/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14182995]

>proves objective morality outside of God
nothing personal kid

[Anonymous No.14183006]

Oh I'm sure the Jewish intellectual that spent his entire career criticizing Islam then gets offended at Trump for doing the same cracked the code.

[Anonymous No.14183010]

>we will use SCIENCE for ethics, screw philosophy
also Harris was refuted by philosophy tube https://youtu.be/wxalrwPNkNI

[Anonymous No.14183014]

>>14182995
It is common. It shouldn't be hard to prove

[Anonymous No.14183015]

>>14182995
Doesn't matter religious people don't listen to others.

[Anonymous No.14183016]

>>14182995
>in a few centuries people of faith will be a tiny minority
how do religious people cope?

[Anonymous No.14183025]

>>14183016
Incorrect

[Anonymous No.14183030]

>>14182995
>Writes a book called "The Moral Landscape"
>Book describes An Amoral Landscape

[Anonymous No.14183033]

>>14182995
He didn't prove that. At all. Don't get me wrong. Objective morality without God is what I believe in also. But Harris didn't prove that whatsoever. Besides, if someone did prove it, it's likelier to be Kant, or Moore, or Ross. Harris fails by giving a naturalist reduction that doesn't actually reduce normativity, but presupposes it in the process. You might contest Kant or Moore or Ross, and say their proofs didn't really prove anything. But Harris isn't even proving something. He thinks he is, but he isn't. Realize I'm not criticizing Harris either from the theist perspective or the moral nihilist perspective. That's how bad Harris is.

[Anonymous No.14183034]

>>14183014
Common sense**

[Anonymous No.14183043]

>>14182995
>>14183010
>>14183025
>making an argument for something means you proved it

[Anonymous No.14183051]

>>14183043

[Anonymous No.14183094]

>>14183010
>Cuck Philosophy
Damn, dude, thats a YIKES. Never post this cringe again. Oof, like, what the heck

[Anonymous No.14183155]

If morality is subjective, why does he act like a person that believes in God?

[Anonymous No.14183171]

>>14182995
Lol. Even (Real) Atheists hate Sam Harris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxalrwPNkNI

[Anonymous No.14183212]

>>14183094
What was wrong with Cuck Philosophies criticisms?

[Anonymous No.14183431]

>>14183094
>yikes
>oof
Go home zoomer

[Anonymous No.14183433]

>>14183212
He throws a lot of jargon, but his criticisms all circle back to appeal to emotion. Basically
>X is bad because it makes some people feel bad :'(

[Anonymous No.14183455]

You mean like Kant did hundreds of years ago?

[Anonymous No.14183461]

>>14183455
You mean like The Bible did before that.

[Anonymous No.14183463]

>garbage pop-sci literature that tries to be philosophy

Forget those obnoxious american evangelics, american scientificism idols are the cancer of our time and they are far more dangerous.

[Anonymous No.14183467]

>>14183455
His autistic version of the golden rule doesnt prove anything

[Anonymous No.14183472]

>>14183433
it seems like Cuck Philosophy was criticising Sam Harris's appeal to emotion though. "Consequentionalism is right becuase some actions cause pain and suffering instead of wellbeing, pain bad"

[Anonymous No.14183473]

>>14183467
No one gives a shit if it convinces you or not. The point is that Kant managed to develop a system of secular ethics, one of the greatest intellectual achievement of mankind.

[Anonymous No.14183475]

>>14182995
Notice how most philosophers are atheists but he's a joke to them. This is for a reason.

[Anonymous No.14183476]

>>14183473
Then Nietzsche btfoed him

[Anonymous No.14183480]

>>14183473
>Kant invented secular ethics
what

[Anonymous No.14183485]

>>14182995
>hey, goyim!
>free will doesn’t exist
>but you still have to be moral and submissive ;)

[Anonymous No.14183486]

>>14183433
>>14183472
I meant to say, yes that is the most common criticism of Sam Harris's Consequentialism, but it is a legitimate criticism.

This, and that basically he has rebranded Jeramy Benthams utilitarianism but somehow made it even worse than the original. And he has no strong definition for what he means by "wellbeing"

[Anonymous No.14183490]

>>14183485
Yeah basically this. Nietzsche was right in his criticism of Atheists adopting Christian morality but then just leaving out the belief in God. Its even worse when Atheists say "I dont believe in God but I still support Christian morality", because they have literally no reason to do so

[Anonymous No.14183495]

>>14183480
Kant derives a secular moral law from reason alone, instigating one of the most revolutionary and incredible breakthroughs within philosophical discussions of morality

Read the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

[Anonymous No.14183500]

Since many anons here have never read a book in their lives and the best they can do is digest Nietzsche quotes and easy to follow aphorisms, here is a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rv-4aUbZxQ

[Anonymous No.14183507]

>>14183500
Oh shit how will Neech ever recover from this

[Anonymous No.14183513]

>>14183490
Sometimes you just gotta look at the big picture and wonder “are these people good for me?” The only one who isn’t jewish in this picture is Jordan Peterson. His wife is a jew, though.

[Anonymous No.14183517]

>>14183500
Here’s an essay on why Sam Harris is wrong sighting Nietzsche
http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/alevelphilosophy/data/A2/Nietzsche/NietzschePerspectivism.pdf

[Anonymous No.14183556]

This crap has already been preemptively refuted by hume. A perfect explain of why you should read the old atheists instead.
P.S Sam Harris is considered a quack every philosophy department and only low iq neckbeards take him seriously

[Anonymous No.14183568]

>>14183556
>Go to his amazon page
>He has a PhD in philosophy in Stanford
>wtf how can he be such a.... if he...
>remember that Peter Singer exists
>Oh well nevermind

[Anonymous No.14183577]

>>14183556
>inb4 that guy who actually thinks Harris refutes Hume shows up

[Anonymous No.14183584]

>>14183568
Reminds me of Steven Pinker in psychology.

[Anonymous No.14183596]

>>14183556
This is true for the whole "Intellectual dark web" though.
Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro, Eric Weinstein etc. are all Pseudo Intellectuals and controlled opposition, only retards who know nothing about Philosophy and Politics would take them seriously.

They pretend to disagree with eachother as to cast a wide net of supporters between them.
But one thing they all still have a few key things in common;
Hating Islam, hating Marxism, and supporting Moral Realism...

[Anonymous No.14183604]

>>14183596
How can they support Moral Realism when they all are in favor Israeli settlements?

[Anonymous No.14183609]

>>14183596
>>14183604

O shit you're right I almost forgot the most important thing they all have in common

[Anonymous No.14183612]

>>14183604
Moral realism for thee but not for me

[Anonymous No.14183635]

>>14182995

Morality exists without God.

The morality we live by in todays world is based on Abrahamic religions.

[Anonymous No.14183642]

>>14183635
Okay then, what objective morality exists that is different to that in the Abrahamic religion?
Dont just point to a different religion or philosophy like Buddhism, because the "Golen Rule" still exists there, and is the same essence of morality as that in Abrahamism

[Anonymous No.14183648]

>>14183642
Secular Ethics is possible: Kant is one such example, Rawls is another. Also Epicurus.

[Anonymous No.14183655]

>>14183648
Actually, I can think of more secular systems of ethics than sacramental

[Anonymous No.14183656]

>>14183648
The whole point of Nietzsches philosophy was proving that Kants system was just rebranded Christianity..
And Epicurianism is a meme, hedonism is not objective morality

[Anonymous No.14183674]

>>14183015
Doesn’t matter, atheists don’t listen to God

[Anonymous No.14183703]

>>14183674
neither do Christards

[Anonymous No.14183717]

>>14183568
He doesn't have phd in philosophy though, just bachelor

[Anonymous No.14183755]

The question about morality is immensely significant, because morality is not that which has been told to you for centuries. All the religions have exploited the idea of morality. They have been teaching in different ways, but the basic foundation is the same: unless you become moral, ethical, you cannot become religious.

By morality they mean that you have to be truthful, you have to be honest, you have to be charitable, you have to be compassionate, you have to be nonviolent. In one word, all these great values have first to be present in you, only then you can move toward being religious.

This whole concept is upside down. According to me, unless you are religious you cannot be moral. Religion comes first, morality is only a by-product. If you make the by-product into the goal of human character, you will create such a troubled, miserable humanity - and for such a good cause. You are bringing the cart before the bullocks - neither the bullocks can move, nor the cart can move; both are stuck.

How can a man be truthful if he does not know what truth is? How can a man be honest if he does not know even who he is? How can a man be compassionate if he does not know the source of love within himself? From where will he get the compassion? All that he can do in the name of morality is to become a hypocrite, a pretender. And there is nothing more ugly than to be a hypocrite. He can pretend, he can try hard, but everything will remain superficial and skin-deep. Just scratch him a little bit, and you will find all the animal instincts fully alive, ready to take revenge whenever they can get the opportunity.

Putting morality before religion is one of the greatest crimes that religions have committed against humanity.

The very idea brings a repressed human being. And a repressed human being is sick, psychologically split, constantly in a fight with himself, trying to do things which he does not want to do.

Morality should be very relaxed and easy - just like your shadow; you don't have to drag it with you, it simply comes on its own. But this has not happened; what has happened is a psychologically sick humanity. Everybody is tense, because whatever you are doing there is a conflict about whether it is right or wrong. Your nature goes in one direction, your conditioning goes just in the opposite direction, and a house divided cannot stand for long. So everybody is somehow pulling himself together; otherwise the danger is always there, just by your side, of having a nervous breakdown.

[Anonymous No.14184177]

IS
=/=
OUGHT

And thusly did anon blow the fuck out of this new wave of "scientific moralism" that tries to tell us how we should behave based solely on an appeal to nature.

[Anonymous No.14184192]

>>14184177
The Is/Ought distinction is a dismal byproduct of Abrahamic religion.

[Anonymous No.14184220]

It’s funny trying to see atheists defend a moral system beyond pleasure and pain. No, seriously, the only thing we can really call “bad” in a purely material universe is suffering, that’s it. You cannot without pointing toward irrational beliefs or things with non physical founding defend anything else as immoral. In your view, lobotomising people to make them incapable of suffering is perfectly moral and in fact is a more imperative. There is no chemical founding for any other form of “bad” or evil you can actually prove. Freedom does not matter because it is an esoteric value and these people will not be suffering but happy, which is the only good in a chemically ordained material experience.

[Anonymous No.14184226]

>>14184220
I am the anon who posted the longer version of this in that thread yesterday. Glad to see it’s catching on

[Anonymous No.14184248]

>>14184220
Even worse than that they don't look into what it actually means. Just vague sentimental appeals. In reality when it comes to human flourishing, even putting aside what's right, alone is a complicated question that requires addressing all aspects of human existence and lifestyle. Reducing human experience to a syllogism is so incomplete as to be meaningless.

[Anonymous No.14184269]

>>14183513
his wife is dead, he killed her with that retarded diet lol

[Anonymous No.14184279]

>>14184220
Nietzsche did a good job of it though

[Anonymous No.14184312]

>>14184220
You make a good point, your lobotomy/freedom example challenges my notion that suffering is the only element of morality. The agency (for lack of more controversial terms like "free will" or even "dignity") of the individual is a pivotal element, too. It is an underdeveloped aspect of atheist moral theory as I understand it, but I don't think it is an intrinsically unsolvable problem.

[Anonymous No.14184377]

>>14183025
>Shall the Relicious Inherit The Eorth?

[Anonymous No.14184567]

>>14184220
Can't argue with that.
We want meaning in life though.

[Anonymous No.14184574]

>>14184220
>lobotomising people to make them incapable of suffering
but you can't you boob

[Anonymous No.14184591]

>>14184574
Nature can already do it by accident. We just need better tools:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10237796/Stroke-victim-unable-to-feel-sadness.html
>tfw slavery will make a comeback in your lifetime

[Anonymous No.14184627]

>>14184312
The issue is freedom can be reduced to quantifiable, material properties. So any materialist framework relies on handwavey psuedo-sacraments like human “rights”

[Anonymous No.14184630]

>>14182995
hes a kike

[Anonymous No.14184633]

>>14184627
*cant

[Anonymous No.14184758]

>>14184627
I agree that materialism is a dead end. I'm thinking about an existentialist perspective, in which freedom is absolute. The mental kind I mean, and it may be possible to build the case for legal freedom from there. But I'm not a philosopher and I don't know if this has been tried. In any case, it should be effective in replacing pseudo-sacramental human rights if they ultimately prove inadequate.

[Anonymous No.14184785]

>>14184758
Existentialism will run into a similar dead end if you follow it through logically.
>we are all free
>why are we free?
>it is an innate property of human life, even when you act as if you are constrained by society you are always free to value that society
Great now because freedom is some innate, intractable property, rather than a gift from a deity, that means if I microchip someone and make them my sex slave but the chip sends electrical signals to their pleasure centres they are still free because freedom is innate.
If freedom is NOT innate then the question is why does freedom have value? Why should we actively preserve freedom? If we can eliminate suffering by eliminating freedom why shouldn’t we? The only conclusion is to say freedom has value. But saying that a property has some intangible and intrinsic value is essentially turning it into a sacrament.

[Anonymous No.14184851]

>>14184269
Wait, his wife died?

[Anonymous No.14184881]

>>14182995
>wellbeing is the moral axis around which all morality swirls
>the is ought distinction doesn't matter
What if someone thinks that the quantity of living beings has more moral worth than wellbeing. If you care more that your children exist then the fact that they enjoy life then the entire moral system just dies.

[Anonymous No.14184890]

>>14184220
>There is no chemical founding for any other form of “bad” or evil you can actually prove.
In reality there can't be materialistic definition of "bad" in the first place. Materialistic worldview wouldn´t really give too much of a fuck about pleasure and pain of individuals. It would simply reduce morality to rules which help their societies to survive, reproduce and conquer; and those which lead to weakness, discord and serfdom.

[Anonymous No.14184932]

>>14184785
Yes, it does seem so that meddling with a person's senses will leave them free all the same. Still in this light I think it has become very clear why lobotomy and brain signals are such an immoral thing to do: because you are testing the limits of one's resistance to temptation under arbitrarily strong sensory conditions. It is abusing the material groundedness of the mind (i.e. you can influence one's brain) and the imperfection of the individual to your own ends, with his freedom as your excuse. This sex slave likes serving me, and it's his freedom to do so, and so what if I reshaped his brain to that selfish purpose! Moral rules should definitely deter this. And I still haven't solved why freedom has value at all, consequentialist arguments notwithstanding.

What is the theist argument for freedom, and in what way can it not be translated to a secular (existentialist) system? Christian theology defines God as inherently good, but I don't know what "good" means without reference to some aspect of the human condition (i.e. pain and suffering, or subjective freedom), and I certainly don't want to end up going in circles: that whatever God does is good by definition. Then anything goes. Not that it would work because I don't believe God exists in the first place, but you have made me curious.

[Anonymous No.14185427]

>>14183513

That is such a mixed bag. How could anyone call this a cohesive group of intellectuals?

[Anonymous No.14185467]

Why does /lit/ shit on deontological ethics

[Anonymous No.14185547]

>>14185467
Because Taleb debunked it

[Anonymous No.14185576]

>>14185547
How exactly did that address deontological ethics?

[Anonymous No.14185586]

>>14185547

>not being born in the age of Jena philosophy and the napoleonic wars
>not being born in the age of fin-de-siecle artists, vitalism, madness and lebensphilosophie
>not being born in the age of parisian cafe intellectuals
>being born in the age of twitter shitposters

[Anonymous No.14185589]

>be le atheist
>discover sam harris
>think his monologues are pretty decent
>listen to a debate of his
>Sam Harris vs William Craig
>oh no no no no
>Christfag unequivocally blows him the fuck out
>still atheist but cringe anytime I hear this hack mentioned

[Anonymous No.14185610]

>>14184220
>>14184226
>In your view, lobotomising people to make them incapable of suffering is perfectly moral and in fact is a more imperative.

Nah. Nah that's not true. Most of the fags have counterarguments to this, citing the pleasure of autonomy or some shit as outweighing the pain of whatever.

[Anonymous No.14185615]

>>14184220
I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble seeing

[Anonymous No.14185629]

>>14184220
Not everyone is that terrified of little hardships you zoomer fucking shit.

[Anonymous No.14185656]

>>14182995
Peterson won the debate, plain and simple.

[Anonymous No.14185718]

>>14185427
They're not, but they are some of the most influential "intellectuals" among the general populace, and that's why their agenda most be noted.

[Anonymous No.14186267]

>>14184890
Correct.

[Anonymous No.14186475]

>>14184177
>is ought fallacy!!
You're an idiot.

We are our existence (is). The imperative (ought) is to not die, which is antithetical to existence; literally antithetical to *us*.
So there imperative is to be healthy. There is a science of health.
After health, the imperative is to be happy. There can be a science of happiness / wellness / fulfillment / or however you want to put it.

I haven't read the book, but I believe that is his whole point. And regardless, it is the truth.

[Anonymous No.14186531]

>>14186475
This, but unironically

[Anonymous No.14186539]

>>14186475
If anything the ultimate goal should be reproduction, not preservation. Preservation is futile. Happiness can't be the penultimate imperative either, else struggle, higher pursuit or altruism would be immoral.

[Anonymous No.14186557]

>>14186475
>>14186539
The ultimate happiness is to be bred by a Black Bull, so we should all become sissy traps

[Anonymous No.14186587]

>>14184177
Sam Harris' neurofaggotry really does disservice to people who are seriously involved the field (ethology/anthropology/sociology). So far as actual leading stemfag theories go in there, 'ought' statements arise as strange attractors in chaotic system of competing/cooperating agents. Just like primes 'ought' to be where they are.

The fun part about this solution is that the science still does not explain the philosophical *why* these attractors appear where they appear (just like you can't predict prime numbers). All you can do as a stemfag do is just descriptively trace back the exact algorithm to point of emergence where the statement pops into existence as a sudden, more optimal Nash game. You can certainly speculate in common-senseish manner ("empathy and golden rule ensures higher rates of survival in social species"), but you can't formally prove it.

[Anonymous No.14186594]

>>14186475
>>14186531
Samefag

[Anonymous No.14186633]

>>14186539
I don't think preservation is futile. One way or another, it will eventually be a reality. Immortality is something to be achieved.
Anyway reproduction goes into the category of preservation. Preservation our genes (on an individual level) and the existence of humanity (on a greater level)

>>14186587
I don't know if I agree with Sam. For example, we have gotten very far by being individually selfish. But I do think there is obviously one most-optimal way to live. Even if we're unable to deduce the single most optimal path, we can find out the general direction and go from there.

[Anonymous No.14186671]

>>14182995
how exactly does he do that?

[Anonymous No.14186690]

>>14185610
That would be if the basis of the argument was a strictly utilitarian one. But it has to do with the changing of the will itself. If I can mechanically induce you to desire something that you did not desire before, how am I committing a wrong? Once I have altered your biology there will be no basis for you to be upset that I altered it. In fact even your pleasure of autonomy, if I can materially persuade you to hate your previous state of autonomy how have I committed a wrong? How is your previous view more “real” than your current one?
Let’s say I like smoking cigarettes, I then learn cigarettes are bad for me, I enjoy smoking less. Now let’s assume that instead of my change in view being informed through information my change in perception is mechanically induced. The only way to argue that this is wrong is to sanctify consent as a concept. Which is precisely what materialists due, they just claim that consenting before hand is what justifies an alteration. But if I microchipped your brain, without your consent, but then after wards you had no memory of being microchipped how have I done anything wrong? The you that didn’t consent no longer exists.

[Anonymous No.14186704]

>>14186633
>it will eventually be a reality
Eventually doesn't mean it is realistic option for my existence.
>Anyway reproduction goes into the category of preservation.
Big nope. I don't share existence/cosnciousness with my kids.

[Anonymous No.14186728]

>>14184377
they shall, fake autism anon

[Anonymous No.14186734]

>>14182995

This is one of those books that it is too dumb to argue against.

It is literally just saying "being good is good"

[Anonymous No.14186737]

>>14183473
Making a system doesn't mean its true

>No one gives a shit if it convinces you or not
That makes it sound really subjective to me famalampai

[Anonymous No.14186757]

>>14183596
>But one thing they all still have a few key things in common;
>Hating Islam, hating Marxism, and supporting Moral Realism...
But what is the implication of that?

[Anonymous No.14186770]

>>14184932
The issue stems from something that goes beyond any specific religion. It stems from whether we can agree or not that some mode of being is simply irreducible. You could take a Christian view and say reality is a test and God have man free will that he may earn salvation and so turning a human into a lobotomised being will negate that so it is a sin. Full stop. Buddhism would argue that pleasure is not the end goal of existence but nirvana is so terminating someone’s free will will impede their quest to enlightenment and thus is undesirable.
Materialism already presupposes the human brain is a computer, it will eventually become an incoherent argument to even suggest freedom has value, since a materialist will argue that a human never starts out free. See if GOD didn’t make the human brain, than the brains arrangement is arbitrary. Are you more “free” because I let nature and chance take its course and form your synapses that make you like certain colours and tastes and value certain personalities. Why would that take precedence over engineering your brain? Without religion why must man submit to natures course? It may start small, engineering kids to like the same things their parents do etc but eventually we will hit full blown pre-engineered slaves.
This will almost certainly happen even with advances in robotics because human slaves are: cheap, and some rich people will like the thrill.
Consider a human brain that “nature” created via “evolution” that hates working and loves relaxing and sleeping and dreaming, all of these conditions to a materialist are arbitrary, not designed. So why then has a materialist committed a wrong by altering a human brain to love working, never need sleep, etc. You have to presuppose some teleological value to the “status quo” of a human brain. An absurd proposition in a world governed by chance.

[Anonymous No.14186790]

>>14183025
The only place the religious will inherit are sub-saharan shitholes.

[Anonymous No.14186863]

>>14186633
Vagueness aside, Harris is not wrong in the general picture, and it's certainly useful to make thumpers and basic bitch pseuds screech. However the hardcore metaphysical issue stands - science is useful only if you can use it for engineering. We're very far from that in ethology, aside from primitive, closed-universe computer models. Yet the guy throughout the book implies we can control the weather and trivially project solutions to trolley problem out in the real world.

[Anonymous No.14186875]

>>14183010
>Using Philosophy Tube to criticize Harris
There are so many better ways

[Anonymous No.14186884]

>>14183025
Beware the Mormon and Amish BVLLS

[Anonymous No.14186892]

>>14185547
Man i really dislike that image

[Anonymous No.14186903]

>>14186884
Especially the Amish

[Anonymous No.14186912]

>>14186884
This is terrifying. Mormons spreading like a cancer out of Utah. How can we ever stop the mormon tide?

[Anonymous No.14186915]

>>14186912
Strategically settle mudslimes near Utah DMZ?

[Anonymous No.14186938]

>>14183473
then schoppy absolutely btfo kant

[Anonymous No.14187010]

>>14186704
>Big nope. I don't share existence/cosnciousness with my kids.
>Preservation our genes (on an individual level) and the existence of humanity (on a greater level)
Don't be stupid in front of me again zoomer

[Anonymous No.14187025]

>>14186903
>using ONE data point to extrapolate 10 more
I sincerely think all science should be done this way.

[Anonymous No.14187063]

>>14183043
>the inability to understand that a clinching argument has been made means the that argument is wrong

[Anonymous No.14187072]

>>14183171
um... so what's a "real" atheist?

[Anonymous No.14187079]

>>14186770
>Without religion why must man submit to natures course?
The human mind has been changing over the course of millennia as we gradually adopted more comfortable lifestyles. I don't know to what degree this is genetic, but I believe that we have very different mindsets than cavemen, even on an (epi)genetic level. But the difference with lobotomy is that this was a natural change. There was no conscious actor who subtly altered people's sensory experiences to his own ends. But now that it is known, we will certainly accelerate to a state of lobotimization and mind control unless we have moral rules to prevent it. The status quo is basically the human mind unaffected by deliberate modifications (if still inevitably affected by the unconscious human condition which more or less affects everybody equally). It's just a conservative argument of course, but we prefer this because it is the closest reflection of ourselves free from artificial changes due to special interest.

My thoughts are rough, I need to go to sleep, and I'll think about it some more.

[Anonymous No.14187084]

>>14187025
Imbecile
>If the doubling time remains constant, the Amish population growth curve will resemble figure 12.2. In other words, in little more than two centuries they could form half the US population. This presumes they are able to keep their fertility and retention at current levels for 200 years. They’ve done it for a century.

[Anonymous No.14188186]

>>14185589
How did Sam get BTFO? I haven’t seen the debate.

[Anonymous No.14188189]

>>14184851
Last I heard she had cancer.

[Anonymous No.14188296]

>>14183010
>cuck philosophy

I mean...do i even have to say anything...

[Anonymous No.14188331]

>>14182995
Ok atheist Ben Stiller

[Anonymous No.14188446]

>>14182995
kike

[Anonymous No.14188460]

>>14183513
Joe Rogan isn't a Jew. Also proof that Peterson's wife is of the tribe?

[Anonymous No.14188622]

>>14187079
The issue is to do with moral supremacy. Under the notion of god, there is “an priori” defined state of “good” that is immutable. This state is then defined within a religious text. I don’t want to get all anthropological but perhaps primitive man sought to be altruistic instinctively and codified his morality within myths. Suppose that’s true. The problem is with the elimination of the myth you eliminate the “immutability” of the codified morality. This means what is morally good or bad is ITSELF subject to modification. Since good or bad are perceived by the mind, you cannot morally condemn altering perception because there would be no observer to know of its alteration. If materialism wins then man answers only to man not to god and certainly not to nature. This may work up to a point, but once man is able to alter what man is in the first place, you have a recursive loop that cannot ever be resolved. The tech is only about 40 years away too, I think with current sacraments like “human rights” it’ll probably only see adoption in places like China at first. But eventually it will become the status quo simply because you cannot create an incentive not to do it without appealing to a fallacy.

[Anonymous No.14189195]

>>14183755
Just want to thank you for a post.
I'll always skip everything and look for long, concise, argumented posts. Shame there is so few in between.

[Anonymous No.14189219]

>>14187072
Moral Nihilists & Non-Consequentialists, like Nietzsche.

Every Atheist who supports Moral Realism is just, as Zizek would say, a "Christian Atheist"

See, On the Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.14189224]

>>14182995
>dude tepid early 21th century leftist positions are objectively moral because we don't try to hurt fee fees lmao
The absolute state of centrists and ath*ists

[Anonymous No.14189287]

>>14188622
Surely the fundamental purpose of morality (enhancing collective survival/flourishing) is immutable though? As any value system which abdicates that purpose will remove its proponents and subsequently itself from the equation?

[Anonymous No.14189296]

>>14182995
Not even close.

[Anonymous No.14189354]

>>14189287
If you are trying to say that whatever supports the principle of "Natural Selection" can be used to define Objective Morality, then you can justify things like like Rape, slavery, stealing etc. as they ensure the survival and flourishing of the fittest, at the expense of the weakest.

Which, isn't an illogical position to hold, but most Atheist Moral realists/Utilitarians would disagree with it, even though they cant come up with anything better

[Anonymous No.14189415]

>>14186475
>The imperative (ought) is to not die
Nice opinion, faggot. Care to support it with evidence?

[Anonymous No.14189442]

>>14187084
>If the doubling time remains constant, the Amish population growth curve will resemble figure 12.2

The great thing about second derivatives is that there is often a third and a fourth. There is no "constant" rate for any human trend through time.

[Anonymous No.14189456]

>>14182995

This is impossible, morality is alway contingent on whatever the given meatbags/subjects/energy-forms decide it is in their own litle political sphere; the rest is projection. No sooner do those same meatbags/subjects diverge/speciate than they decide whoops, there is a new morality. t. atheist but c'mon

[Anonymous No.14189458]

>>14188622
>If materialism wins then man answers only to man not to god and certainly not to nature
I fully respect this argument, but in what way can we respect the state of man as envisioned by God if not for the conservatist stance that I proposed? That you shouldn't lobotomize your fellow people is obvious, but as far as I know we have no reference outside of our existence at this moment. And suppose mentally-modified willing slaves existed (bred through a couple of generations so no question of operations on the specific individual), does that mean they aren't children of God? Did God not will it? (That sounds extremely determinist but that's just how Christians cope with the world.) I don't think we know God's ideal image of man beyond our own experience. You don't actually have any reference to a previous state is neither material (they altered the brain) nor ideal (they altered subjective perception).

[Anonymous No.14189461]

>>14183033
>Objective morality without God is what I believe in also
It's big of you to admit you are retarded anon. You have my respect.

[Anonymous No.14189462]

How can people here even discuss such vague concepts without defining everything? You could be discussing different things without noticing... I'm not a philosopher, just found this weird.

[Anonymous No.14189473]

>>14189287
>Surely the fundamental purpose of morality (enhancing collective survival/flourishing) is immutable though?
Not unless you're retarded. You couldn't even nail down an immutable purpose in your parentheses. "Enhancing collective survival/flourishing" Which collective? My family, my community, my tribe, my nation, the whole species? How do you choose which collective to prioritise, and when? Why survival *and* flourishing? They're clearly not exactly the same and always noncontradicting, otherwise you wouldn't have used both words. How do you then resolve which of brute survival or qualitative flourishing to prioritise and in which contexts? How do you resolve the dilemma of never fully knowing every consequence of every moral choice when making your judgments?

After all, if it's immutable and universal, there must be a one clear unambiguous answer to this.

[Anonymous No.14189484]

>>14189462
>How can people here even discuss such vague concepts without defining everything?
because atomistic logical positivist was btfo and discredited. Yet if you confront the ambiguity and uncertainty of your arguments and values with any intellectual honesty, you would have to abandon dogmatic insistence that there is one Objective True path, and most don't want to do that. They want to insist their ideas/arguments/morals/etc are the one true option.

[Anonymous No.14189513]

>>14183463
So much this

[Anonymous No.14189536]

>>14189484
>clear reasoning means Russell delusions
How the fuck did you even manage to meme yourself into thinking you shouldn't be clear?
Of course you don't even think there are truths, so you're already well into memetic territory.

[Anonymous No.14189547]

>>14183016
Atheism is the fastest shrinking religion in the world, though.
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/global-study-atheists-decline-only-18-world-population-2020

[Anonymous No.14189575]

>>14189547
It's the only shrinking religion in the world lol.

[Anonymous No.14189588]

>>14189536
>How the fuck did you even manage to meme yourself into thinking you shouldn't be clear?
How did you manage to force that message? The goal of "defining everything" is literally Russell's goal. Clarity is not at all derived from defining everything (a failed aim), it's derived from communicating in a honest manner such that your audience reasonably understands you. Communicating in an illogical and deceitful manner, such as insinuating via childish buzzwords that a comment saying that defining everything in philosophical discourse is a tried-and-failed path instead *actually* means that you shouldn't use clear reasoning, would certainly count as unclear.

[Anonymous No.14189589]

>>14186737
If you don't give a philosophical argument saying why you don't agree with Kant's deontology then don't bitch when I dismiss your worthless post.

[Anonymous No.14189601]

>>14189547
>Atheism is the fastest shrinking religion in the world, though.
Turns out there's not a lot of African atheists. Not sure the significantly higher population growth among barely literate peasants in the impoverished religious world is a great benchmark to be proud of.

[Anonymous No.14189607]

>>14183463
I think I believe this statement without fully knowing why. Where do I start? I started with the Greeks and am reading Plato and Aristotle.

[Anonymous No.14189608]

>>14189513
Lurk more faggot.

[Anonymous No.14189693]

>>14189588
Concepts are simple or complex. There is only definition of complex ones, which doesn't mean you shouldn't aim for defining every complex concepts as we can. Russell was retarded by all measure for failing to understand actual logician as Leibniz and Bolzano here.
Besides my post was related to what other anon said and that sparked your response. It's not about definition, or not only. There isn't any entente on the use of words here.

[Anonymous No.14189720]

>>14183648
How so? Besides extremities such as banning murder for self preservation, what incentive do powerful folks or men have for following any modern morality guide?

[Anonymous No.14189742]

>>14189693
>which doesn't mean you shouldn't aim for defining every complex concepts as we can.
The nature of abstracted concepts is that there will remain some core of ambiguity. Defining clearly the aspects of the abstraction such that shared meaning can be found is certainly important, but so is understanding the limits of that exercise, because ultimately it is from the ambiguity that people exploit abstraction for their own rhetorical ends.

[Anonymous No.14190058]

>>14184932
>What is the theist argument for freedom
God gave us freedom so that we can be agents instead of automatons. Freedom introduces good and evil, where good is aligning yourself and your deeds to God's will, while evil is turning freedom into a tool of self-servitude. In Christianity, evil is merely a corruption of good, and not a substance on it's own. Evil exists only as an abuse of good.

[Anonymous No.14190086]

>>14186690
>The you that didn’t consent no longer exists.
So we are not our bodies and you just admitted to commiting murder.

[Anonymous No.14190089]

>>14187072

Someone who realizes that absolute morality is a religious concept. Most "atheists" are basically christians.

[Anonymous No.14190203]

>>14190089
It's a natural law concept, it has nothing to do with divine revelation. Get your christcuck apologetics right ffs

[Anonymous No.14190209]

>>14189415
>which is antithetical to existence

[Anonymous No.14190227]

>>14190203
You cant even define Natural law? Thats literally the same as a Christard saying Morality is a "Gods Law" concept

Atheist Moral Realists are literal Christcucks, just get over it or become a Moral Nihilist

[Anonymous No.14190239]

>>14190209
>existence is a predicate

[Anonymous No.14190271]

>>14190227
I *am* a moral nihilist, the point is that whether objective morality is real or not has nothing to do with whether God exists. I just don't understand why we have to concede to Christcucks that objective morality requires God, they have no arguments in favor of that.

[Anonymous No.14190290]

>>14189458
No because Christians believe in a soul which is immutable. This establishes a relationship between the ideal and the material. This if you materially enslaved someone’s brain a Christian would still perceive there to be an idealised “soul” trapped in a mechanised “brain” and see this is an abomination. Harmony between spirit and brain is important. Conversely a materialist argues the idealist world emerges from the material. So if I materially alter someone’s brain then there is no “soul” to object. Humans are just computers, arguing that there is an ethical barrier to transforming a human into a sub 80 IQ manual labourer and cock sleeve is like arguing there is an ethical problem with designing software for answering emails. The best you can do is argue against pain, that is it, you cannot form coherent teleological arguments (creating such a human is an abomination because there is an innate quality a human SHOULD possess like freedom which is itself an immaterial and immeasurable property)

[Anonymous No.14190298]

>>14190239
What do you mean by this
I am saying the imperative of any given instance of existence, such as our own lives, is to go on existing.

[Anonymous No.14190304]

>>14190086
Except a materialist would argue murder is a bio mechanical property that confines to strict medical parameters. Inserting a chip the size of a grain of rice to permanently alter your desires is no more “murder” than giving you a piercing. Free will is a metaphysical and immaterial property, to a materialist it never even existed in the first place.

[Anonymous No.14190339]

>>14183568
Peter Singer is excellent though. I've not seen anyone actually tackle his on point criticisms of every other moral philosophy.

Sam doesn't have a 'real' PhD anyway.

[Anonymous No.14190354]

>>14189693
>Concepts are simple or complex.

Unironically read Derrida.

[Anonymous No.14190356]

>>14190271
There are no valid arguments for morality without God.

[Anonymous No.14190374]

>>14183755
>In one word, all these great values have first to be present in you, only then you can move toward being religious.
What the fuck is this pseud talking about? This is just a false statement.

>The very idea brings a repressed human being.
oh, there it is, muh repression. How much jailbait did this guy bang.

[Anonymous No.14190380]

>>14190356
Argument or btfo

[Anonymous No.14190386]

>>14190380
You don't just get to assume your position. Show me why murder is immoral if there is no God.

[Anonymous No.14190391]

>>14190298
>saying
Assuming

[Anonymous No.14190399]

>>14190386
>Show me why murder is immoral if there is no God.

This should be intuitively clear without having to appeal to any conception of God. Do you have empathy?

[Anonymous No.14190414]

>>14190399
Intuition is not evidence. Assume I don't. Human feelings about something don't prove that it is right or wrong.

[Anonymous No.14190425]

>>14190414
>Assume I don't.

This is what worries me. This should be self evident, at least more so than any system of morality that claims to be objective via appeals to 'reason' or 'god'. Empathy is the only thing morality ought to be based on.

[Anonymous No.14190429]

>>14190386
Why murder is immoral if there *is* a God?

[Anonymous No.14190450]

>>14190290
So if I understand you, an unmodified human being can properly express his soul, while a modified one will have its behaviour, tastes, choices—in short, his whole character—altered, with his primordial soul locked up, in a sense. After death, the person will be who he was before the lobotomy. But on the other hand there also exist natural changes in one's mental state, like those that happen in puberty. (I am now reminded of castrati, which is interesting to think about in this context but that as an aside.) So we still only know that a person should be as he is naturally (but that now meaning: as he is created by God). That still means trouble for naturally-born mind slaves: we don't know what the pure soul is like, the natural assumption doesn't work, and they can never revert back to a good faith life, if you assume their existence is an abomination from the start.
>there is an innate quality a human SHOULD possess like freedom which is itself an immaterial and immeasurable property
And here freedom must be defined through an outsider's perspective, since the said lobotomy patient considers himself perfectly free. Would have been nice if we at least had a blank slate to fall back to.

[Anonymous No.14190456]

>ctlr F
>no hand on stove
come on lads

[Anonymous No.14190468]

>>14190425
It's not self-evident at all if you completely discount that we are made in the image of God to fulfill a specific purpose, namely to glorify God. Otherwise, your empathy doesn't represent any meaningful transcendental reality. It's just a chemical reaction occurring in your brain, which has been biologically programmed to occur so as to promote the survival of the species, which matters because DNA desires to replicate itself for no real reason in particular. What, then, is wrong with one highly-evolved primate killing another highly-evolved primate, whose life is just as meaningless as his, just because he felt like it? Nothing; there's no moral character to it at all.

>>14190429
Because we are created in the image of God, and it conforms to his good, kind, and holy nature that we should not go around murdering each other.

[Anonymous No.14190509]

>>14190468
>it conforms to his good, kind, and holy nature
If God truly means well for us then good should be defined directly with respect to the human condition. Or could it be possible that God decides that murdering is good? He is free to do so, since He defines good.

[Anonymous No.14190534]

>>14190509
God means well for us but not according to the limited human conceptions of what that means. Our purpose on this Earth isn't to have our desires fulfilled or to enjoy life as such; it's, again, to glorify God.

[Anonymous No.14190541]

>>14190425
>This is what worries me. This should be self evident
It is, for people who grew up with values and morals based on abrahamic religions.

[Anonymous No.14190550]

I haven't read the moral landscape. However I did subject myself to Harris's "waking up" which convinced me that Harris is an actual idiot, masquerading as an intellectual. His fans seem to be one step removed from the kind of morons who think Joe rogan is brilliant.

[Anonymous No.14190575]

>>14186475
>The imperative is to not die

What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous No.14190587]

>>14190450
A non materialist doesn’t need to know the perfect conditions for the soul, so much as accept the concept that they exist. It’s more like, I do not know what God’s will is, this inspires uncertainty, uncertainty tempers extremism (at least in intelligent people) and balances knowledge with intuition (medicine is good, lobotomies are bad, one enhances the physical vitality and one diminishes spiritual freedom), materialism suffers from the same dogmatic approach to reality as the most extreme and radical religion because it is uncertain and unyielding in its conclusion. True atheism is worse than radical Islam because the empirical results of its creed lends itself to a degree of radicalisation the most hateful Imam could only dream of, paradoxically it may come to be that religions greatest gift to man was inspiring doubt. Meanwhile true atheism, true unbridled materialism, will usher in abominations like the bio-engineered slaves I described earlier.
When people talk about “intellectual atheists” these people are unironically not materialist because they still cling to the pseudo-sacraments I describe like human rights and beauty. But if we conceptualise a full blown empirical materialist all of these things are problems to be solved with engineering. Why strive to make beautiful things when the path of least resistance is to directly stimulate the beauty pathways of our brain? We’ve only started scratching the surface due to barriers in the resolution of brain scans. All these materialists like Kurzweil are intellectually dishonest. Let’s follow through a completely rational thought experiment in which we have completely reverse engineered the brain and can produce 1 picometer superconducting quantum chips:
>create a mental paradise for all humans irrespective of their current physical conditions
>now that everyone is happy you need to keep them alive, every meal is already at maximum pleasure levels so create the most nutritionally optimised paste to subsist on
>space on this earth is limited so house everyone in pods
>people will take up less physical space without arms or legs
>people will use up less energy if we switch off unnecessary parts of the brain like face recognition or language
Eventually you could iterate through this process to conclude with keeping everyone as a floating brain stem experiencing unending orgasms in a blank void of space with no language or self identity powered by a Dyson sphere surrounding the sun. Paradoxically a materialist paradise is only marginally different from death. I mean given the inevitable march of entropy what is morally more justifiable, sustaining life for 10x longer at 10% capacity? What about 100x longer at 1% capacity? How can you evaluate the value of “complexity” as a desirable trait from a materialist perspective? You can’t. You must have pseudo sacraments (art, love, freedom, passion, suffering, as inherent valuable properties of existence)

[Anonymous No.14190603]

>>14190468
Because we are created in the image of God, and it conforms to his good, kind, and holy nature that we should not go around murdering each other.

No no no you are begging the question. Even if God made us Good, the fact that we shouldn't go around killing people presupposes that there is something wrong with the act itself. My question for you then, is why does the fact that God exists makes murder morally wrong?

[Anonymous No.14190635]

>>14190603
I explained to you what was wrong with it; it doesn't conform to God's good nature.

[Anonymous No.14190699]

>>14190587
I'm not too familiar with the terminology, but it seems to me that materialism shouldn't be concerned with value at all. If it wants to build anything like a moral system, it can only choose survival, evolution and general accumulation of (bio)mass as motives (among other naturalistic arguments), which leads to unironic fascism. But the people we are talking about clearly do value some subjectivity; however the morality is defined purely through joy and suffering, and it would not be rationally opposed to unending orgasm paradise (because the value of sensory gratification trumps freedom, living in the real world, etc.) If you ask them we'd learn that there is in fact more to life than instant gratification, but I am not sure how this can be properly construed from the "materialist" principles.

[Anonymous No.14190725]

>>14190699
It can’t which is why Sam Harris and other futurists are hacks peddling feel good ideas to idiots who hate wageslaving and think some new trinket will restore the sense of joy they had as children. Ultimately value is subjective so the value system that most successfully propagates will be what dictates the direction our society goes in. There is a war going on for the soul of humanity and whether you’re a Chinese plutocrat, a Scientific technocrat, an Islamic theocrat, Liberal Democrat, or some other ideologue you need to fight for what you value and not let some egghead convince you to just listen to the scientists.

[Anonymous No.14190782]

>>14190635
Can't you see how your explanation is begging the question? I am asking you why murder is wrong, and your reply is "God is good and hence bad things like murder go against his good nature".

[Anonymous No.14190808]

>>14190782
Yes morality is ultimately circular reasoning that necessitates a priori value statements which are irrational within an empirical framework. You’re finally starting to understand.

[Anonymous No.14190815]

>>14190782
God is self-attesting.

[Anonymous No.14190873]

>>14190808
A priori values do not imply circular reasoning at all, in fact they provide a starting point. You may argue that there is no point in these values without God, but they are nonetheless noncircular. If God isn't a total egotist and cares for His creations, then that reason can be understood as the definition of what is good. Maybe you just don't know it, that would mean it's quite open to interpretation but at least it's not a circular definition.

[Anonymous No.14190887]

>>14190808
No you completely missed the point so let me recap our conservation for you. You initially said that objective morality requires God. I asked you why do we need God in order for murder to be morally wrong. And you answered that God is good, therefore bad things like murder go against his nature. Unfortunately, this argument commits the fallacy of begging the question - the fact that murder goes against God's nature presupposes that we already established that murder is wrong. Is this hard for you to follow?

[Anonymous No.14190957]

>>14183010
was that SO|jak a self portrait?

[Anonymous No.14190996]

>>14182995
does he tho? he just axiomatically posits wellbeing as a value and then goes from there. sure, once your values are established, there is an objectively superior course of action in accordance with them, but the value-selection process is still arbitrary and thus subjective.

[Anonymous No.14191074]

>>14182995
I can prove morality with pure logic, but the problem is most people are guided by emotions. So the only thing that keeps them in line is religion.

[Anonymous No.14191113]

>>14191074
do it pussy

[Anonymous No.14191130]

>>14182995
Does he try to frame subjective morality as objective because, like, dude, science has proven with FACTS that subjective morality EVOLVED, which makes it SCIENTIFIC and actually OBJECTIVE?

[Anonymous No.14191191]

>>14191113
You're not ready.

[Anonymous No.14191239]

>>14182995
Sam based Harris

[Anonymous No.14191258]

>>14184177
>>14184177
with science, i can change the chemistry on your brain that you will so deeply thought that everyone ought to rape their own kids. so where is your god now?

[Anonymous No.14191269]

>>14182995
objective morality doesn't even exist with a god fucktard

[Anonymous No.14191282]

>>14191258
>not understanding the distinction between the mind and the soul
how are atheists this retarded

[Anonymous No.14191398]

>>14191282
soul is so undefined that even soulfags can't agree on what it is. look for retardation in your own ranks.

[Anonymous No.14192428]

>>14189354
Well, it depends upon the circumstances right? In a primitive society, perhaps you could justify those things; in the context of modern society, I think you need to establish a high degree of social trust to form one in the first place. The 'fitness' priority shifts from being able to physically dominate towards intelligence and conscientousness (for the average man). So no, I don't think it's a given that you can justify 'whatever'.

Keep in mind that 'objective' ≠ 'universal'
Morality doesn't work via universality, but rather a sufficient overlap in our natures.

>>14189473
Whichever collective — they're all important. Generally though, you should prioritize your own population (ethnos/genetic cluster) before divergent populations, otherwise you run the risk of being conquered/replaced by them (and so your 'moral' adaptation will have failed).

I'd say survival and flourshing are interrelated, as flourishing indicates a surfeit of conditions amenable to surival (and the inverse, non-flourshing potentially indicates threats to survival on the horizon). We can also look at it in terms of reproduction, i.e. a flourishing people has a higher carrying capacity for population and is able to reach that capacity. Flourishing isn't 'qualitative', we could use heuristic analysis of health data to quantitatively distinguish between levels of flourishing. General survival is obviously prioritized, as without that you have nothing, but on a granular level there are choices to be made (e.g. capital punishment might be a good idea). The health of the collective is the resolving consideration.

The dilemma of imperfect knowledge is mostly theoretical; in practice, you apply heuristic methods (general rules) towards achieving superior on average outcomes, not perfect ones (solutions needn't be utopian).

We should distinguish between the phenomenon of morality itself and specific rulesets. While we can say that the purpose of morality itself is universal and immutable (immutable in that abdication = extinction), the specific rules people abstract are not (as specific human nature is not universal nor immutable, and the same goes for circumstances/environments).

I hope that is clear enough for you, your unearned smugness notwithstanding.

[Anonymous No.14192473]

>>14186790
>The only place the religious will inherit are sub-saharan shitholes.
Yeah, it's not like Europe is importing tons of fanatical Muslims to replace it's ageing atheist white population.
Same with US and Mexican Catholics.
You faggots are so delusional.

[Anonymous No.14192499]

>>14186475
This is not logically consistent.
>After health, the imperative is to be happy
This especially does not follow, even if we do accept what comes before it. Why is being happy the imperative after being healthy?
>So there imperative is to be healthy.
This similarly doesn't follow.

[Anonymous No.14193405]

>>14190887
You don’t need god for the question of why murder is bad, that’s quantifiable under a metric like “preserve human lives” much like “reduce pain” is a quantifiable metric. The problems arise when you are confronted with IMMATERIAL properties that are subjectively experienced like “freedom”. Did you miss the under discussion prior to this? According to a materialist freedom is perceived by the brain, it doesn’t actually exist since the brain is just a deterministic machine evolved to solve problems. Ergo a materialist can not justify preserving freedom as it is an incoherent concept to a materialist. So the problem arises with the question of “why is it immoral to insert a microchip in a persons brain that makes them permanently happy” and the only counter argument is to wave your hands around say something about the human right to consent. This is a sacrament, you don’t need a religion per se to preserve human rights like freedom, but you cannot conceptualise these rights in a materialist framework. You seem to think I am arguing for a belief in God being a necessity for morality. I am not, I am simply arguing that a strictly rational materialist doctrine will eventually lead to things like slavery because freedom is a concept that we value a priori and arbitrarily. We just deem it “self evident” that freedom is important. This by itself is a very basic type of religion. The problem is you believe religion to be a belief in heaven and god and stuff so you think by criticising empiricism I am arguing from the point of view of a theological doctrine. I am not, I am simply arguing that morality must be grounded in AN irrational belief (the experience of human life has intrinsic, immeasurable value that cannot be artificially engineered) otherwise you devolve into a society that treats humans as computer programs.

[Anonymous No.14193463]

>>14192428
Please explain, from a materialist point of view, how maximising the human population and causing them to exist in a state of minimal energy consumption (thus maximising available entropy) would not qualify under your definition as “flourishing”? If we lobotomise all the parts of the brain necessary for survival (e.g. face recognition, problem solving, pain) and keep everyone in a state of stasis where they are experiencing continuous pleasure in complete sensory deprivation in pods to minimise environmental footprint. How would this not be flourishing WITHOUT appealing to an immaterial, intangible, and unquantifiable value like “experiencing reality”, why is “experiencing the reality of grief, heart ache, struggle, etc” inherently of any worth? How can it be objectively demonstrated when every aspect of our experience serves as a survival tool, we release endorphins after exercise as a survival mechanism. We enjoy the experience of building something, having a conversation, observing nature, because each of these evolved to help our survival. We enjoy observing nature because it trains our brains to be more observant, we enjoy talking because it accumulates information, we enjoy learning skills because they are useful. Your body releases chemicals in order to learn from experience. If technology makes survival obsolete then these experiences have no value and there is ZERO justification for leaving them present without appealing to nature or some other fallacy. You use words like flourish because they are intentionally ambiguous. Materialism is contingent on empirically, quantifiable value systems, but how is it possible to quantify the experience of going fishing at 6 am on a lake and smelling the breeze from the trees around you and hearing the birds? These are all just evolutionary “learned” pleasures, why not just have you in a vat, blind and deaf, with a constant drip feed of feel good chemicals. How can you materialistically JUSTIFY subjective experience of reality? You literally cannot. You just have to say “we evolved this way so we shouldn’t change it” which is a total fallacy, one I agree with, but it is an irrational position.

[Anonymous No.14193467]

>>14182995
>proves objective morality
lmfao, okay

[Anonymous No.14193478]

>>14193463
I like your writings. Were did you get inspirations, etc?

[Anonymous No.14193490]

>>14191130
>all those smart people who have done meaningful things in their life vs a bunch of autistic neets on 4chan
hmm, which should I listen to...

[Anonymous No.14193492]

>>14190239
Formal semantics is beyond the grasp of this board, anon.

[Anonymous No.14193526]

>>14193478
I actually came to all of these conclusions myself. I even coined the concept of the living morgue. I myself am a scientist and spend a lot of time dealing with them so I often undergo mental exercises where I try to imagine the most direct and logical conclusion from a given set of premises. Technology always follows the path of least resistance. Without an irrational spark of resistance, some form of inherent “faith” in a priori values, call it god, call it naturalism, call it whatever you want, without somehow believing that there is an inherent, inextricable value to EXPERIENCING life. A value to the qualia of existence. It only follows that we will slowly strip away every brain function that evolved for survival until human society becomes giant banks of brain stems experiencing endless pleasure, with no limbs, no sounds, no sights, etc. This is more cost effective than some technological singularity where we all enter some utopian simulation of earthly delights. Resource are finite, entropy is finite, any system of optimisation for the purpose of optimisation built entirely on completely rational principles WILL conclude that it makes more sense to eliminate than to add. Why spend energy creating a paradise when we can just destroy the parts of our brains that perceive ugliness in the first place. The path of least resistance may be slow in its descent, but it is certain and unyielding.

[Anonymous No.14193538]

>>14190873
>why should all humans be treated equally
>because we should strive to live in an egalitarian society!
>why should we strive to live in an egalitarian society?
>because all humans deserve to be treated equally!

[Anonymous No.14193571]

Riddle me this, you neo-Christian niggers: how can something that is inherently perspectival be decentralized from all perspectives absolutely?

[Anonymous No.14193608]

>>14193571
Begging the question

[Anonymous No.14193612]

>>14193608
Avoiding the issue.

[Anonymous No.14193617]

>>14193612
The issue doesn’t exist. You have to prove that something can be “inherently perspectival”, the existence of god would preclude that, gods existence would indicate an absolute perspective of which each person represents an aspect. The contradiction only exists because of how you framed the question.

[Anonymous No.14193629]

>>14193617
>the existence of god would preclude that
Talk about burden of proof... lol.

Point to the organ in your body that is capable of objectivity and explain how you know that.

[Anonymous No.14193648]

>>14193629
But your argument isn’t whether god exists or not, it’s asking how god CAN exist given a premise you cannot prove.
It’s like saying “answer me this Christian fags: how can there be a soul if nothing is eternal”, the entire belief system is predicated on faith in something being eternal. Do you really feel a smug sense of accomplishment when pointing out to people that there beliefs are simply beliefs? It’s a self evident point and you should be embarrassed to be making it. Also the discussion here is about materialism, stop trying to frame critics of material empiricism as religious people to justify your own amoral system.

[Anonymous No.14193664]

>>14193648
Why should I be embarrassed for pointing out to people that they are fucking deluded for such obvious reasons? You don't want to be told that you're an utterly clueless moron? Get the fuck off the literature board then, or at any rate stay the fuck away from philosophy threads.

Also, MY "framing" is WAY older than the Christian framing of reality. Belief in the physical is way older than belief in the metaphysical, which is way older than belief in a metaphysics that operates independently of the physical. The person who is begging the question is the one who asserts the existence of the Christian God.

And you didn't answer me. Which organ in the body is capable of objectivity and how do you know that it is? Why is the body not the source of all your reason? You are begging the question by asserting another premise, not me. I'm simply reversing the original reversal.

[Anonymous No.14193716]

>>14193664
A Christian would answer “the soul” you would answer “the soul doesn’t exist/is not an organ” they will answer that it does and you reach an impasse. You should be embarrassed because you framed a question in a manner that sought to highlight a paradox, but there paradox is just a more pretentious way to say “there is no evidence of god”

[Anonymous No.14193727]

>>14193526
Thanks anon, I myself was wondering about the whole enlightenment- anglo empirical-pragmatism for a bit. Explains why english speaking nations nowadays are so morbid, materialistic, zombie societies - end conclusion of empirical-pragmatism leads to death of spirit, so to speak.

[Anonymous No.14193741]

>>14193716
No such impasse is reached, because I can observe and also explain the lack of such an organ whereas they can't observe or explain the existence of the soul. The only kind of impasse that is reached is a cognitive one, namely, their inability to understand me (I understand their idiocy perfectly well).

[Anonymous No.14194020]

>>14193741
>I can observe and also explain the lack of such an organ whereas they can't observe or explain the existence of the soul.
You can't observe the lack of a soul, and your "explanation" of its lack of existence is basically "there is no material evidence for its existence, so therefore it isn't real", which isn't a provable statement. You're being stupid by trying to frame your belief that absence of evidence equals evidence of absence as a logical conclusion instead of a personal preference.

[Anonymous No.14194300]

>>14193405
Wouldn't a physicalist doctrine acknowledge that we aren't entirely rational beings though? From a biological perspective, we know that 'feelings' come first; you only reason about things because you first feel some way about them. So it seems to me that physicalism accounts for a natural and pre-rational bias towards modes of living. If your concern is that physicalists are more likely to alter our nature in fundmental ways (microchip), I'd agree that's a possibility, but even then the motivation for such a project will always stem from some bias (as we are not capable of pure rationality). Futhermore, physicalist utilitarians can consider the utility that irrational beliefs provide to people.

>>14193463
I guess I'm not sure how technology can ever really render survival 'obsolete'. Even if we were all transhumans living in matrioshka brains, entropy would eventually snuff us out (and so minimizing energy consupmtion would be a very real survival concern).

As far as justifying our nature goes, I don't believe that's a logical requirement of a physicalist perspective (as I've noted in the other response above). Physicalism acknowledges our nature and the bias it entails (appealing to this is not a fallacy). If we do alter that nature such that typical measures of survival are circumvented, then I don't see why living in a simulation would be immoral (if that's what you're implying).

Values don't precede valuing agents, so I don't see how it's sensible to talk about values needing to justify the state of 'experiencing' required to assign value.

[Anonymous No.14194340]

>>14189442
there's a constant rate for /lit/ threads to be shitty since OP is constantly a fag

[Anonymous No.14194425]

>>14193405
Okay so now you made two claims, first that freedom of the will has to be an illusion under materialism, and that morality requires the belief that human life has intristic immeasurable value. You didn't really elaborate on the second one, so I'm going to respond to the first point.

Free will is usually understood in two senses, compatibilist and libertarian. In the compatibilist sense, being free just means doing whatever you want - in this sense being in prison infringes on your free will because you would rather not be there. In this sense free will is perfectly compatible with determinism - the fact that the desires we have are predetermined don't make us any less free in this sense.

Secondly, we have the libertarian concept of free will, which basically means that in any given moment your choice between a or b isn't necessarily determined by internal or external factors, but you can always pick between either of them freely. Now it is usually said that determinism is incompatible with libertarian free will, and this is true. But what is also true, but rarely mentioned, is that libertarian free will is incompatible with indeterminism as well. For example, say that you are a soldier and you are thinking about whether to retreat or not. The determinist would say that your brain would calculate whether the battle is lost yet or not, whether you are brave or a coward etc. and all these factors will necessitate the action you are going to make. So if determinism is true we don't have libertarian free will. However, suppose that determinism is false, and all these factors that are calculated in your brain don't necessitate your decision. In this case, your choice isn't based on any reason (you thought you were going to lose anyway, you were a coward etc.) but the choice happened randomly - both choices were possible, and it just happened that you chose one over the other. But does this really save libertarian free will? If the fact that your choices you make are predetermined makes them unfree, then your choices being completely random surely doesn't make them any more "free" either. If your choices are not determined by anything, that would mean that even if you had good reasons to retreat (you were losing for sure etc.) it would still be a flip of the coin as to whether you would actually retreat or not. Besides the fact that this is utterly implausible, since humans always act based on various reasons and not randomly, this shows that libertarian free will is an incoherent non-concept; It doesn't exist regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism is true.

Libertarian free will then is rationally indefensible, regardless of whether you are a materialist or not. But does that mean that morality has to go as well? I think not, since compatibilist free will is enough for that. People have certain desires, and even though what desires they have are determined by the brain, we can learn to respect them if we find value in that.

[Anonymous No.14194430]

>>14183010
Ethics is a science. A social science.

[Anonymous No.14194442]

free will doesn't exist, so how can morality (as it pertains to the freedom to make choices) exist>

[Anonymous No.14194914]

>>14193538
Anon you shouldn't defend your views by comparing them to leftist logic.

[Anonymous No.14194970]

Kierkegaard

[Anonymous No.14195091]

>>14194020
Spacetime refutes the relevance of the concept of the soul in our universe. If it does not exist in the spacetime continuum, which the universe we're in operates by, it can't interact with it without throwing it in complete disarray, and we're here now, so obviously things haven't been thrown in complete disarray.

[Anonymous No.14195469]

>>14194300
I am going to boil this down as simply as I can, your brain evolved to survive it's environment. It EVOLVED to enjoy things as a chemically induced reward for acquiring survival skills. It evolved to see colours and smell food etc.
If we achieve, as it is very likely we will, in the next 50 years the ability to completely automate all production, to 'solve' the problem of survival in totality. It logically concludes that if entropy is finite, it makes sense to eliminate those qualities of existence that have no material value. I don't know how this isn't obvious. If you cannot justify, as no materialist can, the value of experiencing reality, there is no reason not to just make everyone motionless, blind, deaf, etc.
If I can remove the parts of my brain that feel pain, why shouldn't I? If I can remove the parts of my brain that are used to facial recognition, why shouldn't I? We only need facial recognition to recognise friends and family members, we only have the concept of friends and family members to further aid in our survival. All of these properties of the human condition become fundamentally vestigial as they EVOLVED to solve problems that technology can now solve for us.
Put it this way, you create a super AI and tell it 'preserve human life, reduce human suffering', now explain why it should not lobotomise all people to allow for existence to persist over a maximum amount of time. The problem is you can't, you must create some immaterial standard like 'experiential value' that preserves our right to experience things. It can even be argued from an ethical standpoint that since my ability to walk and move and see and hear consumes resource it directly impedes on the ability on other humans. It is more absolutely just to store everyone in pods in giant human banks so that we can exist for trillions of years. This sounds absurd but thats because materialist ethics IS an absurd proposition.

[Anonymous No.14195484]

>>14194300
I see you again believe we would be transhumanists living in some simulation. This makes no sense, even if we eliminate energy concerns a simulation still consumes entropy, even with some theoretical advances in quantum computing it STILL is more cost effective and more entropically feasible to just cut parts of our brains out and steep us in dopaminergic chemicals. The only problem is we would resist the idea, but we'd only resist it UNTIL we had the parts of our brains responsible for fear eliminated. Do you see if you reduce all humans to computer programs then the basis for our desires is chemical and not due to some higher reasoning. Thus it makes sense to simply chemically excise the source of our frustration. Why jump through all the hoops of simulating some tropical island where we are surrounded by loved ones when we can just eliminate our knowledge of beaches? You do not miss what does not exist. Eventually you could simply alter the human brain until we are just brain stems experiencing orgasms. You wouldn't know you were blind if the memory of having sight was eliminated. Etc.

[Anonymous No.14195500]

>>14190873
You claim a priori values do not imply circular reasoning, but yet previously you used a priori reasoning as an example of the circular logic of Christians. Here is an example:
>the gospels are the word of God revealed to Man
>the gospels tell us God loves us and to listen to His word
You claim this is circular reasoning, which it is, but then you argue a priori values are not circular reasoning which makes no sense since the first statement could be, according to YOUR argument, be the starting point.
Had you argued that Christians have no empirical basis for their beliefs, that is a valid argument, but Christian beliefs are only circular insofar that ALL ethical beliefs must start from a non-falsifiable position of self-evident fact. For Christians the 'gospel' is what is for a Humanist the notion of 'rights', they exist only because we believe they exist. They have no material basis in reality. You cannot escape this fact. You can argue that Christian ideas are more tenuous, incompatible with reality etc. than human rights, but you cannot somehow argue one is grounded in logic and the other isn't. They're both equally arbitrary you fucking sophist.

[Anonymous No.14195608]

>>14183703
>NO U

[Anonymous No.14195617]

>>14183033
this

[Anonymous No.14195649]

>>14186475
>The imperative (ought) is to not die
Prove it.
>After health, the imperative is to be happy.
Not only does this need happiness to be defined and then this to be proven, but there are many many cases where preservation of existence and happiness are at odds with one another. You're already assuming that existence cannot be suffering, which is also unfounded.

[Anonymous No.14195671]

>>14195500
I wasn't the guy you were talking to earlier, he's the one who responded after me, I suppose. That was rude of me. I much prefer axioms over circular reasoning even if they be ad hoc or illogical, so I call it out, and I'm happy we are in agreement on the problems we find ourselves in.

[Anonymous No.14195676]

>>14183433
did you even watch the fucking video? He proves that Harris is dishonest, without ANY philosophical knowledge, self-refuting, a lousy academic, and all in all a total disgrace to anyone forced to read this shit with an IQ of 90 or higher.

[Anonymous No.14195711]

>>14195649
Not him, but look at them as natural 'imperatives', not literal universal imperatives. The point being that that value systems which don't prioritize collective survival will tend not to persist for obvious reasons.

As for happiness, that's just how our genes have evolved to motivate us into seeking sustinence, shelter, sex, social bonds, and so on. It's quite fundamental to our natures, and exceptions prove the rule.

[Anonymous No.14195725]

>>14195711
So appeal to nature and dubious evolutionary psychology. Got anything better?

[Anonymous No.14196064]

>>14195469
Again, it is pointless to talk about valuing and lack of experience in the same context, since valuation is impossible without varied experience. Following on that, we don't need to justify our nature (our capacity for experience), as value assigning behaviours exist to serve that nature. You're putting the cart before the horse.
I see you just summarily ignore these points, however.

Entertaining your notion though, the obvious answer is that more than anything, our capacity for rich experience defines what we are as sophisticated beings. Even assuming that the minimal pleasure we'd settle for can happen independent of a complex awareness, or the contrast of pain (a big assumption), I can't see us turning ourselves into the equivalent of worms or unfeeling machines just so we can 'live' like that for a trillion years. You're assuming that your worst-case scenario is a foregone conclusion of a physicalist perspective, but it simply isn't (I remind you that physicalists also have natural biases, and that rationality is a tool which serves those biases, not and end unto itself).

Might we one day forego some aspects of our current nature to maximize others? Sure. Does it logically follow that a physicalist ethical perspective would prescribe compromising that nature to the extent that we'd become a more experientially limited form of life? No.

>>14195484
Don't know what you mean by "again", as that was my first mention of transhumanism.

I think most people would recognize that being reduced to an orgasming brain stem is effective suicide, as we would also be disposing of our capacity for identity (and many other capacities, to the extent that it's questionable what significance an orgasm would have). Why is identity important? Because it's our nature, and again — we don't need to justify our nature. I don't think it is in our nature (generally speaking, at least) to value reducing ourselves to long-lived brain stems. That these values are biological programming changes nothing.

No, you don't miss what doesn't exist, but what is the point if 'you' no longer exist in any coherent sense either?

[Anonymous No.14196089]

>>14195725
Got anything more demonstrably fundamental?

[Anonymous No.14196100]

>>14196089
of course he doesn't lol. I don't understand where these idiots think psychology came from if it didn't evolve

[Anonymous No.14196101]

>>14183596
Jordan Peterson has said thousands of times verbatim that ge opposes moral realism.

[Anonymous No.14196108]

>>14196089
God.

[Anonymous No.14196169]

>>14196108
Should I have put more emphasis on 'demonstrably'? Like -demonstrably- or .-=DEMONSTRABLY=-.?

Oh well, have fun with your negative claim.

[Anonymous No.14196185]

>>14196064
I just don’t see how you can materially argue why we shouldn’t become lobotomised brain stems. Remember the premise of the original post is that a materialist basis for what “ought” to be done can be constructed. So to support Sam Harris’ viewpoint it needs to demonstrated materially why we should not reduce humans to pleasure machines. I feel this only possible by appealing to an immaterial value like “nature” or “experientialism” not a quantifiable property.
The nature of matter, rather more specifically what DEFINES matter is that it can interact with other matter. We have expanded our definition of materialism to go from things with mass to things with mass or energy, to essentially include things like quantum fields, but at their core the basis of the material lies in its “observation” where “observation” is synonymous with “interaction/manipulation”. For example the soul is immaterial not because it lacks mass, for light also lacks mass, nor for its lack of energy because space has neither mass nor energy (it is a medium) yet is considered “real” in the material sense, but the “soul” is consider “unreal”, this is not do to any single physical property that is somehow lacking in the soul, but rather because souls cannot be interacted with. No device can be used to detect/observe the soul hence it is immaterial. So if the value of an experience is the cascade of chemicals conducted from an experience, from a materialist point of view there is NO difference between the chemicals released from kissing someone and the experience of kissing someone, they are equivalent. Thus there is no materialistic ethical framework that would preclude simulating a reality as unethical vs an unsimulated reality since the chemical make up is the only real thing. Once you establish the ethical validity of simulating reality it’s another logical step to simulate a reality that is inherently different to a real one. If I have a slave that MENTALLY experiences a beach while I rape their body relentlessly, this is valid to a materialist. How can an ethical violation exist if the other persons chemical make up is identical to that of a person on a beach? Remember God is irrelevant here, the question is how can a purely material person explain the ethical distinction without appealing to an IMMATERIAL concept (consent)

[Anonymous No.14196244]

>>14182995
Morality is obviously subjective.

[Anonymous No.14196290]

>>14196244
/thread

[Anonymous No.14196394]

>>14195711
>but look at them as natural 'imperatives'
That's a just the appeal to nature fallacy though. That an imperative is natural does not make it desirable or good.
>The point being that that value systems which don't prioritize collective survival will tend not to persist for obvious reasons.
Why does that matter? What is right is right even if nobody follows it. The underpinning of this argument is that if something doesn't persist, it must be wrong, which is simply not logical, and has a number of rather terrible conclusions.

>As for happiness, that's just how our genes have evolved to motivate us into seeking sustinence, shelter, sex, social bonds, and so on.
Reducing human happiness to pleasurable chemical impulses (which is how are genes accomplish such motivation) means that the statement "After health, the imperative is to be happy." is advocating for hedonism, and that shit like doing fuck tons of drugs is not only morally acceptable but actually the imperative, since you'd be hard pressed to find anything which better activates pleasure impulses as they do.
If you want to argue that happiness is something beyond those chemical impulses, then you're out of the realm of science, meaning the statement "I haven't read the book, but I believe that is his whole point. And regardless, it is the truth." is still wrong, since Harris' entire thing is explicitly limiting human values to those determined by science.

[Anonymous No.14196435]

>>14196244
incorrect

[Anonymous No.14196511]

>>14196244
Everything is subjective. . .

[Anonymous No.14196604]

>>14193571
>>14193612
>>14193629
>>14193664
>>14193741
cringe

[Anonymous No.14196673]

>>14196185
How is 'nature' immaterial exactly? What does 'immaterial' even mean (if you can't observe something in any way, is it 'immaterial' or simply non-extant)?

No, from a physicalist perspective the experience of kissing someone and some isolated dopamine response are not equivalent. There are many more phenomena involved in the experience, and I don't even see how it's sensible to consider the experience and the 'response' discretely (what truncation of experience is sufficient to allow for both an appreciation of the chemicals and equivalence to the actual experience?).

A simulated reality wouldn't necessarily be considered unethical, depending upon the circumstances. Different reality, still ok. Why would you rape a slave if you could just simulate the experience? They'd be perfectly equivalent, right? What are the expected preferences of your victim ? Are you breaching a necessary social trust? Consent is not immaterial, as 'immaterial' doesn't mean anything; concepts and what they are abstracted from are all phenomena. If you mean to say that consent is an abstraction, then I'd agree, but it is an abstraction that acknowledges a very concrete natural bias. If bodies were really so inconsequential to people that they didn't give a fuck about what happened to them, and it was commonly accepted behaviour to pop back into meatspace once in awhile and have your way with bodies, then yeah I guess it wouldn't be a violation (it would suggest an odd pathology on the part of the 'rapists' though, so I doubt it would be socially acceptable behaviour). Meanwhile, in non-hypothetical, non-idealized reality, there are always consequences, which is why psychological strategies like morality exist in the first place.

[Anonymous No.14196677]

>this thread

[Anonymous No.14196682]

>>14184269
No she isn't retard. She wasn't even on his caveman diet.

[Anonymous No.14196684]

>>14184851
No. She's making a pretty fucking miraculous recovery from late stage cancer actually.

[Anonymous No.14196718]

>>14185656
Agreed.

[Anonymous No.14196802]

>>14196394
It's not a fallacy. Values don't precede our natures as valuing agents; consequently, there is no universal good/bad right/wrong (rather, it is our nature that makes such determinations).

>Why does that matter? What is right is right even if nobody follows it. The underpinning of this argument is that if something doesn't persist, it must be wrong
Incorrect. The argument is that right/wrong are entirely meaningless notions when considered independently of valuing agents. If the agents cease to exist, then so does the context in which their values had any relevance/meaning.

>"After health, the imperative is to be happy"
I didn't make that statement, and again I don't agree with the notion of literal 'imperatives'. The strategy of morality only sensibly applies to collectives (consideration of behavioural impact upon others), and so you'd have to balance the valuation of your happiness against the health of your society.

[Anonymous No.14197805]

The problem isn't just trying to figure out any secular justification for morality, but one that is simple and impactful enough to convince the general population. So, any sort of complex mental acrobatics that only convinces academics won't do.

[Anonymous No.14198076]

>>14196673
Anything that is non-quantifiable would be immaterial. The neural impulse from burning your hand can be quantifiable measured, and reproduced under a controlled setting, the sensation of heat is immaterial and cannot be measured. Consent, freedom, happiness, achievement are immaterial processes and have no value under a materialist framework since they are just concepts like God or the soul. They are ideas we formulate in response to the stimuli that ARE real. A materialist would argue pain is real, at least the electrical impulse conducting it, and pleasure is real. Everything else is meaningless. Believing in human “rights” is as tangible a concept as believing in a “soul”, neither can be proven to exist and neither can be measured or interacted with. Both are just agreed upon by participant members of society as being real and or important. The irony of course being that the modern intellectual sanctifies human rights as some sort of intertextual contract due to the evolved cultural progress of our society and the soul as a contrived fantasy. But the reality is they are in fact depending on your definition of what is real and unreal.

[Anonymous No.14198428]

>>14182995
Nietzsche and Kant told us this

[Anonymous No.14199106]

'Morality' is simply a coping mechanism that people employ to escape the amoral brutality of life. What is 'right' and 'wrong' to one man is simply what he is and isnt comfortable with and capable of. Due to the great varyity in intelligence, physicality and behavior of all people(s), morality is subjective.

prove me wrong

[Anonymous No.14199182]

>>14196604
You missed the last one that never received an argument.

[Anonymous No.14199428]

>>14198076
>Consent, freedom, happiness, achievement are immaterial processes
You are wrong, which you said yourself by admitting that those are a result of stimuli. The thing is that these concepts exist as a result of evolutionary pressure on social beings(us), which creates a positive feedback loop.

[Anonymous No.14199467]

>>14197805
True, a consistent utilitarian must consider the utility provided by falsehoods. Still, I think discussion of not necessarily pragmatic theory among intellectuals is important.

>>14198076
No, anything non-quantifiable is effectively non-extant until demonstrated as something more than a figment of imagination. 'Immaterial' is a negative claim; it doesn't describe anything concrete, only an imagined antithesis to the material. Sensations can potentially be measured (we can already see sensations happen via fMRI, albeit without much granular resolution).

How would a physicalist think that ideas aren't real? As far as we know, everything is a phenomenon (including thoughts). The issue is how well a given abstraction describes reality relative to others... In this context, 'rights' and 'soul' are not even close to equivalent. The concept of 'rights' describes a very concrete social strategy that we implement (of course the notion that rights inhere in us — as opposed to being enforced consensus — is silly), whereas 'soul' describes nothing but an imaginary conceit we have about our nature.

[Anonymous No.14199565]

Objective morality outside of god is such a retarded idea. Why MUST I treat other humans as ends? Because the Categorical Imperative says that I must? Because Science says that I must? I don’t see how any of these is or could ever be binding. If we are nothing but an evolutionary accident then morality can never be objective.

[Anonymous No.14199761]

>>14199565
Values preceding valuing agents is a more retarded idea. Obviously, you don't have to adhere to any moral consensus, the only true obligations are consequences.

That doesn't mean that morality isn't an objective phenomenon though (i.e. a concrete phenomenon that evolves in the brains of social animals, involving capacity for empathy and so on). Try to keep in mind that obectivity ≠ universality. Preferences themselves are objective things, but not universal across valuing agents (morality works via sufficient overlap, not universality).

[Anonymous No.14200468]

>>14183703
>listen to Mohammad's sock

[Anonymous No.14200800]

>>14185547
this is beyond stupid.

[Anonymous No.14200894]

>>14183755
bleh virtue ethics, morality for people who need their dads at 30

[Anonymous No.14200909]

>>14190298
yeah can you prove that though? can you know it? where did you find that out?

Do you know something is not controlling us and is therefore not making us part of a larger teleology? What if we have no purpose and our existence is not us, what if this is the way by accident?

can you prove it is not?

[Anonymous No.14200926]

>>14196677
this, read more.

think about kant playing a gamblers game. If you want morality then you need these things. if you don't then who cares.

who cares about your opinions about your existence and it's importance, it is True that it is important for you not to feel pain?

Prove it.

[Anonymous No.14200935]

I can't believe Hume was refuted by a stove.

[Anonymous No.14201109]

I think if anything, this thread has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sam Harris has not actually proven anything.

[Anonymous No.14201527]

>>14188186

its on youtube. Theres also transcripts if you dont want to watch, although transcripts really make Harris's annoying speech tics stand out more (ok. ok. ok. ok. ok.)

Anyway, basically, Craig showed up prepared for an actual debate, and Harris showed up looking like he just wanted to get a bunch of stuff off his chest about religion in general. Harris ends up looking like an idiot, and at one point accuses craig of misrepresenting his arguments and then in the same turn proceeds to go on a wild tangent about religion and god instead of sticking to the actual debate question. Craig delivers a knockdown argument to Harris's position, and Harris continues his absurdly off-tangent rants about how stupid religion and evil god would have to be if he allows all this suffering... again, completely outside of the debate question.

A lot of christians sort of proudly champion this debate as Craig bitchslapping a popular atheist (and moron) but I don't consider that remarkable. Harris is really, a idiot, but more relevant is he is not good at debating. Craig on the other hand, is nothing if not a professional debater; thats his thing. Independent of whether he is "right" or "wrong" about anything, Craig is very good at winning debates on the terms of the debate.

[Anonymous No.14201633]

>>14201109
Imagine needing to even read this thread to know that. Like how can people not know beforehand what the true agenda of these >>14183513 (((intellectuals))).

[Anonymous No.14201684]

>>14201527
Excellent read, Anon. Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Anonymous No.14201741]

>>14199761
God is timeless dumbass

[Anonymous No.14201766]

>>14182995
Disregarding Harris' blind adherence to Enlightenment-era propaganda, his argument lives and dies by the ability to empirically measure utility, which is a ridiculous prospect considering the many confounding factors and biases on the part of the experimenters and subjects in such studies.
He proposes the foundation of an objective morality on observations which typically have a sub-30% replication rate these days. It's a losing proposition.
And again, it falls prey to the same argument of "well what do you define as utility?" and "how do you balance different costs against each other", which are extremely subjective questions. The more you think about the practical implications of this framework, the more room opens up for subjectivity. And it has no defense against this argument despite the fact that it's the same argument that has BTFOd this strain of materialist objectivism time and again.
So he's really done nothing new whatsoever.

[Anonymous No.14201788]

>there are people on this board right now who think morality has evolved through some spurious notion of evolutionary psychology rather than being a direct proof of the existence of God

[Anonymous No.14201810]

>>14201741
god doesn't exist dumbass

[Anonymous No.14201823]

>>14201810
Take enough psilocybin or DMT and you'll prove yourself wrong on that one.

[Anonymous No.14201826]

>>14201788
How does this addresses the problem of evil?

[Anonymous No.14201828]

>>14201826
Think of parasites as abstract babies.

[Anonymous No.14201832]

>>14201826
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist
2. Evil exists
3. Therefore objective moral values do exist
4. Therefore God exists

[Anonymous No.14201844]

>>14182995
>Argues that well being is the basis of morality
>Evil people can be well
Argument easily obliterated in 2.2 seconds flat

[Anonymous No.14201856]

>>14183495
lol no he doesn't. he tries to though
hegel eternally BTFOd the categorical imperative

[Anonymous No.14201859]

>>14185656
nice bait

[Anonymous No.14201970]

>>14201823
I have, and the machine elves told me that god doesn't real and that they themselves were projections of my subconscious meatmind.

[Anonymous No.14201972]

>>14199761
>Values preceding valuing agents is a more retarded idea.
>implying phenomena precede noumena

[Anonymous No.14202021]

>>14201844
Morality is a nonsensical concept applied to individuals, it's a collective strategy. If 'evil' behaviour is commonplace enough, societies fail. Collective well-being is the concern.

His argument is shit, but he's not wrong about the basic premise that any notion of what we 'ought' to do always contains an intent/preference relative to potential outcomes (and so is always reducible to the 'is').

[Anonymous No.14202036]

>>14202021
>he's not wrong about the basic premise that any notion of what we 'ought' to do always contains an intent/preference relative to potential outcomes (and so is always reducible to the 'is').
I'm dubious about this claim that you can essentially perform moral integration on the justification of an action (the 'ought' being the change in 'is' analogous to velocity being change in position for example) to derive any sort of understanding of what objectively "is". In the physics analogy, the change in position doesn't undermine the fact that your frame of reference still affects your position.
It depends on a dubious claim that you can derive a baseline from relative moral "ought" stances but then also fails to account for the fact that your basic "ought" stances can depend on vastly different cultural contexts.

[Anonymous No.14202046]

>>14202021
Science is contingent on assumed axiomatic beliefs. Stop pretending that it's not a value judgement. Moreover science only tells us "what is", but never "what's wrong with what is".

[Anonymous No.14202049]

>>14201972
>implying that value or any kind of abstraction is noumenal
>implying that the p/n distinction is applicable to anything but the discussion of our limited perception

Ok buddy, time for bed.

[Anonymous No.14202128]

>>14202036
Agreed, which is why I'm not a moral universalist. I don't know if Harris is (he probably wouldn't admit if he wasn't), but in my view morality is objectively real (strategic social behaviours) but not universal (as our natures are not universal — it's just that they overlap enough to form consensus).

>>14202046
>assumed axiomatic
Kind of redundant, anon.

No, science is contingent upon a demonstrated efficacy as a method for interacting with our experience. Our valuation of said efficacy is contingent upon our natural bias (biological impulse), not axioms (valuation doesn't start with reason, it starts with feeling).

Indeed, science alone can't determine right/wrong, since these concepts are meaningless independent of valuing agents. Wielded as a tool, however, science can serve our natural biases by examining our natures, and the consequences of strategies (it can also tell us why we find things right/wrong).

[Anonymous No.14202171]

>>14202049
>implying value is an abstraction
>confusing the map with the territory

[Anonymous No.14202175]

>>14202128
>it can also tell us why we find things right/wrong
It can't

[Anonymous No.14202183]

>>14199106
doesnt look like anyone can.

[Anonymous No.14202186]

>>14202021
>it's a collective strategy
No its not. Its a guideline to how to live well. A solitary man could still lead a moral life.

[Anonymous No.14202355]

>>14199106
>>14202183
Morality has the very practical purpose of making fruitful social coexistence possible. If there is no objective morality to be found in nature (and I agree that there isn't), it's necessary to create one as a noble lie.

[Anonymous No.14202408]

>>14201832
>Evil exists
Not objectively.

[Anonymous No.14202511]

>>14202408
>But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong—in other words, if there is no Law of Nature—what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?
>It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong.

[Anonymous No.14202532]

>>14202511
>people like things that benefit them and dislike things that harm them
Truly an astonishing insight.

[Anonymous No.14202587]

>>14202511
Lewis was a Catholic, so he would literally tell you that evil does not exist and is merely a privation of good a la Augustine.

[Anonymous No.14203253]

>>14193490
>sam harris
>smart people who have done meaningful things in their life

[Anonymous No.14203311]

>>14201970
Except you didn’t. You’re the equivalent of a creationist retard who says “I totally studied microbiology and I still don’t believe” it is impossible to refute evolution and understand it similarly it is impossible to refute god and understand the concept. Some ideas are just predicated on a level of understanding that can only be directly experienced and not learned through appeals to some authority,

[Anonymous No.14203328]

>>14199106
You cannot be proven wrong, because I cannot prove god exists. Ultimately morality IS god, it either exists or it doesn’t and it exists only if God exists and only if his word has been revealed. The history of the human race WILL ultimately come down to religion vs scientism. Unrestricted commodification or theocratic dogmatism. Islam Vs Secular China. European “enlightenment” ideals have revealed themselves to be nothing more than self destructive ideas that actively reduce birth rates. They will have no say in the 22nd century and beyond.

[Anonymous No.14203341]

>>14192473
Sorry sweetie, but demographic studies don't agree with your delusion. Religion is dying off in every developed country, immigration or no immigration.

[Anonymous No.14203511]

>>14187025
its what climate scientists do, you flat earther

[Anonymous No.14203838]

>>14202186
>No its not. Its a guideline to how to live well. A solitary man could still lead a moral life.
Is everyone in agreement on this?

[Anonymous No.14203849]

>>14182995
>funnels his parents money through foundations to seem like a legitimate scientist

[Anonymous No.14203986]

>>14203838
Obviously not, as lots of people seem to think it's an evolutionary strategy. There are a few definitions, one of which is the living a good life one

[Anonymous No.14204960]

>>14202171
>assuming a concrete discontinuity between the map and the territory
>not specifying notion of value so as to avoid getting wrecked

>>14202175
Why not?

>>14202186
Incorrect. Morality is concerned with the impact of behaviours upon others. There are ways to live very well (in terms of individual satisfaction) that you would consider immoral, why is that?

>>14202511
He's getting there. It's hop, skip and a jump from 'Law of Nature' to 'natural bias' (the bias being non-universal, because our natures are not universal). Indeed, it's trivial to see that divergent populations have significantly different standards of 'fairness'.

>>14203311
Well, thanks for telling me what I have and haven't experienced. Good to know. Other than that your argument seems to be: Some experiences can only be interpreted one way. This is true of vanishingly few experiences, the obvious one being the experience of existence itself. It is not similarly true that a hallucinogenic 'revelation' can only be interpreted as existence of god (and yes, I do speak from experience, no matter what your extreme conceit leads you to believe).

[Anonymous No.14205165]

Seems like the thread will die tonight. It's been an interesting discussion.

[Anonymous No.14205771]

>>14205165
no it hasnt

[Anonymous No.14205957]

>>14205771
>t.seething mystic

[Anonymous No.14205964]

>>14205957
i just wanted to have the last word ok

[Anonymous No.14206025]

>>14205964
Ok, sorry. Go ahead.

[Anonymous No.14206028]

>>14206025
Thanks