The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
nautil.us
The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
1–10 of 119 posts
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#2> It might be nice to think that the universe has an inherent moral direction, but do we have any evidence that it does? And if we lack good evidence for these claims, surely respect for Occam’s razor ought to stop us from accepting them? This objection, though, is jam-packed with value-claims: It claims what we “ought” to believe and references “good” evidence. The very challenge pre-supposes the reality of value.
So in attempting to provide evidence for his claims, Goff creates a weak framing for the necessity of evidence and then attacks the framing?
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#3> But the problem for .. anyone who tries to ground moral truth in the natural world, is that moral truths, like mathematical truths, are necessarily true, which means that it’s impossible for them to be false.
What a bizarre argument. Mathematical truths are defined to be true -- entirely the opposite of what the author is trying to claim about moral truths, so this is about as absurd a comparison as one could make.
I'm no expert but this article reads to me like hand-waving psychobabble.
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#4This part of the universe, me, knows that the article is wrong. So yes. But the same part of the universe also knows that the rest doesn't know shit. No evidence required, you can trust me, I'm from the universe.
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#5[deleted]
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#6Panpsychism is a pretty interesting idea, but this article does a poor job of explaining it and then making its own moral argument. I'd say skip the article and read this instead:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/
One line of argument for panpsychism that I don't often see mentioned is that humans/animals assume that we're the only form of consciousness in the universe. This strikes me as rather myopic, at least as a baseline assumption. It seems like the starting point should be assume that other bodies in the universe are constituted in similar ways and not animals on Earth are exceptionally, unexplainably unique.
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#7> But the problem for .. anyone who tries to ground moral truth in the natural world, is that moral truths, like mathematical truths, are necessarily true, which means that it’s impossible for them to be false. What a bizarre argument. Mathematical truths are defined to be true -- entirely the opposite of what the author is trying to claim about moral truths, so this is about as absurd a comparison as one could make.…
Maths is what happens when you take nonsense very seriously.
For some odd reason a subset of all the possible non-sense maps really well to the real world.
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#8> But the problem for .. anyone who tries to ground moral truth in the natural world, is that moral truths, like mathematical truths, are necessarily true, which means that it’s impossible for them to be false. What a bizarre argument. Mathematical truths are defined to be true -- entirely the opposite of what the author is trying to claim about moral truths, so this is about as absurd a comparison as one could make.…
You are nearly there. It is hand-waving psychobabble paid for with taxes. This fraud and narcissist, Goff, is employed by a UK university. This is the tw*t that wrote "Galileo's Error". Presumably, he'll be bringing out a sequel, "Einstein's hopeless confusion".
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#9> But the problem for .. anyone who tries to ground moral truth in the natural world, is that moral truths, like mathematical truths, are necessarily true, which means that it’s impossible for them to be false. What a bizarre argument. Mathematical truths are defined to be true -- entirely the opposite of what the author is trying to claim about moral truths, so this is about as absurd a comparison as one could make.…
> Mathematical truths are defined to be true
Perhaps a nitpick, but: axioms are defined to be true. Mathematics, roughly speaking, is the business of exploring the consequences of chosen sets of axioms. Sometimes published mathematical theorems turn out to be wrong.
Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
#10> But the problem for .. anyone who tries to ground moral truth in the natural world, is that moral truths, like mathematical truths, are necessarily true, which means that it’s impossible for them to be false. What a bizarre argument. Mathematical truths are defined to be true -- entirely the opposite of what the author is trying to claim about moral truths, so this is about as absurd a comparison as one could make.…
Maths is what happens when you take nonsense very seriously. For some odd reason a subset of all the possible non-sense maps really well to the real world.
I think the terms used in Mathematics are a tad more precise than those in natural language e.g. 1 is fairly clear, "moral" is not as clear.
The reason Maths works is because it is based on intuitions (counting, space) that are presumably shadows of the physical world cast on the evolving brain via coarse perception. The effectiveness of Mathematics in Physics is probably not unreasonable at all.