Philosophy Now Forum

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:09 am In many possible contexts, that fact provides extremely useful information on which decisions could be made. You lack imagination.

Well, you don't need all that verbiage. Expand my imagination and show me the kind of decision you would make from that fact.

Scientists call this a falsifier. All you need is one.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:10 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:09 am In many possible contexts, that fact provides extremely useful information on which decisions could be made. You lack imagination.

Well, you don't need all that verbiage. Expand my imagination and show me the kind of decision you would make from that fact.

Scientists call this a falsifier. All you need is one.

First of all, please acknowledge your mistake in conflating a feature of reality, such as a quark, with a factual assertion, which is a linguistic expression. Do you agree that a feature of reality, such as a quark, in itself isn't and can't be 'information'?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 11:09 am

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:10 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:09 am In many possible contexts, that fact provides extremely useful information on which decisions could be made. You lack imagination.

Well, you don't need all that verbiage. Expand my imagination and show me the kind of decision you would make from that fact.

Scientists call this a falsifier. All you need is one.

First of all, please acknowledge your mistake in conflating a feature of reality, such as a quark, with a factual assertion, which is a linguistic expression. Do you agree that a feature of reality, such as a quark, in itself isn't and can't be 'information'?

Don't deflect. Just give me ONE falsifier. A Black Swan for my hypothesis. That is all you have to do to hear me utter the words "I am wrong".

Unlike you slimy philosophers, I hold myself to account for intellectual honesty.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 11:11 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 11:09 am

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:10 am
Well, you don't need all that verbiage. Expand my imagination and show me the kind of decision you would make from that fact.

Scientists call this a falsifier. All you need is one.

First of all, please acknowledge your mistake in conflating a feature of reality, such as a quark, with a factual assertion, which is a linguistic expression. Do you agree that a feature of reality, such as a quark, in itself isn't and can't be 'information'?

Don't deflect. Just give me ONE falsifier. A Black Swan for my hypothesis. That is all you have to do to hear me utter the words "I am wrong".

Unlike you slimy philosophers, I hold myself to account for intellectual honesty.

Don't deflect. Do you think a feature of reality, such as a quark, is information of some kind? Is a rock information?

You disagree with what you call my taxonomy - 1 features of reality; 2 what we believe or know about them; and 3 what we say about them - so until you explain your taxonomy - ontology? - I don't know where you're coming from.

I don't know what your so-called hypothesis is. Can you spell it out so clearly and unambiguously that even a slimy philosopher can understand it?

Why can't you give me even one falsifier?!? You know - EVIDENCE!

I am letting you win this argument and I am giving you the magic words on a silver platter!

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:10 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:09 am In many possible contexts, that fact provides extremely useful information on which decisions could be made. You lack imagination.

Well, you don't need all that verbiage. Expand my imagination and show me the kind of decision you would make from that fact.

Scientists call this a falsifier. All you need is one.

Show me what DECISION you can make from the "fact" you provided.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 12:18 pm Why can't you give me even one falsifier?!? You know - EVIDENCE!

I am letting you win this argument and I am giving you the magic words on a silver platter!

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:10 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:09 am In many possible contexts, that fact provides extremely useful information on which decisions could be made. You lack imagination.

Well, you don't need all that verbiage. Expand my imagination and show me the kind of decision you would make from that fact.

Scientists call this a falsifier. All you need is one.

Show me what DECISION you can make from the "fact" you provided.

One falsifier for what? What is your claim? All you've done is ask me to justify my claim. You do know how to play this game, I assume?

I'm saying that the claim 'people eat animals and their products' is a true factual assertion, given the way we use those words. What is your counter-claim? What point are you trying to make? Spell it out. What the f**k has consequential decision-making got to do with its factual truth?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 12:30 pm One falsifier for what? What is your claim? All you've done is ask me to justify my claim. You do know how to play this game, I assume?

I'm saying that the claim 'people eat animals and their products' is a true factual assertion, given the way we use those words. What is your counter-claim? What point are you trying to make? Spell it out. What the f**k has consequential decision-making got to do with its factual truth?

My claim is: You can't use the "fact" 'people eat animals and their products' to make any meaningful decisions as an individual. It contains no useful information and therefore it has no UTILITY to a human. No more than me telling you the number of hairs on my ass. It is an answer to a question that a typical person would never bother asking.

Prove me wrong by giving me an example of the kind of decision you can make from said fact. OR the kind of question that it would answer!

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 12:33 pm

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 12:30 pm One falsifier for what? What is your claim? All you've done is ask me to justify my claim. You do know how to play this game, I assume?

I'm saying that the claim 'people eat animals and their products' is a true factual assertion, given the way we use those words. What is your counter-claim? What point are you trying to make? Spell it out. What the f**k has consequential decision-making got to do with its factual truth?

My claim is: You can't use the "fact" 'people eat animals and their products' to make any meaningful decisions as an individual. It contains no useful information and therefore it has no UTILITY to a human. No more than me telling you the number of hairs on my ass. It is an answer to a question that a typical person would never bother asking.

Prove me wrong by giving me an example of the kind of decision you can make from said fact. OR the kind of question that it would answer!

I come from another country to set up a food store. What sort of produce should I sell? Well, people (here) eat animals and their products. So I decide to sell those products. If it were a vegan country, I'd make a different decision. QED.

More important, are you denying that a fact is a fact if it has no utility? That it's possible for a fact to have no possible utility? To repeat, what point are you trying to make about facts? I got the impression you deny they (and so objectivity) even exist. Was I mistaken?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 2:45 pm I come from another country to set up a food store. What sort of produce should I sell? Well, people (here) eat animals and their products. So I decide to sell those products. If it were a vegan country, I'd make a different decision. QED.

Yeah but there are no vegan countries? Furthermore - being in a country with meat-eaters does not preclude them from eating vegetables or vegan food also - and so there is no reason to exclude those food groups (and customers!) from your target market either. If you care about making a profit anyway!

So any rational business owner wouldn't ask "What sort of products should I sell?" - that is far too broad and non-specific question that will yield stupid answers.

A business owner would ask "What sort of goods do the people around here like to consume?". The answer to that question (after much market research) would EVENTUALLY look more like "50% of the population consumes X, 30% of the population consumes Y, 15% consumes Z and 5% consumes other kinds of stuff".

In no rational field for enquiry does anybody go from a general question "What sort of produce should I sell?" to a particular and precise answer such as "Well, people (here) eat animals and their products". You live in a dream world.

One would take the scientific approach and test a number of hypothesis first:

Should I sell animal products? If 80% of the population is vegan then the answer is NO!
What is the competition like for selling animal products? Very high. There are 15 other butcheries in the region!
What is the profit-margin on animal products? 5% (this is no good - I can't make a living on this!)

So no - your example is idiotic. You've never run a business in your life.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 2:45 pm More important, are you denying that a fact is a fact if it has no utility? That it's possible for a fact to have no possible utility?

A fact before a question has no utility. Answering questions nobody is asking is pointless.
A question before a HUMAN NEED has no utility either. Asking questions nobody NEEDS the answers to is ALSO pointless!

And so arbitrary facts are pretty useless to the broader population.

Like I said - I have 437.... No wait - one fell off. 436 hairs on my ass.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 2:45 pm To repeat, what point are you trying to make about facts? I got the impression you deny they (and so objectivity) even exist. Was I mistaken?

I am trying to figure out the "Why?" question. Facts don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in the context of a human NEED for a question to be answered.
And then - a satisfactory answer to the question is entirely subjective too and so the accuracy of the fact is largely up to the person having the need!

Person A: How did the world come to exist? God did it! Ohhhhh! OK (carries on with life)
Person B: <insert a lifetime of enquiry>

And we are no closer to answering the question: What does the 'right' answer to "Life, the universe and everything" look like? 42!

TimeSeeker

Whether you have 427 hairs on your arse may be something that doesn't matter to anyone. But if it's the case, then 'TimeSeeker has 427 hairs on her or his arse' is a fact - a true factual assertion. Your insistence on utility is completely irrelevant with regard to the objectivity of factual assertions. Sorry, but you've said nothing to challenge my taxonomy, or my point that moral assertions aren't factual, so morality can't be objective. What you're saying amounts to diddly squat in this discussion.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 4:46 pm Whether you have 427 hairs on your arse may be something that doesn't matter to anyone. But if it's the case, then 'TimeSeeker has 427 hairs on her or his arse' is a fact - a true factual assertion.

Yea but the hairs on my arse keep falling off. So how long until this "true factual assertion" stops being such?
Truth/knowledge becomes stale under ever-changing conditions!

You aren't factoring in the number of arse-hairs a day I lose. Maybe it's 100. So your "fact" has +- 25% margin of error within a 24 hour time-period of being asserted? Is that acceptable or unacceptable? Is it a "true factual assertion" to say that I have 427 hairs on my arse, when I have only 426 now. Aaand 425 now. Wait. I shifted in my chair.. That's 424. And counting down! Do you think I have the time to keep accounting for every arse hair that falls off?

What if I only need this "fact" a week from now? By then I will have only 10 arse-hairs left!!!

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 4:46 pm Your insistence on utility is completely irrelevant with regard to the objectivity of factual assertions.

I beg to differ! You are failing to consider the staleness of said fact. Things change. Any factual statement about the world is an approximation. With a bounded confidence interval and a margin of error since it was last verified to be “true”. Some errors are acceptable - some errors are not.

Being wrong about the number of hairs on my arse by +-25% or 100% is immaterial in the grand scheme of things.
Do you want a pilot to be wrong 25% of the time they try to land an airplane?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 4:46 pm Sorry, but you've said nothing to challenge my taxonomy, or my point that moral assertions aren't factual, so morality can't be objective.

The challenge is right there. Here is the probability distribution of male life expectancy. And so a true probabilistic statement can be made about your future life expectancy based on your current age.
And since we can measure it - we can improve it. And we can say "The median life-expectancy for a male is 65 years. It is objectively moral to strive to increase this by 10% every century".

That is 100 years from now - the median life-expectancy should be 72. 200 years from now it will be 80. 300 years from now it will be 88. And on and on we go extending human life further and further until we live to a thousand years or more.

Objective morality is a factual statement about the FUTURE! e.g a GOAL.

We cannot make any future-factual statements about any particular individual in the group, but we can make future-factual statement about a GROUP as a whole. Thanks to the law of large numbers. https://whatis.techtarget.com/definitio ... ge-numbers

The moral goal is NO HARM. Reduce the 'bad' - increase the 'good'. And that is PRECISELY what we have been doing:

https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/w ... 24sv4jju7j

So would you kindly fuck off with your silly idea. In the context of US - humans - morality is objective.

TimeSeeker wrote:

Objective morality is a factual statement about the FUTURE! e.g a GOAL.

No, this is completely wrong and confused. A factual probabilistic prediction about life expectancy is not, and can never be, a moral assertion. The fact-value barrier is insuperable. Have you actually followed any of this discussion?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 5:31 pm TimeSeeker wrote:

Objective morality is a factual statement about the FUTURE! e.g a GOAL.

No, this is completely wrong and confused. A factual probabilistic prediction about life expectancy is not, and can never be, a moral assertion. The fact-value barrier is insuperable. Have you actually followed any of this discussion?

Insuperable? That's a BIIIIG word

I just jumped over the "insuperable barrier" and imposed my will on it. It wasn't as "Insuperable" as you have been led to believe.

Fuck the rules! If there is no objective morality then surely it cannot be asserted that it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to break rules?
I have followed this thread. Have you actually TRIED doing what I just did? Break the rules, Peter - just do it

I WANT humans to live longer, happier and more fulfilling lives. Therefore I assert that we shall. If you disagree - then we will happily exclude you from society. It's no big deal - just sign the waiver.

TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 5:32 pm

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 5:31 pm TimeSeeker wrote:

Objective morality is a factual statement about the FUTURE! e.g a GOAL.

No, this is completely wrong and confused. A factual probabilistic prediction about life expectancy is not, and can never be, a moral assertion. The fact-value barrier is insuperable. Have you actually followed any of this discussion?

Insuperable? That's a BIIIIG word

I just jumped over the "insuperable barrier" and imposed my will on it. It wasn't as "Insuperable" as you have been led to believe.

Fuck the rules! If there is no objective morality then surely it cannot be asserted that it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to break rules?
I have followed this thread. Have you actually TRIED doing what I just did? Break the rules, Peter - just do it

I WANT humans to live longer, happier and more fulfilling lives. Therefore I assert that we shall. If you disagree - then we will happily exclude you from society. It's no big deal - just sign the waiver.

Wrong again. 'I want' and 'we shall' can't produce 'should' or 'ought to'. You haven't jumped over the barrier - you've just pretended it isn't there.

Sorry - that won't work. Not even Mr Can's god can do it.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Oct 01, 2018 8:13 pm Wrong again. 'I want' and 'we shall' can't produce 'should' or 'ought to'. You haven't jumped over the barrier - you've just pretended it isn't there.

What do you mean? I want to have a glass of wine. Therefore I ought to have a glass of wine **opens bottle of 2015 Pinotage**.

And just like that *POOF* - an OUGHT became an IS **sips wine**. Do all Insuperabilities taste this good?

Maybe there never was a barrier - and you just pretended that there was? How you say this?An illusion!