Is morality objective or subjective?

[henry quirk]

Question (no snark, utterly serious)...

I imagine a unicorn: what is the material explanation for that imagining? What is the material explanation for the imaginer?

Seriously, how does, what is in essence, a bag of dirty water, jazzed up with electricity, imagine?

Explain it, in detail, to me.

Well, thinking and imagining and guessing and reasoning - and so on - must be things that happen, right? And material stuff can't possibly do those things, right? So it must be something immaterial - non-physical - spiritual that does those things, right?

So there must be two different substances, right?: physical and non-physical; natural and non-natural or - well, blow me down - supernatural.

And the evidence for the existence of non-natural or abstract things? It's obvious - we talk about them all the time.

Don't do that, Pete. I asked a legitimate, not a leadin', question.

If you have no answer, just say so. Don't make it about me or my beliefs.

[Peter Holmes]

Question (no snark, utterly serious)...

I imagine a unicorn: what is the material explanation for that imagining? What is the material explanation for the imaginer?

Seriously, how does, what is in essence, a bag of dirty water, jazzed up with electricity, imagine?

Explain it, in detail, to me.

Well, thinking and imagining and guessing and reasoning - and so on - must be things that happen, right? And material stuff can't possibly do those things, right? So it must be something immaterial - non-physical - spiritual that does those things, right?

So there must be two different substances, right?: physical and non-physical; natural and non-natural or - well, blow me down - supernatural.

And the evidence for the existence of non-natural or abstract things? It's obvious - we talk about them all the time.

Don't do that, Pete. I asked a legitimate, not a leadin', question.

If you have no answer, just say so. Don't make it about me or my beliefs.

Not buying that, Henry. Calling the brain 'a bag of dirty water, jazzed up with electricity' is the tell. This is the argument from incredulity fallacy: I can't believe this was/is the case; therefore this wasn't/isn't the case. Apologetics 101.

How can it be that the complex electrochemical process in our brains that we call 'imagining something' produces what we call 'imagining something'?

Der.

[Belinda]

Mentalist talk - talk about minds containing mental things and events - is and always was metaphorical. Otherwise, how could we be in two minds, share our thoughts or run out of ideas, and so on?

And such talk does not become literal when we (I think rightly) abandon substance dualism and instead just talk about brains. Hence my questions:

If we see a dog, does an image of the dog exist physically in our brains? Does it exist in the way that a photo of the dog exists?

If we listen to music, does the music exist physically in our brains? Does it exist in the way that the actual sounds exist?

Does a piece of music exist physically in a cd, in the way that it exists physically when we play the cd?

Does anyone have a civilised and coherent answer - if to exist means to exist physically? Mystical woo about dogs and music existing as memories in photos and cds doesn't cut the mustard.

Peter, were it not for your 'mind' you would experience nothing. Photos and CDs experience nothing. Your computer experiences nothing. Photos, CDs, door nails, and computers can't change from what they always were until they get destroyed. But you, I , and the tree in my garden can change because we have futures until we die.

Belinda, I agree that talk about experiences has a natural place with reference to living things, and especially conscious living things. But does a hamster or an amoeba have a mind? At what stage of neural development does 'mind' emerge? Does a tree have a mind? And is it a person that experiences things, or is it a brain?

To repeat: like fictions, metaphors both have their uses and can lead us astray. For example, the claim that a picture of a dog, or a music cd, is a memory - suggests that memories can exist outside brains. Shurely shum mishtake? Surely, memories are mental things - but minds exist somehow in brains - and so on.

Mentalist talk is fine in its natural, metaphorical context. We learn and know what it means to say 'I have an idea'. But then we invent the mind as the place where ideas 'exist' - because, of course, an abstract noun must be the name of something that exists in a location. And on and on. The fiction of substance-dualism comes, as it were, from a mistaken view of language. Which is where the myth of abstract things - the stuff of philosophy - comes from.

Yes, a tree "has a mind". A tree learns form experience how best to experience a future. A hamster can be trained, and so learns how best to experience its future.

It's a brain-mind that experiences. Trees' brain-minds don't look like men's or hamsters' brain-minds but they have the same quality of wanting to live and aiming for power to continue living. Bacteria perhaps don't fulfill that function, and virus certainly does not aim to accomplish anything. Inanimate machines don't feel towards futures because inanimate machines are nothing but their past histories, and as far as they are causal they function via causal chains only.

Your description of "mentalist talk" is incorrect form the start. 'Mind' or experiences are not places. The idea of brains is an experience. Ideas are experiences as are walking and breathing. What I just wrote (about which entities experience and which do not experience) is perilously close to substance dualism. However when experiences is substituted for 'minds' we have idealism, not substance dualism, because 'mind' or experience is primary ,and experiencers are active agents for change, whereas inanimate things are passive.

Memory is unreliable whatever it applies to ; whether machines or living experiencers. Human memories are sad enough to make people cry for lost happiness. Historiography is both art and science. Reporters of scientific experiments constantly and rigorously have to guard against errors. Tree rings as memories rely on human interpreters. I don't know about computers' memories, but I tentatively suggest even silicon eventually decays.

[Peter Holmes]

Peter, were it not for your 'mind' you would experience nothing. Photos and CDs experience nothing. Your computer experiences nothing. Photos, CDs, door nails, and computers can't change from what they always were until they get destroyed. But you, I , and the tree in my garden can change because we have futures until we die.

Belinda, I agree that talk about experiences has a natural place with reference to living things, and especially conscious living things. But does a hamster or an amoeba have a mind? At what stage of neural development does 'mind' emerge? Does a tree have a mind? And is it a person that experiences things, or is it a brain?

To repeat: like fictions, metaphors both have their uses and can lead us astray. For example, the claim that a picture of a dog, or a music cd, is a memory - suggests that memories can exist outside brains. Shurely shum mishtake? Surely, memories are mental things - but minds exist somehow in brains - and so on.

Mentalist talk is fine in its natural, metaphorical context. We learn and know what it means to say 'I have an idea'. But then we invent the mind as the place where ideas 'exist' - because, of course, an abstract noun must be the name of something that exists in a location. And on and on. The fiction of substance-dualism comes, as it were, from a mistaken view of language. Which is where the myth of abstract things - the stuff of philosophy - comes from.

Yes, a tree "has a mind". A tree learns form experience how best to experience a future. A hamster can be trained, and so learns how best to experience its future.

It's a brain-mind that experiences. Trees' brain-minds don't look like men's or hamsters' brain-minds but they have the same quality of wanting to live and aiming for power to continue living. Bacteria perhaps don't fulfill that function, and virus certainly does not aim to accomplish anything. Inanimate machines don't feel towards futures because inanimate machines are nothing but their past histories, and as far as they are causal they function via causal chains only.

Your description of "mentalist talk" is incorrect form the start. 'Mind' or experiences are not places. The idea of brains is an experience. Ideas are experiences as are walking and breathing. What I just wrote (about which entities experience and which do not experience) is perilously close to substance dualism. However when experiences is substituted for 'minds' we have idealism, not substance dualism, because 'mind' or experience is primary ,and experiencers are active agents for change, whereas inanimate things are passive.

Memory is unreliable whatever it applies to ; whether machines or living experiencers. Human memories are sad enough to make people cry for lost happiness. Historiography is both art and science. Reporters of scientific experiments constantly and rigorously have to guard against errors. Tree rings as memories rely on human interpreters. I don't know about computers' memories, but I tentatively suggest even silicon eventually decays.

So...you think trees have brain-minds, want to live, and aim to have the power to carry on living. And you're entitled to your beliefs.

But mysticism doesn't interest me, Belinda. Along with intuitionism, irrationalism, properly basic beliefs (needing no justification), and so on - it's a retreat into the whistling darkness from which we're still struggling to emerge.

[Belinda]

Peter, mysticism is not the only alternative to logical positivism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

[Peter Holmes]

Peter, mysticism is not the only alternative to logical positivism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Belinda, I'm not advocating logical positivism. And what you're promoting is mysticism - unfalsifiable woo.

[Skepdick]

Mentalist talk - talk about minds containing mental things and events - is and always was metaphorical. Otherwise, how could we be in two minds, share our thoughts or run out of ideas, and so on?

And such talk does not become literal when we (I think rightly) abandon substance dualism and instead just talk about brains. Hence my questions:

If we see a dog, does an image of the dog exist physically in our brains? Does it exist in the way that a photo of the dog exists?

If we listen to music, does the music exist physically in our brains? Does it exist in the way that the actual sounds exist?

Does a piece of music exist physically in a cd, in the way that it exists physically when we play the cd?

Does anyone have a civilised and coherent answer - if to exist means to exist physically? Mystical woo about dogs and music existing as memories in photos and cds doesn't cut the mustard.

Ok. You've convinced me.

You have no memories of your wife's name.
You have no memories of your you even being married.
You have no memories of learning English.
You have no memories of any past event.

Your memories don't exist - it's all metaphorical mentalist nonense.

It's also some kind of mysitcal woo woo as to how you keep refering to dogs, photos and music while we have none exist physically around here.
It's pure magic how you keep using English without any memory of English.

What are you even talking about? What are you talking with?

[henry quirk]

I close my eyes and picture or imagine a unicorn: I see the iridescent horn, the intelligent eyes, the swish of its tail.

How do I do that picturing, that imagining?

More simply: how do I imagine?

[FlashDangerpants]

Pete, how one Earth did you end up having to discuss mystical witchcraft regarding tree-minds, a logical positivist with a type identity theory, and a substance dualist with a unicorn fixation, all in a conversation purportedly about the logical status of moral assertions?

This forum is just nuts.

@henry none of that matters. If it's a fact that physical brain injuries and physial substances such as LSD can change the way you think, then there is a physicalist answer to those questions, irrespective of whether Pete can explain them in detail or you are able to understand them (which is two seperate but both relatively unlikely things)

[henry quirk]

flash,

henry none of that matters.

Sure it does. we're expected to accept materialism/physicalism. Fine. *Explain how I imagine and I'll put aside all my wacky notions.

If it's a fact that physical brain injuries and physial substances such as LSD can change the way you think, then there is a physicalist answer to those questions,

Not really. Damaged or altered hardware affects software, but the software still isn't sourced in the hardware.




*can you? or are you a promissory materialist too?

[Peter Holmes]

Pete, how one Earth did you end up having to discuss mystical witchcraft regarding tree-minds, a logical positivist with a type identity theory, and a substance dualist with a unicorn fixation, all in a conversation purportedly about the logical status of moral assertions?

This forum is just nuts.

Agreed. But it can be entertaining. And I find that having to explain an argument's absurdity helps me to craft my own more carefully. And it beats doing the washing-up.

[Skepdick]

@henry none of that matters. If it's a fact that physical brain injuries and physial substances such as LSD can change the way you think, then there is a physicalist answer to those questions, irrespective of whether Pete can explain them in detail or you are able to understand them (which is two seperate but both relatively unlikely things)

Well shit!

If there is a physicalist answer to the way we think, then there is a physicalist answer about the way we think about morality.

Irrespective of whether any one of us can explain it in detail that ssure ounds sufficient for making morality objective.

But wait! There is more! ANY monist metaphysic is sufficient for making morality objective, because if monism is true then everything IS objective by definition.

You have failed strategically and tactically on your opening gambit. If Pete wants to win the argument he actually has to commit to dualism/mentalism.
It's a non-negotiable pre-requisite for maintaining the objective/subjective distinction.

[henry quirk]

If Pete wants to win the argument he actually has to commit to dualism/mentalism.

Hell, I'd be satisfied if he'd admit he doesn't know how imagination works.

[Belinda]

Peter, mysticism is not the only alternative to logical positivism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Belinda, I'm not advocating logical positivism. And what you're promoting is mysticism - unfalsifiable woo.

What I promote is idealism together with panpsychism. I distrust mysticism.

Can you identify which known philosophy you actually hold to?

[Belinda]

Peter Holmes wrote:

So there must be two different substances, right?: physical and non-physical; natural and non-natural or - well, blow me down - supernatural.

There is only one substance. Mind and matter are different ways by means of which we think of the one substance.