What could make morality objective?

[Atla]

Is it maybe an American pragmatist philosophy thing, that people so vehemently deny the existence of their own minds? Even VA knows better than that lol..

I don't see anything particularly american or pragmatist about eliminative materialism. I can't see giving up the useful terms used around mind and mental phenomena being something most pragmatists would be attracted to. They are pretty damn effective terms in so many contexts and since a pragmatist isn't beholden to substance monism, for example, or other relavant ontological stances, being a pragmatist, it would be odd if there was much of this belief or lack of belief amongst pragmatists.

There are certainly many things to be critical about in U.S. culture, but some resistance to talking about mental states, feelings, what's on their minds, intentiosl, motivations, desires, dreams, fantasies, the imagination...

really doesn't seem like a tendency amongst Americans. And certainly not compared to other cultures who are more reticent - for good and for ill.

But maybe arguing yourself into non-existence in this sense, and then forgetting about yourself entirely, taking the stance that you never existed in the first place in this "mental" sense, can have huge practical use for a country that is so materialistic, so focused on the external world, extremely successful at dealing with the external world on the global scale.

Dealing with a literally existing mind could just be a distraction to that. It gets in the way, it complicates and muddies things, it's impractical, it would force people to reconsider some of their actions etc. Waste of time and energy, simplicity is faster more useful when dealing with the external world.

So mind, a literally existing thing, is made purely third-person, asbtract and de-realized, and talked about metaphorically only, when necessary. And all this is done by the mind too, ironically.

[Veritas Aequitas]

What sort of fucking moron would think that the noun phrase mind-independent referent has any coherent meaning whatsoever? Perhaps the sort of fucking moron who thinks that the noun phrase mind has a referent of any kind.

What sort of fucking moron would think that ostensive definition is foundational, or has any extra-contextual function?

You are the delusional moron who think mind-independent referent is not coherent based on your dogmatic thinking stuck with the Descartes' Mind–body Dualism Problem.
The idea of a separate mind from the body/brain was a serious issue then [even now] to refute the claim by theists and others that there is a separate mind, i.e. soul that could survive physical death and enter heaven.

Are you familiar with the Principle of Charity?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Any rational person when encountering the term 'mind' in the present state of discussion will be by default take 'mind' to be in the modern sense of 'what is mind'. One will have to highlight if otherwise.

The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves.[2][3][4] These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various mental phenomena, like perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion. Various overlapping classifications of mental phenomena have been proposed. Important distinctions group them according to whether they are sensory, propositional, intentional, conscious, or occurrent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind#Philosophy

In our present era, the concept of mind and its referent [not independent of the human conditions] is recognized within the various sciences, e.g. neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, mental health, nutrition, etc. and other FSKs.

Generally the brain is confined to the biological-anatomical aspects while the 'mind' encompasses all the related mental activities within the brain.

So, the noun phrase mind has a referent, i.e. the reference to a human-based FSK referent.

Something is obviously wrong with you in insisting and restricting the discussion of 'mind' to the Descartes' Mind–body Dualism Problem and refusing to recognize the modern definition of 'what is mind' within its specific FSK.

[Peter Holmes]

Elsewhere, VA offers the following evidence for the existence of the mind.

'Any rational person when encountering the term 'mind' in the present state of discussion will be by default take 'mind' to be in the modern sense of 'what is mind'. One will have to highlight if otherwise.

"The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves.[2][3][4]
These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation.
They are responsible for various mental phenomena, like perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion.
Various overlapping classifications of mental phenomena have been proposed.
Important distinctions group them according to whether they are sensory, propositional, intentional, conscious, or occurrent."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind#Philosophy

In our present era, the concept of mind and its referent [not independent of the human conditions] is recognized within the various sciences, e.g. neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, mental health, nutrition, etc. and other FSKs.

Generally the brain is confined to the biological-anatomical aspects while the 'mind' encompasses all the related mental activities within the brain.'

To summarise.

Premise: There are mental faculties [?] which are responsible for mental phenomena [?]
Conclusion: Therefore, there are minds.

Question-begging or what?

And a question: are minds, supposedly consisting of mental faculties - and the mental phenomena for which these faculties are supposedly responsible - physical or non-physical things?

If they're physical, what and where are they? And if they're non-physical, what and where are they, and by what causal mechanism do they affect physical things?

Legacy religious claptrap that's been around for a long time is still claptrap.

[Skepdick]

Elsewhere, VA offers the following evidence for the existence of the mind.

'Any rational person when encountering the term 'mind' in the present state of discussion will be by default take 'mind' to be in the modern sense of 'what is mind'. One will have to highlight if otherwise.

"The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves.[2][3][4]
These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation.
They are responsible for various mental phenomena, like perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion.
Various overlapping classifications of mental phenomena have been proposed.
Important distinctions group them according to whether they are sensory, propositional, intentional, conscious, or occurrent."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind#Philosophy

In our present era, the concept of mind and its referent [not independent of the human conditions] is recognized within the various sciences, e.g. neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, mental health, nutrition, etc. and other FSKs.

Generally the brain is confined to the biological-anatomical aspects while the 'mind' encompasses all the related mental activities within the brain.'

To summarise.

Premise: There are mental faculties [?] which are responsible for mental phenomena [?]
Conclusion: Therefore, there are minds.

Question-begging or what?

And a question: are minds, supposedly consisting of mental faculties - and the mental phenomena for which these faculties are supposedly responsible - physical or non-physical things?

If they're physical, what and where are they? And if they're non-physical, what and where are they, and by what causal mechanism do they affect physical things?

Legacy religious claptrap that's been around for a long time is still claptrap.

Look what ChatGPT posted!

Hahahahaha.

[Veritas Aequitas]

To summarise.

Premise: There are mental faculties [?] which are responsible for mental phenomena [?]
Conclusion: Therefore, there are minds.

Question-begging or what?

And a question: are minds, supposedly consisting of mental faculties - and the mental phenomena for which these faculties are supposedly responsible - physical or non-physical things?

If they're physical, what and where are they? And if they're non-physical, what and where are they, and by what causal mechanism do they affect physical things?

Legacy religious claptrap that's been around for a long time is still claptrap.

Strawman again.

This is the proper argument;

The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena.

They [mental faculties] are responsible for various mental phenomena, like perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion.

Perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, and emotion are empirically verified and justified within the neuroscience-FSK, the psychological FSK as real grounded on the physical neurons and their connections within the human brain.

Therefore the mind exists as real as conditioned upon the human based neuroscience-FSK, the psychological FSK.



What is your counter to the above.

[Iwannaplato]

I moved my response to VA's thread..
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40071

[Peter Holmes]

Some thoughts in response to one or other of VA's shot gun posts.

Did the big bang occur only because there is cosmology? Does no cosmology = no big bang?

Is water H2O only because there is chemistry? Does no chemistry = water is not H2O?

Are there neurons only because there is neuroscience? Does no neuroscience = no neurons?

I trust everyone can see where VA goes wrong, even if he can't. Though he denies it, his premise is that a fact is a description - and that, since all descriptions are contextual and conventional, facts are contextual and conventional - or 'conditioned upon a framework and system of knowledge'.

Conclusion?: No chemistry = no chemical facts, such as that water is H2O.

The mind-warp required to believe this nonsense came (at least in VA's case) from Kant - possibly misinterpreted. But more modern variants of the delusion include constructivism, model-dependent realism, and Derrida's invention of logocentrism: 'there is nothing outside the text'.

These increasingly outmoded 'anti-realist' fashions all have to straw man realism with some sort of correspondence theory charge.

[Peter Holmes]

Elsewhere, VA asks the following gotcha question.

'PH: If you agree with W[ittgenstein]'s 'meaning is use' how come you are rejecting the
meaning of 'mind' as used within the various FSKs I have mentioned? i.e. neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, mental health, nutrition, etc. and other FSKs.'

We also use the words fairy, ghost, goblin, devil, angel and god. Does that mean those things exist?

Face palm.

[Skepdick]

Elsewhere, VA asks the following gotcha question.

'PH: If you agree with W[ittgenstein]'s 'meaning is use' how come you are rejecting the
meaning of 'mind' as used within the various FSKs I have mentioned? i.e. neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, mental health, nutrition, etc. and other FSKs.'

We also use the words fairy, ghost, goblin, devil, angel and god. Does that mean those things exist?

Face palm.

What a stupid fucking question. Everything exists.

Fairies, ghosts, goblins, devils, angels and gods exist exactly in the same way numbers, Logic, Mathematics, Time etc. exist.

They exist in the mind, but they do exist.

[Iwannaplato]

Some thoughts in response to one or other of VA's shot gun posts.

Thoughts??
Don't you mean sentences?

[Skepdick]

Some thoughts in response to one or other of VA's shot gun posts.

Thoughts??
Don't you mean sentences?

What sentences? These arrangements of dots/pixels we are making appear on each others' screens?

Intellect: By convention there is sweetness, by convention bitterness, by convention color, in reality only atoms and the void.
Senses: Foolish intellect! Do you seek to overthrow us, while it is from us that you take your evidence?

--Democritus' Atomic Theory

[Peter Holmes]

Some thoughts in response to one or other of VA's shot gun posts.

Thoughts??
Don't you mean sentences?

Don't we have and express thoughts - sometimes by means of sentences?

What I find strange and revealing is the baffled reaction to the blindingly obvious observation that there is no reason to think that what we call the mind, containing so-called mental things and events, is a non-physical thing.

Iow, unless you are willing to claim that there are indeed abstract or non-physical things, such as minds and mental things and events - then you agree with me.

Happy to have that argument - about the supposed existence of abstract or non-physical things - but the bop is with claimants, and unmet so far, to my knowledge.

Irritated interlocutor: 'Ah - but you agree that we have and can express thoughts?! Gotcha!'

But why do you think those thoughts are abstract or non-physical things?

Irritated interlocutor: 'Okay. Show us a physical thought.'

Der. Never said I could - or anyone can. All we can see are electrochemical events in brains - and maybe other physiological processes.

The myth of abstract or non-physical things is ancient, potent and pervasive. Witness the outrage when it's challenged and exposed for what it is. It's like atheism for a theist.

[Skepdick]

But why do you think those thoughts are abstract or non-physical things?

But why do you think thoughts are non-abstract physical things?

And what reasons do you have to think that any thing is "physical"?

The myth of abstract or non-physical things is ancient, potent and pervasive.

And the myth of "physical" things is just as mythical.

Note that Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes can never address anything substantial. He just juggling adjectives.

[Peter Holmes]

Pending evidence for the existence of non-physical things, belief in their existence is irrational. So-called abstract or non-physical things are remarkably like supernatural things. Defend the faith!

[Skepdick]

Pending evidence for the existence of non-physical things, belief in their existence is irrational. So-called abstract or non-physical things are remarkably like supernatural things. Defend the faith!

100% agreed.

So where's the evidence for the existence of "physical" things?

Queue appeal to the physics FSK.