Is morality objective or subjective?

[Immanuel Can]

In short, it comes down to a combination of empathy and sympathy, I suppose. If you are able to intuit how others might be affected by your actions, or the actions of others -including those of society in general- and it causes you concern if you think they will suffer in some way because of them, then you have a basis on which to make moral judgements. As you have already said, empathy can be misleading sometimes, but morality is not a science, is it?

No. But how do we know that empathy is the right principle? I mean, all empathy really means is imagining that whatever I think somebody else should be feeling is what they are feeling, and then (presumably) feeling some duty (derived from nothing more than that feeling, presumably) to...to do what?

I don't know what I can add to my above account to make you understand if it still leaves you feeling you need to ask these questions.

Well, you haven't really given an answer that suits the situation. That's the problem. I'm just wanting to know where you get your morals from. They're not all from a particular society, if you can criticize society. And there's nothing obviously moral or even obviously right about feelings like empathy.

I don't see anything in any of that that tells us we have a moral duty towards others. There's certainly no self-evident argument there.

As an atheist, I am free to follow my own instincts and feelings.

Of course. As an Atheist, you're "free" to do anything at all. You're free to be nice to folks or to cut their heads off...anything you can get away with. Nothing in an Atheist worldview says you are immoral or moral, no matter what you do.

That poor sap I feel sorry for is one of the "unfit." I am one of the "fit." If I help him, I'm working against basic evolutionary principles.

What if I am a very poorly educated atheist and know nothing about evolutionary principles? Is it okay to help the poor sap then?

Like I said: you're "free" to do whatever you feel you want to. But you're not, from an Atheist perspective, "good" for doing the right thing, nor "bad" for doing the wrong one. These terms have no objective referent at all.

Even empathy needs an explanation,

Empathy is just a sense of being able to imagine yourself in someone else's position, and we don't usually demand an explanation before we allow ourselves to sense something.

Well, if at one time, when I was a child, I saw ghosts in the curtains in my window, and I felt anxiety, then the feeling was childish, delusory and without actual basis. I needed to grow up and get over it, if that's what I felt.

Empathy could plausibly be just like that...especially if it bears no resemblance to what I, as an Atheist, believe to be the basic dynamic of life itself, "survival of the fittest." How do you know, then, that your feeling isn't just something you should get past? Nietzsche said it was: why was he wrong?

I'm not saying I believe Nietzsche about that. But I am saying that an Atheist would need a reason not to believe that Nietzsche was actually right in the logical consequences he mapped out from his own Atheism.

It may be remiss of me, but I have never stopped to think about Nietzsche before rushing to the aid of someone in distress.

Well, now that you've got time to think, you might want to take Nietzsche more seriously, and think through what he said.

"Social injustice" isn't a self-evident thing. There are cultures where there are castes and levels of society...and not a few such cultures, either. In these, women do not deserve the same rights as men, or children the rights of adults, or people born at a worker level the same as those born to the elites, and so on. In all these cultures, "justice" means that the ditch diggers stay ditch diggers, the women stay in the kitchen, the children can be killed or traded, slaves can be owned and exchanged, rape is what an offending family deserves to get, the tribe next door deserves death...and so on. Mandela's own culture was an Aparteid one. He was taught to understand himself as part of a deservedly-lower minority; and everything in his society tended to that.

How did he know he was worth more? How do you know he was, if you think he was?

When you are being badly mistreated, you more tend to think, "I don't like this", than, "I'm worth more than this".

You might not like it. But that doesn't prove you're worth anything at all. All it shows is you're not happy with the things you're experiencing.

Justice requires more: it requires you to know that what's being done to you is actually wrong. If it's right, then as much as you may not like it, there's nothing more to be said.

The more important point is that whether the perps believed they were wrong for what they did, we believe they were. And we need reason to say so. Because there are still things in our societies that we deem "unjust." And if we do, we must be accessing some outside-of-culture frame of reference for our saying so.

Otherwise, Hitler was right to kill Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, etc. in Germany. And Stalin was right to murder Kulaks in Russia. And Mandela was wrong to contradict his South African society. So social morality of that kind has to be judged by something that transcends the merely social.

What have you got for that?

I only have my own sense of right and wrong. Sorry.

I believe that. But then, I believe that conscience is more than just a feeling. What I can't tell is why you suppose your "sense" of a quality that is merely subjective ("right and wrong") entitles anybody to anything. From a purely Atheistic perspective, it surely doesn't.

That won't make it right. How many "opinions" of contradictory kinds get thrown up here? There's nothing magical about the having of an opinion that makes it a true or right opinion.

Exactly, there is nothing magical, or mystical, about morality. Nothing objectively right or wrong about it; it is only right or wrong according to a given moral standpoint.

Not even that much. For the standpoint itself can't be justified, in an Atheist world. So there's no guarantee that any standpoint tells us anything at all about objective right and wrong, which they Atheist has to believe doesn't exist at all, anyway.

Lacking any objective referent, opinions about a thing are a delusion.

No, they are opinions. When you come to redecorate, I'm sure you don't say, "well, I would prefer the bedroom in blue, but I know I'm only deluding myself". Or perhaps you do say that.

But we're not speaking of colour-choice, but of moral precepts. My colour-choice does not make any demands of me, or of my society, or of anyone else. But morality always does.

Would you really say that Nelson Mandela's actions were equivalent to his colour-choice? He happened to like black, maybe? But then, on what basis would we condemn the regime that imprisoned him? And with what moral justification could he ever protest against them? They simply had a different "colour-choice."

How is not existing a "freedom"? It's the complete absence of any options at all, really. It would rather seem to be the ultimate in...nothing.

To not exist is total freedom from pain and suffering, and as for the good things in life, you are completely unaware of what you are missing. Win, win.

There's actually no "you" to be aware at all...so one is not "winning"; one is not anything.

But we all know that existence, even with its present pains, is better than non-existence. That's why we're not all instant suicides. It seems there are things we value in the experience of existing, and are at great pains not to give up. And rightly so.

I happen to like you. That's a bit inexplicable, maybe

Don't try to explain it; just accept it.

Right. Will do.

But I may check with my therapist, just to see if I'm alright.

[Will Bouwman]

Even if God walked the Earth, knocked on your door and made you coffee and satisfied all of the tests you subjet him yo you'd insist you were hallucinating.

It depends how good the coffee is. I might insist that hallucination is still a possibility, and that there is more than one possible explanation for my experience, or I might be convinced. Who are you to say?

Given your a priori insistence that God has no place in science, I'd venture a guess that no coffee; or hallucination or any experience whatsoever would be good enough for you.

Thales of Miletus is credited with kick starting both philosophy and science in the western tradition. What distinguished his way of thinking was that he tried to explain events without reference to gods. Here's something I wrote in another article:

One of the best known examples he gave of this was earthquakes. In Greek mythology, earthquakes were caused by Poseidon, a god and so an actual physical giant, who would wreak havoc by stamping the sea floor petulantly. Thales believed that the Earth floated on the primordial ocean, and so in contrast he reasoned that earthquakes could be caused by waves shaking the world, as a ship might be tossed in a storm.
Never mind that the best of Thales’ ideas were speculative, and that many were wrong; they could be challenged and tested in a way that the whim of divine beings could not.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/104/Ph ... d_Branches

Unless you tell us how long that piece of string you call "good enough" is...

Tell me what your god can do.

[Skepdick]

Thales of Miletus is credited with kick starting both philosophy and science in the western tradition. What distinguished his way of thinking was that he tried to explain events without reference to gods.

That's really easy. Just rename "gods" to something else. Strip away the connotation. Take the bits you like. Remove the bits you don't like.

Example: Remove all the personification and anthropomorphism. Keep all the ruling/control/determination of direction.

And you get... laws of nature.

But it doesn't make for a good story, so people might be tempted to add all the color, humanity back into the colorless reductionism.

Tell me what your god can do.

Any God can dy whatever we define God to do. Like every other theoretical construct.

[Will Bouwman]

Any God can dy whatever we define God to do. Like every other theoretical construct.

Well, if a theoretical construct knocks on my door and makes me coffee, I'll let you know.

[Skepdick]

Any God can dy whatever we define God to do. Like every other theoretical construct.

Well, if a theoretical construct knocks on my door and makes me coffee, I'll let you know.

Yeah sure. Robot baristas are here.

There's a lot of Mathematics/computer science theory under the hood...

https://rozum.com/coffee-robot-barista/

[Harbal]

I don't know what I can add to my above account to make you understand if it still leaves you feeling you need to ask these questions.

Well, you haven't really given an answer that suits the situation. That's the problem. I'm just wanting to know where you get your morals from. They're not all from a particular society, if you can criticize society. And there's nothing obviously moral or even obviously right about feelings like empathy.

A moral issue that often splits public opinion is abortion. Some people think it morally unacceptable to terminate a living human foetus, while others think it unacceptable to force a woman to go through with a pregnancy she does not want. In either case there is a regrettable consequence: The death of a developing baby, or the deprivation of a person's freedom to make their own life changing decisions. I think the woman's freedom to make the choice should have priority, although I can't say why I think that is more important than the life of the foetus, but I can say that empathy plays a part in it. I don't always know how I arrive at my moral principles, but I know I have them.

I don't see anything in any of that that tells us we have a moral duty towards others. There's certainly no self-evident argument there.

I never said we had a moral duty towards others, but if we feel we have one, we impose it on ourselves.

Of course. As an Atheist, you're "free" to do anything at all. You're free to be nice to folks or to cut their heads off...anything you can get away with. Nothing in an Atheist worldview says you are immoral or moral, no matter what you do.

But there is nothing preventing him from including morality in his worldview.

Like I said: you're "free" to do whatever you feel you want to. But you're not, from an Atheist perspective, "good" for doing the right thing, nor "bad" for doing the wrong one. These terms have no objective referent at all.

The referent is my own sense of morality, which does have an objective existence, but I think of it as being subjective because it only applies to me.

It may be remiss of me, but I have never stopped to think about Nietzsche before rushing to the aid of someone in distress.

Well, now that you've got time to think, you might want to take Nietzsche more seriously, and think through what he said.

If I felt the need to take someone else's opinion on morality seriously, I would choose someone whose opinion agreed with mine.

I only have my own sense of right and wrong. Sorry.

I believe that. But then, I believe that conscience is more than just a feeling. What I can't tell is why you suppose your "sense" of a quality that is merely subjective ("right and wrong") entitles anybody to anything. From a purely Atheistic perspective, it surely doesn't.

I don't suppose that my sense of right and wrong does entitle anybody to anything, and I never said it did.

Exactly, there is nothing magical, or mystical, about morality. Nothing objectively right or wrong about it; it is only right or wrong according to a given moral standpoint.

Not even that much. For the standpoint itself can't be justified, in an Atheist world. So there's no guarantee that any standpoint tells us anything at all about objective right and wrong, which they Atheist has to believe doesn't exist at all, anyway.

I agree: A moral standpoint only informs those who are standing at that point.

But we're not speaking of colour-choice, but of moral precepts. My colour-choice does not make any demands of me, or of my society, or of anyone else. But morality always does.

But your colour choice influences your actions when you come to buy paint, just as your moral preferences influence them when dealing with other people.

Would you really say that Nelson Mandela's actions were equivalent to his colour-choice? He happened to like black, maybe? But then, on what basis would we condemn the regime that imprisoned him? And with what moral justification could he ever protest against them? They simply had a different "colour-choice."

I don't know enough about Nelson Mandela to discuss him with you, I'm afraid.



One of your main criticisms of my account of morality seems to be that no one has to take any notice of it, but that is true of any source of morality, including yours.

[Will Bouwman]

Later I read the Bible, hopeful that doing so might persuade me of something marvellous.

All 66 books? Or just a part of it?

I read the New English Bible, so however many books are in that version is as many as I read. I also read a lot of other books: the Epic of Gilgamesh, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Enuma Elish, Hesiod's Theogeny and a raft of others about mythology. What became apparent was that the creation myth in Genesis is typical of beliefs in that period and earlier. Flood narratives are common, as are Gods that protect and help their chosen people in battle. In that context, the Old Testament is a collection of some sprightly but generally unexceptional stories. Also common are resurrection myths, so the central theme of the New Testament Gospels is also typical of contemporary stories, and that there are different versions by different authors is true of all the myths mentioned, with the exception of Hesiod.

To respond, though, the short explanation for why I speak of "Evolutionary propaganda" is that much of evolutionary theory has already proved to have been nothing but pure propaganda -- the monkey-to-man theory being one of the most glaring recent examples, but others being readily available as well.

I take it you mean the common ancestor theory. What is so glaringly wrong with it?

There are cases in which not only are the fossils inverted...

Absolutely. It's called Chevron folding.

..but also when a single fossil -- like, say, the fossil of a tree -- cuts across multiple strata that are supposed to have happened millions of years apart.

There are different ways that can happen. It can be as simple as a Pre-historic creature digging a hole and an ancient tree growing out of it, sink holes, plunge pools or just the sort of cracks that open during folding.

The fossil record is far more ambiguous than Evolutionists will ever let you know; for, once again, they act as right when they're right, and not wrong when they're wrong. The fossils that seem to confirm the theory are celebrated, and the ones that undermine it are quietly shuffled off the scene.

Do you have any examples of fossils that undermine evolution?

[Will Bouwman]

Any God can dy whatever we define God to do. Like every other theoretical construct.

Well, if a theoretical construct knocks on my door and makes me coffee, I'll let you know.

Yeah sure. Robot baristas are here.

There's a lot of Mathematics/computer science theory under the hood...

https://rozum.com/coffee-robot-barista/

And should such a god appear at my door, what propitiations shall I perform to secure a cup of coffee?

[Skepdick]

Well, if a theoretical construct knocks on my door and makes me coffee, I'll let you know.

Yeah sure. Robot baristas are here.

There's a lot of Mathematics/computer science theory under the hood...

https://rozum.com/coffee-robot-barista/

And should such a god appear at my door, what propitiations shall I perform to secure a cup of coffee?

Ask it.

It's normally how prayer works... If it works.

[Peter Holmes]

What does or can language show about the nature of reality? For example, does or can language show that water is H2O? Or, for example, does or can language show that X is morally right or wrong? In other words, are these two different states-of-affairs, or features of reality, that can be described linguistically?

Moral realists and objectivists say they are - that a moral assertion is or can be a factual description of a feature of reality, just as much as a non-moral assertion is or can be - that 'homosexuality is morally wrong' describes a property in exactly the same way that 'water is H2O' describes a property.

That this is obviously bollocks goes without saying. And the sophistry needed to pretend that it isn't has been evident throughout this marathon discussion.

[Immanuel Can]

I don't know what I can add to my above account to make you understand if it still leaves you feeling you need to ask these questions.

Well, you haven't really given an answer that suits the situation. That's the problem. I'm just wanting to know where you get your morals from. They're not all from a particular society, if you can criticize society. And there's nothing obviously moral or even obviously right about feelings like empathy.

A moral issue that often splits public opinion is abortion.

Yes, a good example. Continue...

Some people think it morally unacceptable to terminate a living human foetus, while others think it unacceptable to force a woman to go through with a pregnancy she does not want.

No quite right. The woman has already made a choice: to have unprotected sex. She's used her choice to create a child, and now intends to kill her. (Statistically, 99% of abortions are these "birth control" abortions, not medical or rape-related.)

In either case there is a regrettable consequence: The death of a developing baby, or the deprivation of a person's freedom to make their own life changing decisions.

That second one isn't actually happening. She did have the choice: she didn't use it wisely. And now she wants to make second, even more evil choice, in order to "fix" the thing she chose to do.

I think the woman's freedom to make the choice should have priority,

So do I: but not the choice to murder. She should have practiced her autonomy in the matter of responsible sexual practices, instead.

...although I can't say why I think that is more important than the life of the foetus, but I can say that empathy plays a part in it.

But there's not much empathy for the child. She is dismissed as "not yet human" or even "a cluster of cells," and dispatched without mercy.

I don't always know how I arrive at my moral principles, but I know I have them.

That's functional for you, perhaps. It won't help with ethics, though, because ethics always involves more than one person. As in the abortion case, somebody's going to pay for the moral principle. And in that particular case, it must be very obvious to you that your feeling about the action is a secondary concern -- the primary is that your stand is going to have an effect on a woman and a baby, because you're going to support laws and instiutions that favour a particular outcome, or at minimum, you're feel better or worse about the woman or baby based on what gets done. Empathy, right? It's about how somebody else is feeling, not just about how you are.

That's a primary fact of morality: it always affects relationships among people, not merely the feelings of one person. So it's never a matter of one person's opinion only.

I don't see anything in any of that that tells us we have a moral duty towards others. There's certainly no self-evident argument there.

I never said we had a moral duty towards others, but if we feel we have one, we impose it on ourselves.

Well, why don't we get over it? After all, if there's no reason we owe it, and if it seems inconvenient to me, can't I just drop it?

Of course. As an Atheist, you're "free" to do anything at all. You're free to be nice to folks or to cut their heads off...anything you can get away with. Nothing in an Atheist worldview says you are immoral or moral, no matter what you do.

But there is nothing preventing him from including morality in his worldview.

...except that he doesn't believe morality is real. He thinks it's only a fabrication of his own feelings, or merely a construct from his society. So he can talk about it, but in order to believe in it with any strength, he has to play a double-minded game with himself: to secretly know that morality is bosh, but to pretend that being moral makes him genuinely good anyway. (I don't say you do this: I'm just speaking of somebody who is an Atheist but wants to "be good.")

Like I said: you're "free" to do whatever you feel you want to. But you're not, from an Atheist perspective, "good" for doing the right thing, nor "bad" for doing the wrong one. These terms have no objective referent at all.

The referent is my own sense of morality, which does have an objective existence,

That's a different question. Nobody is wondering whether or not you objectively have a (delusory) feeling about morality. We're debating whether that feeling has any objective substance. And you're saying you objectively feel morally, but that that feeling itself is merely subjective, in that it refers to no objective fact.

It may be remiss of me, but I have never stopped to think about Nietzsche before rushing to the aid of someone in distress.

Well, now that you've got time to think, you might want to take Nietzsche more seriously, and think through what he said.

If I felt the need to take someone else's opinion on morality seriously, I would choose someone whose opinion agreed with mine.

But then you'd never be able to learn if you were in any way making a mistake or wrong. You'd never be able to learn. You'd be gravitating only to those views that support what you already believe...very reassuring, but not at all informative.

But why would one choose to do that? Perhaps only because he secretly fears the other side. Perhaps because he knows that even to listen to them makes his world shake, and makes him uncomfortable with the vulnerability of his own assumptions. And he doesn't like the discomfort.

But I think you're braver than that. After all, you're here, talking to me and to others who hold the contrary view. So you cannot so lack belief in your own view as the above would imply.

Exactly, there is nothing magical, or mystical, about morality. Nothing objectively right or wrong about it; it is only right or wrong according to a given moral standpoint.

Not even that much. For the standpoint itself can't be justified, in an Atheist world. So there's no guarantee that any standpoint tells us anything at all about objective right and wrong, which they Atheist has to believe doesn't exist at all, anyway.

I agree: A moral standpoint only informs those who are standing at that point.

It doesn't even "inform" them of anything, since nothing objective exists for them to be "informed" about. All it does is reinforce their existing preferences and prejudices in a particular way.

But we're not speaking of colour-choice, but of moral precepts. My colour-choice does not make any demands of me, or of my society, or of anyone else. But morality always does.

But your colour choice influences your actions when you come to buy paint, just as your moral preferences influence them when dealing with other people.

Other people happily grant me all my colour choices, or object only trivially. But morality's different than colour-choice...remember the abortion case you raised? Morality always affects multiple people, because it governs relationships. And relationships always involve more than one person.

Would you really say that Nelson Mandela's actions were equivalent to his colour-choice? He happened to like black, maybe? But then, on what basis would we condemn the regime that imprisoned him? And with what moral justification could he ever protest against them? They simply had a different "colour-choice."

I don't know enough about Nelson Mandela to discuss him with you, I'm afraid.

Then we could speak of any black man in any society that believed in Aparteid, or slavery, or caste, or anything like them.

One of your main criticisms of my account of morality seems to be that no one has to take any notice of it, but that is true of any source of morality, including yours.

I'm actually arguing the opposite: that morality always involves relationships among multiple people. And a second feature of it, because of that, is it's always somewhat agonistic -- it brings people into combat with each other for a time, if only to reconcile eventually (if they can), because it's going to settle the question of how the relations between them are going to be constructed.

The reason that it's a fault of any moral theory when nobody else has to take any notice of it is that it's manifestly failing to inform the relations among people, or to produce the conflict necessary to produce a common, new relationship pattern. That exposes any such theory as impotent for the purposes morality always has to serve, that of governing relations among people.

But what my morality has that yours lacks is this: the appeal to objective truth. Your claim, from the start, is that your morality is nothing but your own feeling. Mine is that my moral judgment conforms to the truth that ought to govern the relations between the woman and the baby she's chosen to create. Your point is that I have no right to appeal to objective truth (though ironically, you cannot be saying I'm "bad" for doing so, since there's no objective bad). My point is simply that nobody has a right to deny the objective truth.

And that's where the divide sits, I think.

[Skepdick]

What does or can language show about the nature of reality? For example, does or can language show that water is H2O? Or, for example, does or can language show that X is morally right or wrong? In other words, are these two different states-of-affairs, or features of reality, that can be described linguistically?

Moral realists and objectivists say they are - that a moral assertion is or can be a factual description of a feature of reality, just as much as a non-moral assertion is or can be - that 'homosexuality is morally wrong' describes a property in exactly the same way that 'water is H2O' describes a property.

That this is obviously bollocks goes without saying. And the sophistry needed to pretend that it isn't has been evident throughout this marathon discussion.

Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes doesn't even know what a systemic/emergent property is.

A property that neither belongs to the "object", nor the "subject" (what stupid fucking nomenclature!) but only emerges from the interaction between the two.

Does "wet" describe a property of H2O; or does it describe a property emerging from the interaction with H2O?

[Immanuel Can]

Later I read the Bible, hopeful that doing so might persuade me of something marvellous.

All 66 books? Or just a part of it?

I read the New English Bible, so however many books are in that version is as many as I read. I also read a lot of other books: the Epic of Gilgamesh, Egyptian Book of the Dead, Enuma Elish, Hesiod's Theogeny and a raft of others about mythology. What became apparent was that the creation myth in Genesis is typical of beliefs in that period and earlier. Flood narratives are common, as are Gods that protect and help their chosen people in battle. In that context, the Old Testament is a collection of some sprightly but generally unexceptional stories. Also common are resurrection myths, so the central theme of the New Testament Gospels is also typical of contemporary stories, and that there are different versions by different authors is true of all the myths mentioned, with the exception of Hesiod.

There are two mistakes here, though. One is the trust in the old Frazer et al. hypothesis, so current back in the middle of the last century, that resemblances among ancient stories prove that one is derivative of the other. However, as the old saying goes, "correspondence is not causality." If two (or more) stories say the same thing, it may happen because of two reasons: one, that one is derivative from the other, as you're supposing, it seems; or two, that both are reporting a third thing, a common event that both of them document in different ways. This seems to be the case with the Deluge narrative, because cultures all over the world have it, apparently independently of one another. The simplest explanation of that is not that all cultures had a conspiracy about it, but that all of them report an event they all knew about.

It's like when multiple newspapers report a fire or earthquake in Hawaii. Some papers get the story right, and some wrong. Some are partisan reports, and some are more objective. None of them is exactly the same, except those that merely reproduce somebody else's report. But the fact remains that the reason for ALL the reports is the objective fact of fires in Maui.

The second mistake is this: the old Frazer theory assumed that in order for the Biblical narrative to be true, it had to compel the assumption that its narrative was unique, and all others were totally false. But this isn't so, anymore than in the case of the various news reports. Ancient cultures did know stuff, and much of it was true. Some of it clearly wasn't, but some was. To suppose, then, that because we have a flood narrative that was earlier than the Biblical one, that the earlier narrative had to be totally false, or that it was the reason for the later narrative, is to make a fairly straightforward error in deduction.

There are, in fact, multiple explanations for the similarities and differences, the earlier accounts and the later ones: and not all of them represent any kind of insight to the origins, or challenge to the integrity of the Biblical narrative. So the question doesn't settle that easily.

To respond, though, the short explanation for why I speak of "Evolutionary propaganda" is that much of evolutionary theory has already proved to have been nothing but pure propaganda -- the monkey-to-man theory being one of the most glaring recent examples, but others being readily available as well.

I take it you mean the common ancestor theory.

No. The "common ancestor" theory is current, and holds that mankind and apes had a "common ancestor" back at the stage of the primordial ooze, but not much later than that, if at all. That's the theory that's been floated to "save" the old monkey-to-man theory, which is now so totally and embarassingly discredited.

No, the monkey-to-man theory was the one taught in all public schools, museum dioramas, textbooks, and so on back in the 1960s' and 1970s...the one with the progressive pictures of apes actually turning into human beings, through the chain of things like the Java Man, the Piltdown Man, the Peking Man, the Neanderthal man, and so on.

If you weren't alive then, you might not remember how embarassingly confident the teaching of that theory was back then. It was taught as certain fact; and anyone who dared doubt it was laughed off the stage as "unscientific." When that their collapsed, though, there was never a public retraction at all...and certainly nothing commensurate with the hubris with which it had been taught formerly. There was no attempt to rectify the public record, or to re-educate students so badly mistaught.

It now serves as a cautionary tale about the folly of trusting those who deviously employ the term "science" to cover up a false theory...sort of like COVID "science" was used. (We don't seem to learn these lessons.)

There are cases in which not only are the fossils inverted...

Absolutely. It's called Chevron folding.

That's one kind. As I said, there are multiple ways it can happen. Sudden sedimentation is certainly another, as you have also seen.

The fossil record is far more ambiguous than Evolutionists will ever let you know; for, once again, they act as right when they're right, and not wrong when they're wrong. The fossils that seem to confirm the theory are celebrated, and the ones that undermine it are quietly shuffled off the scene.

Do you have any examples of fossils that undermine evolution?

Yes, but it's not particularly useful to the present discussion to get bogged down in debates about lower-animal evolution, one way or the other. There is no theological principle at stake, in such cases. In man alone, the stakes are high: because a unique creation for man establishes his importance in the created order; a tale of how he accidentally arose from the muck along with other animals means serious things for science, for theology, for history, for morality, and for our practical future as human beings. The stakes there are very, very high, as the Evolutionists well know; and that is why they floated the false monkey-to-man theory in the first place, even though the data were not there to support it. They could see what was at stake, and were desperately eager to foreclose on those possibilities.

And they're still trying, even though their first attempt was such a disaster. They've managed to keep it quiet, so they haven't had to pay for the hubris and dishonesty there. That's too bad -- for science itself. For it is not good that a group of people purporting to be scientists and educators can find a way to float a false theory of huge consequence, and can walk away from it unchallenged and without having to correct their errors. It doesn't make for good science. But that's clearly how it is, in the human-evolution story: the stakes outweigh even scientific integrity.

[Iwannaplato]

What does or can language show about the nature of reality? For example, does or can language show that water is H2O?

Well, for the sake of exploration, I don't think language shows that water is H20. Nor do I think it can show it. We often think of it as describing, though I tend to think, because of spending time on the phenomenology of language (not reading but doing) that it elicts experiences. If someone says water is H20, this doesn't show that this is the case. It asserts it. Perhaps, if we already have the not really the case plantary-ish model of atoms, with balls stuck together in models for molecules, then we get this 3 part image of water molecules in our minds and if we believe the assertion, then we have this in the back of our mind. Or we just take the assertion in without the model.

A longer text might try to convince us that water is h´H20, explaining how we arrived at this model. And so we get some complicated images and associations related to this process. I don't think however we are shown, at least not in the holding up a weasel and saying this is a weasel we are shown something.

And whatever happens when we are told water is H20 depends on the goals, knowledge and individual idiosyncrasies of the listerer or reader. We're not one listerner and we have different experiences, even with similar levels of knowledge.

The more advanced listener migth wonder about the weaker bonds between the hydrogen atoms because the water is H20 has these three pasts as if they are distinct or binary and not influences in degrees of strength.

As a sort of pragmatist I would say that we can be convinced to think of water using this model for certain uses. Others may simply remember it as this fact, contextless hanging in the air, with many other reactions and elicited experiences in between. I could argue for a moment that it is on a spectrum from a tool for doing certain things on one end and a disconnect fact on the other end.

Some of the elicited experiences becoming a kind of tool when we imagined water's ability to dissovled polarised and ionized particles - those also language creating models and eliciting experiences.

Or, for example, does or can language show that X is morally right or wrong?

It can certainly elicit that experience. And there's the rub. For most people water is H2O does not demonstrate this. It's an assertion of something they will not experience. Nor will they be able to grapple with a convincing for them description of the process through which we can decide that the H20 model for water, while a simplication, and is not based on direct experience and uses models that are to some degree symbolic (that may sound redundant), is a good shorthand for water (in certain contexts with certain goals). So, there's a practical problem for showing that these two assertions - water is H20 and homosexuality is immoral are two different kinds of assertions. The person hearing the latter statement may have feelings of disgust, the sense of being told the truth.

And it would be a hallucination to think that everyone who hears the water is H20 actually did any kind of due diligence, or even that most did that.

I know this may all seem like muddying the waters, but they are muddly. We can just think people are stupid if they can't see there is a difference. But I think if we actually look at what is happening experientially, it is not such an easy distinction.

We don't have direct experience of water as H20. In fact for someone raising thinking homosexuality is a sin, it may seem more of a direct experience that is immoral, should they see two men holding hands (and we are not in, for example, India).

And let me muddy the waters even more as a tangent with homosexuality. One can have a negative physio-emotional reaction to seeing gay sexual or romantic contact as a heterosexual not based on homophobia but simply because we identify with other people - VA's favorite a while back: mirror neurons. Long before films trained us even more to do this if we see someone who is double jointed bend a joint in a way we would suffer from, we wince. We sort of feel pain. We see them as if they are us. So, if the hetero man sees two men kiss, whoever he identifies with, he experiences doing something he'd prefer not to. (I am not arguing this is really all there is in homophobia, I just think there is a confusion, both about language and what is happening when we see differences, that leaps to judgments about the person reacting that may or may not fit.

It's like we don't actually track what is happening, we stay at the level of concepts. Homosexuality is not bad, so if you have a negative reaction you have a bad belief.

In other words, are these two different states-of-affairs, or features of reality, that can be described linguistically?

Moral realists and objectivists say they are - that a moral assertion is or can be a factual description of a feature of reality, just as much as a non-moral assertion is or can be - that 'homosexuality is morally wrong' describes a property in exactly the same way that 'water is H2O' describes a property.

Both can and do describe experiences. (and of course describing, in both cases, can create a way of experiencing)

My point being not that you are wrong, but I think you're way of describing it makes it all seem so obvious and simple. And I don't think it is.

That this is obviously bollocks goes without saying. And the sophistry needed to pretend that it isn't has been evident throughout this marathon discussion.

I can understand the frustration with certain participants, but I don't think in general the it's really obvious (goes without saying) reflects what is actually going on in people. I don't think it's useful. I know that you've taken many other approaches over the years, so this is just this post. I do think that how language works, what assertions are, what models are, what happens when we hear things is much less neat that a look at the words will let us know.

[Peter Holmes]

What does or can language show about the nature of reality? For example, does or can language show that water is H2O?

Well, for the sake of exploration, I don't think language shows that water is H20. Nor do I think it can show it. We often think of it as describing, though I tend to think, because of spending time on the phenomenology of language (not reading but doing) that it elicts experiences. If someone says water is H20, this doesn't show that this is the case. It asserts it. Perhaps, if we already have the not really the case plantary-ish model of atoms, with balls stuck together in models for molecules, then we get this 3 part image of water molecules in our minds and if we believe the assertion, then we have this in the back of our mind. Or we just take the assertion in without the model.

A longer text might try to convince us that water is h´H20, explaining how we arrived at this model. And so we get some complicated images and associations related to this process. I don't think however we are shown, at least not in the holding up a weasel and saying this is a weasel we are shown something.

And whatever happens when we are told water is H20 depends on the goals, knowledge and individual idiosyncrasies of the listerer or reader. We're not one listerner and we have different experiences, even with similar levels of knowledge.

The more advanced listener migth wonder about the weaker bonds between the hydrogen atoms because the water is H20 has these three pasts as if they are distinct or binary and not influences in degrees of strength.

As a sort of pragmatist I would say that we can be convinced to think of water using this model for certain uses. Others may simply remember it as this fact, contextless hanging in the air, with many other reactions and elicited experiences in between. I could argue for a moment that it is on a spectrum from a tool for doing certain things on one end and a disconnect fact on the other end.

Some of the elicited experiences becoming a kind of tool when we imagined water's ability to dissovled polarised and ionized particles - those also language creating models and eliciting experiences.

Or, for example, does or can language show that X is morally right or wrong?

It can certainly elicit that experience. And there's the rub. For most people water is H2O does not demonstrate this. It's an assertion of something they will not experience. Nor will they be able to grapple with a convincing for them description of the process through which we can decide that the H20 model for water, while a simplication, and is not based on direct experience and uses models that are to some degree symbolic (that may sound redundant), is a good shorthand for water (in certain contexts with certain goals). So, there's a practical problem for showing that these two assertions - water is H20 and homosexuality is immoral are two different kinds of assertions. The person hearing the latter statement may have feelings of disgust, the sense of being told the truth.

And it would be a hallucination to think that everyone who hears the water is H20 actually did any kind of due diligence, or even that most did that.

I know this may all seem like muddying the waters, but they are muddly. We can just think people are stupid if they can't see there is a difference. But I think if we actually look at what is happening experientially, it is not such an easy distinction.

We don't have direct experience of water as H20. In fact for someone raising thinking homosexuality is a sin, it may seem more of a direct experience that is immoral, should they see two men holding hands (and we are not in, for example, India).

And let me muddy the waters even more as a tangent with homosexuality. One can have a negative physio-emotional reaction to seeing gay sexual or romantic contact as a heterosexual not based on homophobia but simply because we identify with other people - VA's favorite a while back: mirror neurons. Long before films trained us even more to do this if we see someone who is double jointed bend a joint in a way we would suffer from, we wince. We sort of feel pain. We see them as if they are us. So, if the hetero man sees two men kiss, whoever he identifies with, he experiences doing something he'd prefer not to. (I am not arguing this is really all there is in homophobia, I just think there is a confusion, both about language and what is happening when we see differences, that leaps to judgments about the person reacting that may or may not fit.

It's like we don't actually track what is happening, we stay at the level of concepts. Homosexuality is not bad, so if you have a negative reaction you have a bad belief.

In other words, are these two different states-of-affairs, or features of reality, that can be described linguistically?

Moral realists and objectivists say they are - that a moral assertion is or can be a factual description of a feature of reality, just as much as a non-moral assertion is or can be - that 'homosexuality is morally wrong' describes a property in exactly the same way that 'water is H2O' describes a property.

Both can and do describe experiences. (and of course describing, in both cases, can create a way of experiencing)

My point being not that you are wrong, but I think you're way of describing it makes it all seem so obvious and simple. And I don't think it is.

That this is obviously bollocks goes without saying. And the sophistry needed to pretend that it isn't has been evident throughout this marathon discussion.

I can understand the frustration with certain participants, but I don't think in general the it's really obvious (goes without saying) reflects what is actually going on in people. I don't think it's useful. I know that you've taken many other approaches over the years, so this is just this post. I do think that how language works, what assertions are, what models are, what happens when we hear things is much less neat that a look at the words will let us know.

Thanks. Lots to pick up here. Just to start - are you advocating a kind of phenomenology - with 'experience of phenomena' as a foundation? I may be wrong, but some of what you say seems to point in that direction.