAL or others.

However if such acts of torture are to be termed 'morally wrong' it must be justified within a Moral Framework and System.
There is an argument and justification why 'torturing children for pleasure' is morally wrong, but I have not yet presented a detailed argument and justification for it.

I have presented reasonable detailed arguments and justifications the moral facts,
-no human ought to kill another'
-no human ought to enslave another as a chattel.'

Point is for every claim that is claimed to be a moral fact, each claim must be individually justified empirically and philosophically. There are no generic universal rule that is applicable to all moral facts.

If you think a fact needs justification, you must be referring to a factual assertion, because a feature of reality - a thing that is known to exist or to have occurred - obviously needs no justification, because it just is or was.

So the facts you're referring to are linguistic expressions, such as: no human ought to kill another; and no human ought to enslave another. And you think these assertions can be shown to be true empirically and philosphically.

Now, we can sack philosphical justification, because all that means is valid argument with true premises - and there's nothing specifically philosophical about that requirement. Calling it 'philosophical justification' is sound and fury signifying nothing special.

So we're left with the need for empirical justification for a moral assertion: real evidence from experience for the truth of a claim such as: no human ought to kill another.

What and where is that empirical evidence? To my knowledge, you (VA) and others have failed to produce any such evidence. Every putative example has turned out not to be evidence of any kind - let alone empirical evidence. But, perhaps I've been blind, stupid, ignorant, deluded by my logical positivism, and so on.

So, tell you what, please be patient and enlighten me once and for all by producing your best piece of empirical evidence for the truth of your favourite moral assertion: no human ought to kill another. Empirical evidence, mind, not argument. Why is it true, and what would have to be different for it to be false? What in reality would we not experience if it were false?

Since VA will either misunderstand or ignore this request - offers from any other convinced moral realist or objectivist also welcome.

offers from any other convinced moral realist or objectivist also welcome.

did all that...now I'm dealin' with...

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Nov 11, 2020 5:24 pm pete sez: A factual assertion is one that can be true or false. Do you think the assertion 'torturing children is wrong' could be false? And if so, how? What would have to be different in reality for it to be false?

let's test that standard...

do you think the assertion fire is hot could be false?

if so, how?

what would have to be different in reality for that assertion to be false?

pete sez If it couldn't be false, then there's no reason to call it true because it doesn't make a factual claim about reality that may or may not be true

pete?

Not sure what you're getting at, Henry.

What we call the hotness of what we call fire is a feature of reality - a physical property of fire that we can sense. So we can verify the factual assertion 'fire is hot'. It's a true factual assertion - a fact. And the factual assertion 'fire is cold' is false - given the normal use of those words.

If the nature of fire were different - if it were cold - then the factual assertion 'fire is hot' would be false. What verifies or falsifies a factual assertion is the feature of reality that it asserts - given the way we use the words in context.

Now, what in reality can verify or falsify the assertion 'slavery is wrong' in the way that something in reality verifies the assertion 'fire is hot'?

If all you can offer is 'a person owns herself', that doesn't do the job, because all you're saying is that it's wrong to own a person who owns herself - which just adds another moral assertion: slavery is morally wrong because it's morally wrong to own a person who owns herself.

Truth is, the claims 'fire is hot' and 'slavery is wrong' have radically different functions. And only the first is factual.

odysseus wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:31 pm

henry quirk wrote

please, continue

It is an argument that requires your participation. Either you agree so far or you have issues. Which and why to both.

I wasn't sure you were done with that Then their at the end of your post

I'll respond this evening

Not sure what you're getting at, Henry.

nuthin' really...just checkin' sumthin' out

Hmmmm Unabashedly simple.

I'm a parsimonious guy


Freedom, a free will: There are many types, and I won't name drop as that can be off putting (unless you want to).

I'm only interested in one


Freedom ex nihilo is an impossible idea to defend, so I have to assume you don't mean this.

no, freedom comes from sumthin'


I think something extraordinary happens in this kind of organic complexity.

I think sumthin' extraordinary is in or is overlaid on or operates through the organic complexity of body/brain

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu Nov 12, 2020 5:33 pm Now, what in reality can verify or falsify the assertion 'slavery is wrong' in the way that something in reality verifies the assertion 'fire is hot'?

What you assert is true. However, there is more to wrongness than morality. There is physicality.

For example, to eat spoiled food is wrong because of the nasty physical effects, possibly even premature death.

Likewise, slavery is wrong because of its deleterious effects upon the body, that include premature death of the body.

This assertion that what is good for the body is morally right, that slavery is physically harmful and thus morally wrong, raises the question, is slavery actually deleterious to the body?

Because slaves are often subjected to harsh physical conditions that shorten a lifespan, the inquiry can be refined to an objective measure that excludes harsh physical conditions, namely: Does physical enslavement lead to mental enslavement, with the same deleterious effects upon the physical?

Well, those in the know realize the significance of the mind/body connection and how enslaving the body does in fact enslave the mind. An enslaved mind can be full of fear and alertness, but it can also be dopey and complacent. Depends on the master. Dopey and complacent often has deleterious physical effects similar to those that Chief Full Of Fear And Alertness is watching out for, ‘specially if the slave’s fingers are stained orange from cheetle, and if the complacent slave’s feet trip over beer bottles when they finally start moving.

However, those who learn this are on the road to transcending enslavement of the mind.

Example: Viktor Frankl realized, while physically and mentally enslaved, that love is the purpose of life, and this freed his mind from physical enslavement. Is this realization morally right, given the objective criterion of positive mental effects upon the body?

The fact is, his body lived to tell the tale. Many others under the same physical conditions of brutal enslavement did not. Therefore, his mental freedom is morally right.