Atla wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 4:33 pm
Nowhere did I say that morality IS raw power.
Okay. But then you have to have some basis of enforcing any "morality," whether it's objective or subjective you have in view. Because morality tells people what to do -- especially when they don't want to do it, or have incentives for wanting to behave contrary to morality.
To test this, consider why we have a law like: stealing is wrong. Why would we have such a law, if stealing were not at least sometimes appealing to people? If they had no such temptation or incentive to steal, we would not need any such moral instruction at all. It would be as stupid as a law that said, "Do not eat tungsten for breakfast." Everybody would simply wonder why on earth that precept had even been thought of...and it would likely never be useful for anything. But morality (both objective and subjective) has the goal of giving at least one person (even though only one, in the case of subjectivism) moral guidance as to what is the "right" thing to do in a particular situation, in which his desires and inclinations are at least somewhat prompted to do the wrong thing.
So far, so good?
If you are an objectivist, you can have a range of tools to convince people. Certainly, some objectivists resort to using nothing but power. But if they do, then we have to wonder why it even matters where their "morality" view comes from, since power has nothing to do with rightness or wrongness. Other objectivists, like Locke or myself, would use persuasion, reason and logic to convince people to comply freely with objective morality, for their own good and for the good of their society. That's less swift than using power, but ultimately much more durable and effective, since it makes people convinced inwardly, not just compliant outwardly. And when power fails or lapses, persuasion remains.
But if you're a subjectivist, what have you got? By definition, you can't convince people by logic, evidence or proofs, since those depend on objective realities. And as a subjectivists, you have to believe that the only "rightness" behind your moral advice or 'law' is the emotional and predispositional sympathy of the listener, if he/she happens to have any. But ultimately, they have no duty whatsoever to care what you think; and if they think otherwise, they can do what they want, and a subjectivist has to accept that as every bit as valid, appropriate and moral as his own choice. And if (since morality instructs us what to do when our desires or incentives are contrary to the right thing) it is certain that many will prefer their own interests and desires to anything somebody else can subjectively offer.
That means subjectivism has to use raw power, or it is powerless. If it does not, it collapses into nihilism, solipsism or even unrestrained wickedness. Moreover it cannot ground a polity, cannot inform a law code or justice system, cannot instruct a people or nation what is worth corporately pursuing or eschewing as a goal...it cannot inform, in other words.
There could not be a more useless version of "morality," then. Even nihilism has one sort of virtue: predictability, reliability. Subjectivism, it seems, has none.
That's why it has to lapse into using raw power, or it just disappears.
If the variables in the universe are infinite -- which, in an infinite universe, they have to be, by definition of "infinite" -- then any particular outcome remains infinitely improbable, for an infinite duration of time.
Which means the "infinite universes" explanation (in addition to its problem of being unscientific because definitionally unempirical) fails to explain why anything exists.
That is, unless there is some inexplicable "limiting factor" to the number of possible outcomes...which would be... what?
There is no reason to think that existence has to have a why. Maybe existence just is.
Then it's meaningless and accidental, just as the Atheists think. And any delusion we have that it HAS a meaning is merely that: a delusion to comfort us, whereas there is no justification for us to believe it in reality.
Nor do we necessarily need a limiting factor.
Not "we." It's not we who need a limiting factor. What needs a limiting factor is the number of possibilities within the infinite universes. If the number of possibilities in it is truly infinite, then any amount of time or recursions does not make any one outcome any more probable. The odds always stay infinitely against any outcome at all.
But what all that doesn't explain is why we're stuck with this particular outcome.
That's because the infinite universe hypothesis is a total fraud. It's designed to give unthinking persons of limited mathematical discernment the
feeling that an answer has been offered, while not revealing to them that the answer doesn't actually "answer" anything at all.
The Kalaam cosmological argument rests on the childish assumption of linear time instead of closed loop time.
"Childish"? And against that, you want to offer "infinite regress" or "reincarnation"?
But it's really linear
causality that's the problem. It's the realization that everything that has a beginning has a
cause, and that
causes proceed in linear fashion, just as all science assumes. So if you want to contradict the Kalaam, you first have to stop believing in linear causality...and science. And observation. And mathematics. And reality as we know it.
Is that a price you wish to pay?
