371–380 of 464 posts
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"1+1=2" as a string of symbols is open to interpretation, however, both you and I understand the idea that that string of symbols is conveying, and that idea is true objectively.
>both you and I understand the idea that that string of symbols is conveying Until the moment we have to take each other to court, then suddenly two different trials with two different juries comes out with conflicting answers.
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I don't know what "absolute semantics" means. If you mean "objective semantics", then yes that's already objective. If you mean "universal semantics", well there's rarely universal agreement on anything, so I'm not sure why I should find the existence of a few contrarians persuasive.
So you are essentially saying that you can keep your own ideas of “objective semantics” because you can dismiss people who disagree with you Which means you have a subjective definition of the meaning of “objective semantics” Objective doesn’t exist Everyone can assign their own meaning and not agree on what something means We are doing it right now on this thread You might say that there is an objective reality or t…
> You might say that there is an objective reality or truth regardless of whatever anyone else says, but you can’t prove that
I get what you mean here, and I agree, but it's untrue that "1 + 1 = 2" can't be objectively true. It can, as long as certain semantics are applied. A sufficiently smart alien that understands what we mean by "1", "+", "=", "2", the set of integers, what a field is, and so on can only reasonably conclude the same. It also isn't objectively true that there are no objective truths in the sense of "racism bad". We can't know if it's objectively true, but given the context of, well, the world, maybe it is an objective truth. Not that it matters, since we can't know, but still. Although you could argue that those statements shouldn't be considered statements anymore.
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And that's just the start. They openly advocate for nuking western nations. Imagine if Anderson Cooper spent tens of minutes ranting about how we should just nuke Russia and China because fuck them
I'm no apologist for Russia, and you can see that from where I started this thread, but... You act like there aren't actually dozens and dozens of Fox-news style commentators on US media and talk radio who haven't said similar things before, about various enemies of the USA? The asshats on Russian media saying these things are basically the Russian equivalent of that crap. Demagogues etc Some of the shit I heard comi…
false
> dozens of Fox-news style commentators on US media and talk radio who haven't said similar things before
show one
> The asshats on Russian media saying these things are basically the Russian equivalent of that crap.
Yeah. Read this channel. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/170716092435045600...
Then repeat your lies.
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If you refuse to engage with a challenging concept and instead talk about something else entirely, you make things easier. Go figure. Strategy helps us decide which actions will help us reach a goal. It does not tell us what that goal should be. It has practically nothing to do with morality. Human societies adopt different means but they also work towards different ends.
It's not a challenging concept, it's a mistaken distinction. Using those specific words, just confuses the issue with ancient religious dogma.
I think that the thing that most people don't realize about ethics is the meta-ethical problem that axioms are by definition arbitrary. When we really think about the fact that all of our ethical theories are based on arbitrary axioms, suddenly the teeth to ethics have a deep, serious problem. The only argument we have at that point is that the axioms "feel" correct, and I have no problem with this basis, I consider…
> axioms are by definition arbitrary sorry, the axioms of Euclidean Geometry are not arbitrary. They are axioms by the definition of axioms, but not by the definition of arbitrary.
The axioms of Euclidean geometry are very obviously arbitrary, in that, we can create other forms of geometries should we choose to. The fact that we are attempting, with Euclidean geometry, to create a model of the phenomena we experience is good and useful, but that does not change the fact that we could create a geometry of any other fashion, to map to any other phenomena we could imagine.
If we found that all minds feel the same with regard to an ethical mapping we created (I see this as Chomsky’s point) then we have effectively created a physics of ethics. The problem is that it is quite obvious that this is not the world we live in. In fact, if it were, I would hardly think we would have much disagreement about anything of moral substance.
Thus, we are living in a world where two people measure the same geometric line, and find two different results, form two different axioms to model their measurements, and then try to enforce their measurements with threats of violence.
Again, I consider myself a fairly ethical person, I have an moral theory, I just don’t pretend that my theory can be universalizable, and don’t think that moral judgments, in a philosophical sense, have much foundation. The reason I fight for what I fight for is that I feel that doing what we can to help each other is the way we should live. I just know there are plenty of people who will inherently disagree, and there is little way to reason with them.
I’m not a moral relativist in that sense, I just refuse to pretend that I can create an ethical theory in any moral sense beyond what makes good sense to me.
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What I consider hunger someone else can consider the norm or vice versa. If you define something that depends on the person as objective - then subjective loses meaning.
I improved my definition of feelings so that they can easily be objective. I define hunger as the ideal signal that corresponds exactly to the extent of starvation. 'Ideal signal' is almost like sensation or feeling, except it may not be always or in full precision accessible by consciousness. It is a physical signal, or a function from the physical state. Extent of starvation seems objective (after fixing its defini…
If you redefine words how you please you can prove anything. What's the point tho?
> What do you consider hunger?
The feeling I sometimes get that I should eat something. It's VERY subjective (for example when I'm fasting I can go a few days without it, but when I'm not - I get it just cause I'm bored and haven't eaten a breakfast).
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The idea of moral progress implies that there is objective morality, and that we can improve our knowledge of it. Progress implies a destination, it implies a standard against which the progress is measured, at least in principle.
That is correct. In this is view, all evils are the result of a lack of knowledge, and so moral progress is achieved through the growth of knowledge. All knowledge is fallible and therefore uncertain, so even if we stumbled on objective truth (the destination which we are error-correcting towards), we could never know it for sure.
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Yes, there are physical facts, most moral relativists are physical realists. But that is also exactly where the moral relativism originates. You _do_ have physical laws, you _do not_ have moral laws. You can _test_ physical laws, you _can not test_ moral laws. Once you axiomatically ordain some set of rules as "moral truths" or some measure of "moral truth" then the physical apparatus comes in, and you get to use it.…
> But that is also exactly where the moral relativism originates. You _do_ have physical laws, you _do not_ have moral laws. You can _test_ physical laws, you _can not test_ moral laws. First, this assumes a very specific kind of moral realism, but does not describe all forms of moral realism. Second, we do just fine testing mathematical laws by checking for consistency without any tests of the sort you're describing…
These sorts of arguments definitely have been talked to death. So has the existence of god, yet people still believe in Santa.
I find it troublesome to listen to the person who claims that Russia is fighting in Ukraine in a more humane way than the US in their wars [ https://civilek.info/en/2023/04/30/noam-chomsky-russia-fight... ]
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He is pretty open about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial
I don’t know why people still defend Chomsky’s horrible positions on this stuff. Moreover his claim that Leninism is distinct from Stalinism was absolutely disproven when the soviet archives were briefly opened and scholars could read Lenin’s letters and memos, but Chomsky holds to the claim.