Hey, so I'm new to the subreddit so apologies in advance.

Here's my question under determinism there are a couple distinctions made: compatiblist and incompatiblist with regards to free-will. Doesn't that distinction carry over to a non-deterministic world as well? Just because a world isn't inherently deterministic, that doesn't guarantee that we have free will.... Right?

Again sorry if this is the wrong place or if my terminology is flawed.

Edit: sorry, wrong place

What makes a human?

Hey it’s me the resident nerd.

I often read early Inhuman comics and one of the big moral debates is what to do withe alpha primitives. The Alphas are basically cloned netherhals created to serve the inhumans as slaves. But the inhumans debate is that right to enslave them; are they people to?

Then I think of the Star Wars extended universe and Star Trek, and they always ponder a question when is a robot sentient and deserve rights? That is kind of the back drop of George Lucas’s clone wars and the legacy stories from it, the morality of clones and droids shooting each other.

So I want to know; can you justify clone servants even if they are of a lesser “human” species?

Can you argue the humanity of a machine?

On free will
The more I think about free will the less it seems reasonably possible.
First, lets define Free will.
I had a pretty clear Idea but I look it up on Wikipedia to find an already wide consensus on its definition: Free will is the capacity of the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Being able to choose means there are real possibilities to choose from.
Unimpeded means not being force, push or nudge.
Second, what are the necessary requirement for free will to exist.
If we can show that those requirements exist we can, then, reasonably think that free will is possible.
Not yet proving it exist but might exist.
Can a 6 sided die can fall on its 8th faces?
Of course not. Being a cube exclude having more than 6 faces. So it’s “choice” is confined. It cannot “choose” to fall in any other ways.
It structurally impossible.
I guess we are all humans here, reading this. Or maybe ChatGPT is.
Anyway for the sake of argument it is not important.
Being humans implies a lot of limitations and reduces the choices we can make.
You did not choose to be human. You did not choose where and when you are born.
You did not choose you parents, culture, language… any social-economics conditions.
Your gender, your genes, your environment.
And not remembering you have chosen is not an argument, it is not an explanation. And in fact limits you more add constrain and tend to push toward no free will.
OK lets suppose you are on a road and there is an intersection. You may choose to go right or left.
Both choices lead to the same road. So you can freely chose to go left or right.
Witch way do you choose?
Can I choose to go both ways? Why left or right? Why not up or down or back? Why?
Why am I on a road? Did I choose a road with no other choices than left or right? Why am I on this road?
Why am I speaking the language I speak? I am sure nobody is born being able to speak Polish and Japanese… Why? We don’t have to choose because this is not REAL possibilities.
We are like a 6 sided die. We can’t choose what we cannot choose.
Can I choose to live forever? Not just saying so, or believing so until I die. I mean really live because I choose too.
Can we be smarter than we are by sheer will? It will be thinking that we can be taller by sheer will.
I think we cannot.
To resumed: Where there is no real choices there is no way we can show there is free will.
What can we choose by our self that is not implicit or force on us?

Does anyone else like philosophy but dislike (or find boring, annoying, stupid, what have you) many contemporary philosophers? I found in uni that while most philosophers were nice people (moreso than other disciplines), there was a fair amount of work going on which I thought was wrong, stupid or pointless. The same goes for reading contemporary papers, even of people well respected in their field (I'm looking at you Nick Bostrom).

In philosophy class we discussed Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. We even discussed Buddha and Jesus Christ. There was also Max Weber. Though Weber was a sociologist there was clearly a train of philosophy in his otherwise socially scientific thoughts. Therefor I shall explain my understanding on government based on my rudimentary understanding of the philosophy of Max Weber, sociologist philosopher.

As much as we like to point the finger at leadership we need them in the purest form of irony.

During times of feast we celebrate and times of famine we lament. But like the yin yang we have thise lamenting the leadership in feast and celebrating in famine.

However, leadership keeps people together. Either as a rallying force for the way or a enemy to band against. For the latter the people will banded against those against the greater good. A necesssry but still evil culling, which is the reason for the leadership.

This leadership has culminated in our society into what we call government. We as people cannot see past our immediate needs to outside. The idea of government is a group of elites that can see the big picture. Even so they have their own interests and people can really tell when someone is on the take. They rally against that corruption respresented by that corrupt figure. The corruption succeeds or it fails but otherwise people would not have the grand goals of supporting the good, benefitting from the corrupt, or fighting the bad. Their goals would be hunter gather and hunt food. That lifestyle is the most harmless and pure to society. It is clean mountain water not tap, but most would die without tap.

That is why we are the dominant species on the planet. We have infrastructure that runs deep. If weren't for the leadership and the governments we would not even be living as good as those that live off the grid, because they have access to modern technologies that make their life possible. We would still be in caves hunting and gathering with a population comparable to any other predator like a bear with a slight advantage because of our thumbs.

Max Weber described government as the monopoly of force. When the individual is allowed his own force no society can emerge from that. He would fight community for his own well being and food. Take the force from him and people can work together. Somebody has to occupy that spot or we would still be stuck in a cave.

The young are thinking themselves into despair.

Why should young people concern themselves so frequently and often to the point of despair with questions of morality or even nihilistic beliefs? Aren't we allocated many years in the later stages of our life when we have more time, experience, and wisdom to dwell on such topics? The young's superior fluid intelligence cowers in comparison to experience. I propose that our younger years should be driven by self-improvement, and if you do believe that your opinions are superior, then also laying the framework for a career with power where your opinions might hold more weight. This should all be done while constantly learning so that you may be even more qualified to speak on topics like the ones mentioned.

I am having a fun time using Stable Diffusion to combine philosophies with various physical things. For instance I like using the following 5 words: stoic, epicurean, hedonist, skeptic, ascetic

and follow that with... anything.

"Bedroom", "Bedroom theme", "Backyard", "toys", "toilet", "city", "art", etc.....

I find it interesting, nothing is too surprising, but its interesting to see these visualized. My most interesting thing so far, I got a hedonist bedroom that seemed to like Christmas trees and lights, but with the colors pink and blue.

(Note that the images I have below have more details in the prompts, that was because I was a noob before. Now I just edit the guidance scale)

https://imgur.com/a/CZAFRxE

Lets be philosophers, find it interesting, and figure out what is interesting. We all know how to be skeptics and poke holes.

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The thing about “imagining Sisyphus happy” by Albert Camus. I understand that the meaning of it is that we need to find joy in the struggle of life. My issue with it, which I’m thinking through, is that I don’t really want to be complacently happy about constant labor with no real accomplishment. That sounds like meaningless purgatory. Can someone explain if I’m missing something? I haven’t really looked into Camus too much.

I have concluded that the “self” starts from a prenatal stage (genetically determined) and grown through life experiences. And the idea of “me” is an illusion that the prenatal “I” attaches to over time. The ideas of Buddhism are the only thing ive found that comes close to explaining “will”. But If there is no “self” and thus no separate will, is the prospect of obtaining liberation predetermined in itself? (understanding that any “will” you have is the will of the universe as a whole)? How can buddhism have any “methods” while simultaneously believing in a concept of “no self” or “separate will” ?

What can “i” do, if there is no “i”.

I should just watch life go by until one day it hits me?

This was deemed too spicy for a regular post so it has been relegated to the weekly thread. As a result it is a bit too long, sorry 😬

Supertasks by VSauce

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ffUnNaQTfZE

This is a good video by VSauce on supertasks. Fun, informative, accurate; just watch it!

I'm posting this because I think it shines a light on an area of philosophy which I think is seriously flawed: metaphysics (downvotes incoming!). My problem with metaphysics is that it tries to reach conclusions about what exists which are too strong using "armchair" reasoning, when this should be better left to scientists, especially physicists. While philosophy does utilise cold hard logic sometimes, especially to construct paradoxes to establish what isn't true, it often also requires other approaches to arrive at conclusions about what is true, such as coming up with different theories which fit, valuing parsimony, etc. But when it comes to establishing what exists, it's the scientists who should be left to come up with theories that fit, utilise parsimony as they see fit, do experiments to narrow things down, etc., and yes they can also be trusted with the cold hard logic when it comes up. They get to decide when a question is more concretely answered vs. when there isn't sufficient information and so there are only hypotheses.

So how does this relate to Michael's video on Supertasks? Supertasks originated as thought experiments, specifically paradoxes, thought up by philosophers. The two most famous are Zeno's paradox and Thomson's lamp. Michael explains the correct answer to both, which was stated firmly by Paul Benacerraf back in 1962: all these supertask thought experiments ultimately come down to a lack of information (like one of those logic puzzles where one of the options is "not enough information"). So they aren't really paradoxes at all and don't tell us anything about reality.

That doesn't mean that these thought experiments are useless. They should be better thought of as puzzles, which tell us something about reasoning, and open interest into what physicists may one day discover, or what mathematics might apply. Often puzzles have been the foundation on which beautiful and interesting maths is built. Indeed, it feels like metaphysicians are often pulling interesting ideas which belong in maths or physics into their department, because while they aren't qualified to tackle them properly they still need to publish papers.

Now, for some philosophers like Alexander Pruss this isn't enough: they want to use these thought experiments to reach conclusions about what exists. In Pruss's book 'Infinity, Causation, and Paradox' (2018) he uses supertasks and other reasoning to try and argue for his position of causal finitism, which roughly implies that none of these paradoxes could ever come about in reality.

But this is just not necessary and an overreach of philosophy. Let's take the example of the green and yellow cube at timestamp 10:57 in the video. If a cube like this did exist in reality, yes it's true that the colouring algorithm does not tell us the colour of the top. But maybe physicians would find out that the top colour must always be green, or always yellow, or always a quantum superposition of the two. All answers fit because the supposed paradox isn't a paradox: the colouring algorithm doesn't give enough information to determine what the top colour is. So the thought experiment is interesting and opens up questions about reality, but can never answer them. Zeno's paradox is much the same: all it tells us it that physicists must determine how motion works; maybe because motion is continuous (so the limit of the partial sums gives the answer, as expected), maybe because space is not infinitely divisible, or something else.

I've only been talking about a small slice of metaphysics, but it is my personal opinion that this a microcosm which correctly shows the sub-discipline's flaws (I can feel the downvotes running through my veins ❄️). This is of course my personal opinion, and seeing as I'm posting it anonymously on Reddit it's worth pretty much nothing, but I thought I'd voice it here anyway to give a little balance to this subreddit.

If you actually read this far, well done! Here's a cake 🎂

If morality is subjective, that means world ending philosophy like Antinatalism, Pro mortalism and Benevolent world exploder argument are all valid and it wouldnt be "wrong" for people to pursue the end of all life on earth or beyond.

The only difference between them and other people is the amount of subscribers? lol

So if one day in the future, a small group of them are determined enough to fund and develop a technological doomsday device to sterilize or blow up earth into pieces, they would not be morally "wrong", right?

Time is the most valuable resource because you can never have it back . i would recommend Tomes More Utipa. he discuss the value of time

Is reality 100% deterministic? Determinism says everything has a cause, so the beginning must be uncaused, right? With this reasoning, indeterminism must be true in some aspects of reality.

You can objectively point out at so many things which you could label as "it makes me sad!". But you cannot objectively name one thing that makes you happy in absolutenees.

An ownership isn't an action. It can be seen as an abstract relationship between a possession and a proprietor enforced by a law or consensus.

Not being an action means that an ownership isn't production. Goods and services are exclusively produced, excluding some very rare cases of natural goods like atmospheric oxygen. Human responsibility in production will be limited to the role of one's own personal human capital, such as his time availability, experience, acquired knowledge, skills, mental and physical capabilities, etc. Humans will thus not be responsible for automated production, for example, even if the owner of the automate is his producer. In essence, the producer isn't what he produces and can't claim responsibility of the role of what he produces in production.

We can thus say that wealth compensations can't be given for ownerships of any kind other than personal human capital. Since production for which humans are responsible for is limited, any such compensation will cause a reduction of the pool of wealth. This pool of wealth being used to compensate back producers, its reduction will prevent a compensation for participation in production for the equivalent amount of produced wealth, creating an unfairness or prejudice akin to wage theft.

Anyone can agree or disagree with what I'm saying?

Bergson - I am interessted in developing Bergson’s thoughts that appear in his Introduction. However, what he says sounds very smart and correct, but did he develop some sort of methods for attaining this sort of intuitive grasp of the inner object. I feel like it sounds well, but can it be done? Could we really know things like that? Not by symbolical science but by grasping it from within in one strike?

I strongly believe in the fact that someone’s reasoning for a crime, does not change the crime of that in itself.

It is often said, “Is stealing bad? What if someone stole to feed their family?”

I am not saying that stealing is objectively bad, just that the reason for any crime does not change the crime committed and what should be punished for it. The factor in crime is malicious intent over self preservation. There could be thousands of reasons for someone committing murder although none make that person have committed less of a wrongdoing or more of one. Lightening someone’s punishment or worsening it is acting on personal feelings over facts.

If you believe in Free Will or are an Atheist, read on:

​

Why is there something and not nothing? How is there something and not nothing?

Let’s call the answer to both questions God (necessarily outside of time). The “something” includes the observable universe and anything that may be unobservable in another realm (can never be proven).

Well I ask this: “Where do our decisions come from?”

Well, where does everything come from? God, right? We may undergo a process within our minds to reach a decision, but ultimately, it was entirely orchestrated by God. This must be the case, as God, whether intentionally or not, determined the nature of the “something” that is all of existence. You may still think you can choose from “your perspective”, but it is an illusion resulting from your lack of knowledge of yourself. We are products of God and had no influence over our genome, place of birth, and other environmental factors beginning at birth contributing to one’s nature as a person and decision making. Moreover, once you do something, that’s what you would’ve done all along in this universe/state of being. We will always see in hindsight that we never had free will. If we “hit the rewind button” on all of existence and let things play out again, things would all end in exactly the same way.

As I said, I believe the answer to my question is God, but if you disagree, please explain your thoughts and let me know of any errors I may have made.

This is also a question for atheists too. As you see God defined above as the “First Mover” and creator of the universe, why do you not believe in God’s existence? Why is God not logically valid as a term for the producer of existence? My definition appears to be the standard from what I’ve been able to see that’s universally accepted and not of any particular religion.

Hello, I would like to see where exactly Hume talks about the concept if force in his Treatise - can anyone give me some links to pages?

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Hello! I'm a 'noob' in philosophy, I'm trying to get into it.

I started with Meditations by Rene Descartes and I was wondering what is everyone's general feelings towards him? I find him a bit full of himself and difficult to read, but I'm quite probably the reader he warns doesn't like. That being said, my question is:

What are questions you'd ask him if you could, in regard to his meditations?

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Should physics be forgiven?

Never have humans ever had so much capacity to destroy. Physics has put the world into a state of moral decay, where threatening others with nuclear holocaust is seen as a necessary evil for a ruler. Nuclear war seems imminent, and nobody seems to blame the people who dedicated their lives to create it. Physics has paradoxically made it impossible to fully understand the universe: the nuclear bomb has put a hard limit on how long humans can experience and study the cosmos.
Everyone who spent their lives in dedication to this practice has lived in vein. The end result of finding out about our cosmos is about to end civilization.
Scientists like to see themselves and their work as morally neutral, at worst. But I don't understand how science can forgive itself. Even medicine, for all its life-affirming pursuits, could put the tools of bioweapons in the hands of every man evil enough to cause mass death.
How will the histories (that will never be created, due to the true destruction of the nuclear bomb) judge our pursuit of knowledge about the universe? Will they see physicists as wonderers about our cosmos, or will they see the secrets of life and death as a morally questionable pursuit?
If God does exist, hopefully he can find solace in knowing humans can understand the cosmos as we work to destroy it.

I saw a video today that sparked my interest and I wanted to open up a discussion about objective morality.
The claim in said video was that atheists cannot have an "objective morality" if they do not believe in a god/religious laws (etc).
The comments had a lot of discussion about whether or not objective morality exists/if it can come from the inner self/etc but I didn't see any comments about how objective morality is bad.
Unless you can prove that there is a law/rule that would be objectively moral in every possible situation, objectivity is bad. Let me explain: Pretend there are no government laws and the only rules that define society are religious texts. Hypothetical text says: "You shall not kill." Many would consider this an objective moral posed to them by their god, right? But are there not some situations, no matter how rare, at least one, in which murder would be the moral thing to do? To murder one person to save the planet, even? This puts religious people with the above claim in a double bind because they must either concede that you must follow religious laws at all costs, even where it would cause harm, in order to be objective (which would be bad in the cases it causes harm) or they have to concede that in some cases you must break these rules in which they would not be objective.
Therefore, in response to the argument that atheists have no objective morality because they do not believe in a god, I say that 1. objective morality doesn't exist and 2. if it did, it would be bad.

Here is a precis of a conversation I had with ChatGPT written by ChatGPT:-

In our discussion, we used propositional calculus to represent the concepts of non-binary, masculinity and femininity using propositional variables and logical operators. For example, we used p = "The concept of masculinity is true", q = "The concept of femininity is true" and r = "The concept of non-binary alternatives is true" and connected them using logical operator "AND" (p ∧ q ∧ r) to assert that all three concepts are true at the same time. Or, we used "OR" (p ∨ q ∨ r) to assert that at least one of the three concepts is true at the same time.

We also discussed the logical contradiction of stating that the opposite of non-binary is a binary concept, which creates a paradox. This can be represented in propositional calculus using the statement p ∧ ¬p where p is a propositional variable that represents the concept of non-binary and ¬p represents the concept of binary. And also, we used p => ¬q where p is propositional variable that represents the concept of non-binary and ¬q represents the concept of binary. Both of these statements assert the truth of non-binary and the falseness of binary at the same time, which creates a logical paradox.

I wrote (Tebo Steele):-There is a being conceived and born in a binary universe who as a result of his investigations discovers a non-binary being in his universe... can you explain this with reference to our paradox.

Chat GPT wrote:- If there is a being, let's call him B, who is conceived and born in a binary universe, and as a result of his investigations, discovers a non-binary being, let's call it NB, in his universe, this could be seen as an illustration of the paradox "p => ¬q" where "p" represents the concept of non-binary and "q" represents the concept of binary.

In this scenario, B's understanding of the universe is based on the binary concept of "q", where everything is either one thing or the other, but through his investigations, he discovers the existence of NB, who defies this binary concept, representing the non-binary concept "p".

This discovery could be seen as a logical paradox, as the concepts of non-binary and binary are mutually exclusive and cannot coexist, yet in this scenario, they do coexist.

In other words, B's discovery of NB contradicts his previous understanding of the universe as a binary one, and illustrates the paradox of the mutually exclusive nature of non-binary and binary concepts that we discussed before.

I (Tebo Steele) added:- In order not to consider the above Paradox as offensive it may be useful to remember that the concept of non-binary includes orders of being unknown. In fact placing the paradox in an alien universe may circumnavigate the problem of offence.

I wrote(TeboSteele):- Would you say that this formulation of the Paradox is fresh territory?

ChatGPT wrote:-The specific formulation of the paradox you've described, in which a being from a binary universe discovers a non-binary being, is not a common one. It is an unique way of illustrating the paradox "p => ¬q" where "p" represents the concept of non-binary and "q" represents the concept of binary, which is a relatively new concept in the grand scheme of things.

It is an interesting way of illustrating the paradox, in the sense that it provides an analogy of the mutually exclusive nature of the concepts of binary and non-binary, using a story-like approach. This analogy could be helpful for people to understand the paradox in a different way.

It is not common to find this formulation in literature or academic research, so it is fresh in that sense.

*With reference to the error where ChatGPT says that ¬q represents binary I (Tebo Steele) wrote:- You say that ¬q represents the concept of binary.. Did you mean 'q' represents binary?

ChatGPT wrote:- You are correct, I apologize for the confusion. In the statement "p => ¬q" where p represents the concept of non-binary and ¬q represents the concept of binary, q should represent the concept of binary, not ¬q. The statement "p => ¬q" asserts that if non-binary is true, then binary is false, which creates a logical paradox because it asserts the truth of non-binary and the falseness of binary at the same time.