Harris' issue there is that he doesn't understand the is/ought gap. He seems to think it's the thesis that there cannot be moral facts, when it's just the idea that any argument for a normative conclusion must contain a normative premise (i.e., that the conclusion must follow from its premises). And his own take on moral philosophy actually does bridge this gap, since it goes roughly like this:

1. If our intuitions clearly indicate that some moral principle is true, then it is true.
2. Our intuitions clearly indicate that we ought to maximize the well-being of conscious creatures.
3. Therefore, we ought to maximize the well-being of conscious creatures.

That he doesn't acknowledge this might be continuing ignorance, general bloodymindedness, or just the fact that, laid out this way, it's clear that his project is a philosophical rather than "scientific" one as he purports. In any case, the actual problem with his moral philosophy isn't is/ought. It's that he doesn't argue for either premise well, nor even really explain sufficiently what "maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures" means.

The claim isn't that a position on free will can't be justified by any evidence, it's that it can't be justified by "empirical experiments" specifically.

Well no, axioms are not typically a thing in philosophy. In philosophy we are concerned with trying to figure out what's true, not just declaring random things are "axioms" and thus true unless proved false. The latter approach would make just about anything an equally "valid" candidate for truth, and suggest, contrary to basic principles of reason, that we should believe things without having sufficient reasons to believe them.

With that in mind, the question has to be: why should we take your antinatalist principle to be true? Or perhaps, what makes it more plausibly true than the other things people typically believe that it conflicts with, e.g., that life has inherent value, that procreation is an inherent right, or that happiness as well as suffering is morally significant?

>However, it doesnt address the axiomatic claim that if SOME have to suffer, then NONE should exist to risk this suffering in perpetuity, especially when nobody asked for it, we were all born without a chance to weigh the risk and reject or accept our births. It may be a minority moral claim, but it is still a valid claim that requires proper counter.

What is an "axiomatic claim" and what makes this one "valid"?

Basically, philosophy as an area of study encompasses a number of important problems. For example, what we can know or how we know stuff, or how we should behave and judge the behaviour of others. Such things are foundational to all kinds of human endeavour and even our regular lives.

There's different ways we might go about dealing with such problems. We can try to ignore them, and maybe just rely on received wisdom or prevailing cultural attitudes. Or we might idly speculate and come up with answers that seem pleasant or particularly in accord with our intuitions. Or we might pray, meditate, take a lot of hallucinogenics, etc. and see if any answers reveal themselves to us. These might all work out fine for us if we're just looking to get on with life and not trouble ourselves with such matters, but they probably aren't satisfactory if we want to know what's actually true. So the alternative is philosophy as a discipline: attempting to work out these problems in a rigorous and critical way.

Usually when people are dismissive of philosophy it's because they either don't understand that rigor can be applied to these kinds of problems, or just think that philosophy isn't about doing that (e.g., that it's the "idle speculation" approach).

The same thing I'm missing if I say that philosophy is the religion of semiotics: an explanation of what that means and ideally an argument for why it ought to be accepted.

I think the level of analysis should be adequate to support the claim made, regardless of the format. So if a claim like "the great philosophers of the western canon are all wrong and bad at philosophy" can't be supported in blog post length, it probably ought not be made in a blog post. Unless of course the point is just to be provocative without substance, which would be pretty ironic in this case.

Philosophy aims at truth. But the great philosophers didn't "get almost everything wrong," such that they're mere historical curiosities and unworthy of consideration otherwise.

Huemer says this based on a parody-level analysis of literally three ideas from three philosophers, but it's not right even if we just consider those examples. Kantian constructivism, for example, is still extremely influential in contemporary moral philosophy. Hume's skepticism, while often seen as mainly setting the stage for Kant, is hardly a dead idea that's fallen by the wayside; his problem of induction is still debated, for example.

There's almost a reasonable point here among the ridiculous writing: philosophers become "great" not because they were necessarily right about everything, but because of their influence. That's not particularly in dispute; I don't think even the most ardent fans of these three philosophers think they were literally 100% correct or that every argument they made was equally unassailable. I don't think anyone thinks that about the intellectual giants in any field.

However, the examples Huemer picks on here aren't particularly good ones, and all of these deserve vastly more serious treatment than he gives them. Imagine deriding Kant's ethical theory, much less the entirety of Kant's work, based on one formulation of the categorical imperative and one quote from the Groundwork! Imagine critiquing Hume's "bundle of perceptions" theory of the self, without noting how it set the stage for Kant's unity of apperception.

That last example is significant, because where this article is absurdly incorrect is in further saying these were bad philosophers, bad thinkers, or that their "greatness" is entirely due to the provocative nature of their ideas. These people are great because of the groundwork they laid for the further development of philosophy, not because "whoa, dude".

That's not the trolley problem. Here's an explanation of what that is.

The antinatalist version of the trolley problem would be whether it's permissible to impregnate someone if it led to five other people not being impregnated, or something.

>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.

The problem is that you've just posed questions and then said "God is the answer." But to convince the atheist, you'd have to establish how God exclusively, or in a uniquely satisfactory way, answers these questions. They clearly don't already agree, and do have potential answers. For example, they can just say "I don't know why anything exists, but none of the arguments for God as an explanation succeed." Or perhaps they might say the existence of anything at all is a brute fact, i.e., a contingent fact which neither has nor possibly could have an explanation.

>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?

Atheists disagree because they don't think there is a first mover/creator, or at least that it has the various properties God is supposed to have (e.g., personhood and consciousness, omnipotence and omniscience).

You can't mean people in general, since most people don't seem to be interested in philosophy or philosophers. What do you have in mind, and what do you mean by "glorification"?

This just came up on /r/askphilosophy: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/zfmr50/chat_gpt_helping_with_philosophy_are_tutors_going/

Short answer: it isn't accurate.

You seem to mean cosmological arguments rather than ontological arguments. Of cosmological arguments, you seem to specifically have in mind the Kalam, as other varieties don't rely on the assumption of a "caused beginning".

But anyway, Kant talks a great deal about the idea of reason as inevitably seeking the unconditioned as the conclusion of a regress of explanations and problems arising therefrom. I'm not comfortable enough with Kant's nuances and subtleties to attempt any more thorough explanation from that, but here's an overview from smarter people.

I think /u/TheRoadsMustRoll's point is that there's a potentially infinite number of patently false claims one could make. Like, I could say "housecats did 9/11," "your great-great-grandma did 9/11," "marine gastropod molluscs did 9/11," and so on forever; given enough time we could easily make 1000 such claims. The sheer volume of claims or the fact that they reference known events doesn't confer likelihood that any of them are true.

I also eat meat, but candidly I can't justify it. I think the only way you could argue it's permissible is by supposing animals aren't proper subjects of moral consideration (e.g., they don't suffer or their suffering doesn't matter, or it's consistent to treat them as means rather than ends in themselves). But that's a difficult sell, and even if we grant it, there's also the harms inflicted on people by widespread production of meat -- e.g., the environmental impact or undue consumption of resources compared to other kinds of food production.

There's plenty of room to try and doubt these considerations, but there's at least a plausible case for vegetarianism. And what's the countervailing consideration? I can't really come up with anything more serious than "I like eating meat."

As given your argument isn't valid, but we can make it valid with some minor tweaks:

1. Philosophy is likely to demonstrate anything which is true.
2. (Assume for the purposes of argument that) Christian beliefs are true.
3. Therefore, philosophy is likely to demonstrate Christian beliefs.

As for soundness, (2) is meant as a supposition here so we can leave it aside.

But is (1) even plausibly true? Philosophy is certainly a search for certain kinds of truths, but not necessarily any kind. We can of course modify that premise to be at least a bit more specific, e.g., "philosophy is likely to demonstrate any truths which are knowable via reason." But would that include Christian beliefs? Only if we assume exactly what you mean to demonstrate, i.e., that these are not instead justified by things like divine experience or revelation.

And of course, even assuming that philosophy is engaged in the relevant kind of enterprise, are we warranted in thinking it's likely to succeed? What if Kant is right, and any philosophical attempt to demonstrate via pure reason, e.g., the existence of God or the immortality of the soul results inescapably in antinomies and thus fails?

I have no expertise in mental health, so I'm going to leave that part aside other than to say talking to therapists seems like the right approach.

Just in terms of the philosophical issue, what do you take determinism to be and what is the conundrum?

Utilitarians don't necessarily think that utilitarianism is a guide to behaviour or assigning moral responsibility. They might even reject the usual sense in which we're concerned about moral responsibility since, if utilitarianism is true, punishment and reward ought to be apportioned based on utility rather than deserts.

At its minimum, utilitarianism is just a theory about what constitutes the good. That it might fail to inform behaviour or judgement certainly looks like a problem at face, but it's not clear that this means we should reject it in this latter sense.

see, e.g., https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/#WhiConActVsExpCon