- - - - - Jan09/89 22:51 26:18) Brian Holtz: Yeah, instead of just Iran, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Punjab, Northern Ireland, and other similarly enlightened places... - - - - - Jan14/89 20:09 26:62) Brian Holtz: No bigotry involved, Francis. People who think that, e.g., African- Americans are less human than anyone else just happen to be wrong. And people who think that a god exists just happen to be wrong. You don't have to be a bigot to think a group of people are consistently wrong. - - - - - Jan14/89 21:51 26:64) Brian Holtz: Because there's no credible evidence that a god has ever existed. (I'm taking "god" here to mean a supernatural personality with the power to reward and punish people either before or after they have died.) - - - - - Jan16/89 00:14 26:75) Brian Holtz: Actually, Keith, it _isn't_ logical to infer God's non-existence from the Tooth Fairy's non-existence. If I told you in succession that each of this conference's organizers were members of Congress, and each of those three statements were revealed to be false, would it follow that there are _no_ members of Congress? Now then, Eric says there is no conclusive evidence _against_ God. Quite true. But Eric, there is also no conclusive evidence against Tooth Fairies, The Great Pumpkin, or cows that can jump over the moon. Do you believe in any of _these_? Francis, 1. In :62 I said that African-Americans are as equally human as anyone else, and that God does not exist. Neither of these two facts are my "fiat". They are my candid assessment of the evidence relevant to each proposition. A fiat would be if I had said, "Blue is the prettiest color." 2. My saying that deists are consistently mistaken in their belief that a god exists does not make me a bigot. Why? Because I am neither obstinate (if God knocks on my door tonight, I'll gladly revoke my belief in his non-existence) nor intolerant (I do not treat people badly just because they believe in God). 3. That "many have found sufficient evidence [in a proposition] to have suffered and died" does not make that proposition true. A lot of people gave their life for the proposition that 'Aryans' are some kind of master race; does that make their proposition true? - - - - - Jan16/89 00:58 26:77) Brian Holtz: What overwhelms _you_ might only underwhelm anyone else, John. I, too, used to find quarters under my pillow, but my parents later confessed that they were the culprits. Tell us, John, did you ever _see_ your tooth fairy? Would it have qualified as a Tooth Fairy under the rigorous criteria of the average pre-schooler (i.e., perhaps a winged female, but certainly _not_ a person known or related to you)? - - - - - Jan16/89 01:08 26:79) Brian Holtz: First, Francis, I'm not sure I know how to "rail". :) Second: even if I did, I'd never rail against your proclamations of faith, but only your _faith_. That is, I heartily welcome your expression of your views, but I simply disagree with them. Even if neither of us changes the other's mind, we will at least understand both positions better for having tried. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" is what _I_ always say! ;) - - - - - Jan17/89 02:19 26:97) Brian Holtz: Tell you what, John. We ask people who say they at one time believed in a "Tooth Fairy": "Were you led to believe that the Tooth Fairy was not one of your parents?" If more people answer no than yes, God must surely exist, since the "Tooth Fairy" has been proven to, right? Gerald and Shawn, you are only partly correct that there is no "concrete evidence one way or the other" that God exists. But: in such cases, the Principle of Parsimony holds that since no evidence needs to be explained, no entity needs to be posited to explain it. The Principle of Parsimony is the core of the scientific method, and there is tons of (literally!) concrete evidence to support the validity of the scientific method. So yes, Keith, it is the _absence_ of evidence for the existence of God that lets us conclude his non-existence (just as the _presence_ of evidence for Congress's existence allows us to conclude it exists), and _not_ the non-existence of those supernatural beings that we were duped into believing in as kids. Eric, WHERE did I EVER try to "prevent" the "expression" of anyone's religeous beliefs, or "condemn" them for exercising that right? Read my lips: saying that someone is wrong is not the same thing as trying to shut them up! Is that distinction really so hard to grasp? - - - - - Jan18/89 00:35 26:107) Brian Holtz: I guess you're right, Shawn, we really aren't in much disagreement. I believe that god and flying cows don't exist, but I would change my mind tomorrow if I saw either one. Does that make me an atheist or an agnostic? To help you answer that question: are you an "agnostic" about flying cows, or do you flat-out not believe in them? Since I'm really not sure what an agnostic is, I suppose I've always thought of them as just wimpy atheists. - - - - - Jan19/89 00:23 26:123) Brian Holtz: No, John, I've never seen a nuclear weapon, but I _have_ seen a) for example, Mt. Fuji; b) pictures of Mt. Fuji that _I_ took; c) pictures of Mt. Fuji in a vast array of media; and d) pictures of Soviet nuclear weapons in the same subset of media that tend to deal with non-fictional things like Mt. Fuji. So I am led to conclude that there is such a high probability that Soviet nuclear weapons exist, that I can simply consider them as existing. Now: have _you_ seen photographs of God? - - - - - Jan19/89 22:34 26:136) Brian Holtz: Francis (:128), I'm getting a little tired of accusations of "spiteful hatred" and "bigotry" against religious people "in some of the responses here". If you're going to make accusations like that, I for one would like to see response numbers and quotes. - - - - - Jan15/89 20:21 37:54) Brian Holtz: I think it's far more arrogant, Erika, to believe that just because your mind exists now, it's going to exist forever. I'm very skeptical of near-death experiences, Lisa. I'd like to know: what are the religious backgrounds of people reporting such experiences? Do people outside our culture report similar experiences? Why should we assign to such experiences any more reality than our dreams? Carl Sagan has proposed that the experience of emerging through a tunnel into the blinding presence of a superior being is simply a recollection of the experience of birth. If you want to know what it will feel like after you are no longer alive, just remember how you felt _before_ you were ever alive. The second void will be exactly the same as the first. - - - - - Jan16/89 00:21 37:61) Brian Holtz: Well, they have been known to lead to existential terror; Camus held that the most interesting question in all of philosophy was why one should not kill oneself. So Laura's question has a very good pedigree. My best answer would be that if the Void is what we object to, why should we be in any hurry to embrace it? - - - - - Jan17/89 02:26 37:70) Brian Holtz: So what's the deal, John? In domains where there are lots of "unknowns" we should just treat as fact any theory that suits us? That approach has a very poor pedigree: ptolemy's celestial spheres, the universal "ether", "spontaneous generation" of fly larvae on food, using leaches to balance the body's "humours", etc. A better approach, I think, is to believe in only those things that there is evidence for. - - - - - Jan18/89 00:40 37:79) Brian Holtz: I would throw something into the definition of life about the ability to reproduce and evolve, also. I think a metabolic definition is the right approach, but I would broaden it to take in fertilized eggs and viruses and such. - - - - - Jan19/89 00:38 37:85) Brian Holtz: John, I would be the last person to let scientific skepticism interfere with scientific discovery. For instance, it would be ludicrous in using mathematical induction to dispute the hypothesis step as unproved. And it would be ludicrous to reject any proposal for the explanation of a set of phenomena (e.g., the universe's existence) without comparing that explanation with the phenomena. But when you _do_ make the comparison, and the explanation comes up short, you either change the explanation or go get new phenomena. But while you're getting the new phenomena, you do _not_ take the explanation as _valid_. For instance, I hypothesize that the decimal expansion of pi is irregular. No available data support this claim; do I then act as if the claim is one of a set of "multiple" claims that I may believe in, simply because not enough is known about the domain? - - - - - Jan20/89 23:49 37:87) Brian Holtz: Speaking of the Tower of Babel, I used to use that in my anti-God rhetoric until recently. I'd say, "If God was so paranoid about us building our way up to heaven back then, how come nowadays he lets us fly into space? Has he matured a lot since the Old Testament?" Of course, since the Challenger blew up, I can't use that rhetoric any more... - - - - - Jan21/89 13:18 37:91) Brian Holtz: Francis, how can man "seek wisdom and reason" without being an independent (i.e., "prideful") thinker? Two minutes ago I finished reading a response of yours on the political spectrum item saying that we should decide each issue independently? Who needs "wisdom and reason" if God is there to tell you what to do at every turn? - - - - - Jan21/89 18:55 37:94) Brian Holtz: And a lot of doctors smoke, too. Big deal; arguments from authority are worthless. - - - - - Jan22/89 00:16 37:99) Brian Holtz: Francis, I think it is impossible to seek truth without being an independent thinker, able to question _any_ premise, and taking nothing on faith. Faith is by definition belief not supported by evidence; to the extent that you have faith, you are that much less independent a thinker. - - - - - Jan22/89 23:00 37:103) Brian Holtz: There's a _huge_ difference, Francis and Nichole, between having religious faith and faith in science. For every fact or theory in science, you could (in principle at least) become learned enough in that field to verify that fact or theory. But the precepts of religious faith _by definition_ cannot be verified, even _in principle_. Examples: special relativity requires only high school algebra and some college physics; anyone with aptitude and fortitude in the area can verify it. By contrast, things like the existence of heaven are taken completely on faith, and not even the most learned theologians can verify them. This is quite a difference. Also, Francis, I think you threw a fallacy of the excluded middle at me up there. I didn't say that faith precluded reason; I said that to the extent that you place certain propositions beyond skeptical inquiry you have inched away from reason. - - - - - Jan22/89 23:25 37:105) Brian Holtz: No, at a _superficial_ level they both need to be taken on faith. Like, when crossing the road, you don't stop to consider that light might not always travel straight (in such low gravity as 1g), and that an onrushing truck might therefor be invisible to you. Neither do you stop in the middle of the street to consider that heaven might be fiction, and in despair abandon yourself to an onrushing truck's bumper. But: when you _do_ get to the other side of the road, you can at your leisure examine the validity of your physics in the physics lab. You _can't_ examine the validity of your religion in a 'theology lab'. - - - - - Jan26/89 22:22 37:138) Brian Holtz: John and Francis, doesn't it bother you two wild and crazy theorists that the fields of history and biology, which have successfully explained and predicted more phenomena than could fit in 20 bibles, categorically reject the kind of theories you propound? (700 year-old men! genetic recession! a watery SDI!) I suppose not, since there's always room for one more conspiracy in your collections. - - - - - Jan26/89 23:13 37:140) Brian Holtz: Oh. Ok. Yep, they were interesting. Sorry if my knee jerked a little too quickly, there. - - - - - Jan28/89 00:08 37:155) Brian Holtz: John, your speculation is a wrongheaded attempt to codify a folksy truism ('x raises more questions than it answers'). You can't quantify "knowledge", "insight", or "revelation", and while you can quantify information, you _can't_ quantify "information that is not known". But no matter. Your point is that you have to pay attention to border conditions. I agree. But operating near the borders of knowledge doesn't exempt anyone from the rules that govern what qualifies as knowledge and what doesn't. - - - - - Jan29/89 16:51 37:165) Brian Holtz: He's right that free will is worthless if anyone is omniscient about the future. Don't Calvinists believe in predestination _and_ free will? See item 97 for why I think being able to spoil someone's predictions of your future actions is the next best thing to having free will. - - - - - Feb12/89 00:11 125:37) Brian Holtz: Erna-Lynne, I don't think empirical rationalism is so much "pushed" on people as it is _pulled_ by events. First of all, it _works_: it puts men on the moon, it predicts solar eclipses, it gives us air conditioning. In short, it has a track record for getting things done. Second, it needs nothing outside itself to pull itself up by its systemic bootstraps. In a most important sense you are wrong to say that it requires "faith", because this "faith" is _self-justifying_ and thus not really faith at all. That is, it may take a little faith in the beginning, to say "What if I only believe in as little as I need to consistently explain the phenomena I can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell? Yeah, that might be a good plan." But once you start applying it, it works so well that it can no longer be taken as blind luck. You begin to realize that you have stumbled onto a method for unlocking truth, and everyone else realizes it, too. It spreads like wildfire: look how far we've come since Bacon. My father is a nurse. He once assisted at a delivery by a pregnant woman whose religion's "other way of thinking" forbad her from receiving blood transfusions. The delivery had to be Caesarian, and the mother was losing blood, as often happens in such cases. The child was delivered ok, but the mother started to go into shock. They could give her IV fluids (which were permitted by her religion's "other way of thinking") to keep her blood pressure up, but her ebbing blood supply - - - - - Feb12/89 00:11 125:38) Brian Holtz: couldn't get her starving body enough oxygen. She was suffocating on the operating table, and the blood that could save her life was a few feet away, waiting to be used. The surgeons begged the father repeatedly to consent to a tranfusion, but he was steadfast in his "other way of thinking". The woman died; the baby she bore that day will forever be without a mother. The new breeze of Rationalism hadn't blown long enough to save that baby's mother, but it is blowing stronger every day. One day, it will have blown for long enough that no more stale pockets of "other ways of thinking" will remain, and such tales will be mere historical curiousities. One day. - - - - - Feb12/89 21:54 125:50) Brian Holtz: Oh, "paraspychologists" performed "in-depth" studies, eh? Well, that's good enough for me! Look, Eric, I will bet you my life that every one of those stories are either lies (a la The National Enquirer) or mysteriously irreproducible results. I _guarantee_ you that if you could reproduce results like those you describe in a controlled environment, you would walk off with Nobel Prizes. Your having heard of an episode does not make it true; you have to hear of it in the context of a medium that has a reputation for skeptically authenticating what it reports. Oh, and let's make a distinction, here: "intuition" is not very remarkable; the businessmen who claim it probably just have more business savvy than they do introspective powers. By contrast, mind reading and rabbit telepathy are sheer physical impossibilities. Peter, I know Erna-Lynne isn't against scientific advances, and neither was the husband who refused to save the life of his new-born child's mother. Instead, what he and Erna-Lynne advocate is the license to use "methods of thought" that do not admit of procedures for correction. If the guy had simply doubted that a blood transfusion would work, then evidence could have been submitted to him, and the utility of transfusions could have been _demonstrated_. But no, this guy based his actions entirely on someone long ago having heard a voice, an event that is _not_ subject to repetition and verification. - - - - - Feb12/89 21:54 125:51) Brian Holtz: Yes, Erna-Lynne, both the technological fruits of science and the organizational fruits of religion have been subverted for wrong ends by evil men; science cannot make evil disappear, and neither can religion. Similarly, you say that both men of science and men of faith act on their beliefs, and both "say they do so because [their beliefs] are true". But: the beauty of science is that it is nothing more than a _method_ for _publicly_ and reproducibly _showing_ that a belief is true. Religion, by contrast, is _always_ based on experiences that are private, or revealed only to the select. When that father announces that his (or his leader's) private revelation requires that his child's mother should die, you have no choice but to respect his subjective experience. I, on the other hand, can ask him to repeat the revelation for others, to confirm it in controlled circumstances, to demonstrate it to skeptics. Without Reason, you have no way to save that woman's life. - - - - - Feb13/89 01:22 125:54) Brian Holtz: But what, pray tell, is the "essence of being"? Certainly, there are areas of human life in which Reason cannot yield final judgements. Ethics is one; aesthetics is another. But where Reason is "impotent", religion is hollow. Perhaps you are using "religion" too loosely; religion is practices (and spirituality is beliefs) that are based on holding certain propositions to be beyond question. Reason is diametrically opposed to religion and spirituality, but it leaves ample room for _sensuality_: the celebration of the material world that our senses present to us. For instance, nothing could be so unreasoning (as opposed to unreason_able_), and so sensual, as hitting a tennis ball. - - - - - Feb13/89 01:52 125:56) Brian Holtz: If the proposition is "x makes Peter Mooney happy", then any sample _other_ than one is _very_ unscientific. While every proposition isn't _decideable_ by reason, every proposition _is_ subject to reason. Even if reason can't decide for you whether X makes you happy, it can, for instance, lead you to ask: "Why does X make me happy? What other things make me happy for the same reason X does? Will I feel as good about X tomorrow as I do today?" Of course, that you can ask the question is no guarantee you can answer it. But _not_ asking a question _is_ a guarantee of ignorance. - - - - - Feb13/89 18:49 125:61) Brian Holtz: Of course not! Religion _can't_ be scientific/rational, because religion implies unquestioning acceptance of something, and rationality is simply the readiness to question _everything_. I'm not saying that nothing is subjective; I'm saying that only _subjective_ things are subjective. For instance: whether Peter Mooney likes chocolate depends on evidence that is subjective -- that is, available only to Peter Mooney. Whether Peter Mooney is going to have an afterlife, or whether Peter Mooney is under a divine obligation not to accept blood transfusions, does _not_ depend on evidence that is subjective: afterlives and divinities are phenomena _extrinsic_ to the people who believe in them (or else they'd be mere figments intrinsic to the imagination). Most importantly, whether or not something depends on only subjective evidence is itself a matter that is _objectively_ determinable. You see, unless you're willing to be cornered into solipsism, you have to accept that what is objective for _anyone_ is objective for _everyone_. - - - - - Feb15/89 23:23 125:69) Brian Holtz: What religion did I "just make up", John? The one that requires "unquestioning acceptance of something", or the one the forbids blood transfusions? The former is _every_ religion; the latter is the Jehovah's Witnesses. - - - - - Feb18/89 00:30 125:77) Brian Holtz: John, systems of belief concerning God (and other spiritual entities for whose existence there is no evidence and so must be unquestioned) are quite distinct from systems of belief concerning morals: the latter are not _necessarily_ based on a kernel of unqestionable precepts. Papering over this distinction won't make it go away, however much you'd like it to. - - - - - Feb19/89 01:45 125:81) Brian Holtz: It comes in cycles, I think. - - - - - Feb12/89 00:24 129:18) Brian Holtz: Alex, what is undefined does not exist. That said, let add that I share your distaste for utilitarian justifications of gods. No matter how much short-term "joy and peace" a belief brings you, self-deception only hurts you in the long run. - - - - - Feb14/89 13:37 129:23) Brian Holtz: Cheryl, what _is_ your definition of God? If God is not objective for you -- that is, he has no reality and power outside of your mind -- what is the purpose that he serves for you? You make God sound like a child's imaginary friend. Oh, Cheryl, I thought you _knew_: I _don't_ exist. I'm just Meet:Students' imaginary pain in the ass. ;) - - - - - Feb15/89 23:34 129:35) Brian Holtz: John, the undefined _can't_ exist because to exist something must be observable in some way, and you can't observe something if you don't know what it looks like. Sure, I can define intelligence: it's the ability to make and test self-conscious inductions. Cheryl and Erna-Lynne, you say you know that a God exists because of the wonderful things you see happening in yourselves and in other people. Isn't it just possible that you simply do not completely understand yourselves and others, or that you perhaps have too low an opinion of same? People are wonderful and wondrous things; don't sell us short. - - - - - Feb18/89 00:47 129:43) Brian Holtz: Gary (and John), I said that to be considered to exist something must be "observ_able_", not "observ_ed_". Nothing in Relativity says that things can become unobserv_able_ simply because of their relative motions. Gary, you take too narrow a conception of "observe". The Greeks knew by observation that something like atoms (viz., air molecules) had to exist, because they observed that water would not leave the tiny holes in the bottom of a "water thief" unless the larger, top hole was uncovered to allow the particulte air in and displace the water. But take the cave men: if they had no observations of this sort, and one of them had grunted to the effect that "atoms exist", no reasonable cave man would have had any cause to put stock in what he said. Similarly, modern gruntings about a God are, without observations to back them up, just that: gruntings. Cheryl, I'm sorry you don't consider this topic worth spending any more energy on. I still think that if the wondrousness of people as a whole strikes you as more than the wondrousness of the parts of people that are known to you, it may be just that you don't know all the parts of people that there are to know. You wouldn't be alone. - - - - - Feb18/89 00:57 129:44) Brian Holtz: Eric, your equation is incomplete. The probability of heaven/hell existing _is_ infinitely small (to cancel out what you say are the infinite possible rewards), because believing in heaven/hell is utterly inconsistent with an infinite number of other infinite-reward/infinite-punishment systems I can think up, each of which has as much evidence to back it up as does heaven/hell. It is elementary probability that if there are infinitely many such possible but contradictory schemes, then the likelihood that any one is true is infinitely small. Thus, we shouldn't believe in _any_ of them. - - - - - Feb19/89 01:48 129:46) Brian Holtz: Well, ok. But it sounds to me that the only difference to you between God and The Good is a little o. - - - - - Feb22/89 00:35 129:48) Brian Holtz: John, just because an entity can't be observed by a particular observer at a particular time, does _not_ mean that that entity is not observable by _any_ observer by _any_ means. Remember, the sense of "observe" that I'm using is broad; for example, because of fossils, we can "observe" trilobites even though they are long extinct. Although relativistic effects can render some entities temporarily "unobservable" by immediate means, it would usually be possible for the entity to return to direct observability, or to leave behind evidence of its passing. In those cases in which an entity has traveled such that it never again will be directly observable, and not even indirect evidence of its existence can be gathered -- that is, when an entity has totally and permanently lost all ability, however indirect, to influence our sense organs -- in what sense is it meaningful for such an entity to be said to "exist"? - - - - - Feb22/89 19:42 129:50) Brian Holtz: Schroedinger's Cat is a red herring. ;) The supposed paradox assumes that the cat doesn't count as an observer; just replace the cat with the human of your choice, and you'll see that a kind of epistemological solipsism is assumed in the "paradox". Quantum tunneling doesn't violate physical laws, it just reveals that the conventional, simplified statements of them do not apply in all cases. So when I ask you whether you think entities with no possibility of causing even indirect effects on our senses can nonetheless interestingly be said to "exist", don't duck the question by construing my use of "possibility" to mean "Newtonian possibility". Yes, ancient texts contain record alleged observations of supernatural events, and so does the text of Mother Goose. All of which goes to show only that when an observation is indirect, the indirection through which the observation reaches us must be subject to extra scrutiny. - - - - - Feb22/89 20:48 129:52) Brian Holtz: Well, let's see, you're flat wrong on two counts. 1) I merely replaced "meaningful" in my original question with "interestingly": how can something that is causally isolated from us be interestingly/ meaningfully said to "exist"? 2) Contrary to your claim, you _didn't_ answer this question (you merely pointed out the paraphrasing that I just discussed). No, there is no difference between the "paradox" of Schroedinger's Cat, and that of Holtz's Physicist. In both situations, the cat and the physicist are incommunicado in their box, and both can communicate their liveness/deadness quite eloquently when the box is finally opened. Schroedinger's "paradox" boils down to this: "gee, do you realize that, before you ever find out that X is the case, you have no way of knowing that X is the case?" BFD. - - - - - Feb22/89 20:54 129:53) Brian Holtz: How do you know that Mother Goose doesn't purport to be truthful? Answer: because you know something of the context in which it was written. Well, a lot also is known of the context in which things like the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon were written, and thoses contexts were a lot different than, e.g., the one in which the newspaper's weather almanac was written. Consequently, we treat the "observations" recorded in these texts differently, when judging whether those observations lend reifying support to what they purport to observe. - - - - - Feb23/89 23:58 129:56) Brian Holtz: No, Clark, the thought experiment tried to show that indeterminacy in the quantum world (where a variable might not have a value until it is inspected) can be made to cause indeterminacy in the macro world (where a cat might or might not be dead until the box is opened and the quantum variable is inspected). My point is that _any_ macro world recording device can do the requisite inspecting of the quantum variable: it can be a cat or a geiger counter, instead of a human. John, that an ostrich can't see when its head is in the sand does not mean that it can't make observations, either indirect or delayed. What are the practical ramifications of defining existence as (writ large) observability? Simple: only those things which can have practical ramifications can be said to exist, and no ramification is practical unless it is observable in some sense. I still don't think you've grasped the broad sense of 'observe' that I'm using here: "to perceive the (possibly indirect) effects of". There is a big difference between the events whose purported observations are recorded in holy texts, and those recorded in newspapers. Those observations recorded in (reputable) newspapers are of a kind that fit easily into a continuous range of plausibility that begins with my own personal experience. For example, I've shook hands with a congressman, and I've seen in person people shake hands with a senator, and I've seen on TV people shake hands with a president. But I've never - - - - - Feb23/89 23:58 129:57) Brian Holtz: had any experience even remotely like water changing into wine, or people rising from the dead, etc. There is a fundamental _discontinuity_ (right around the edges of what's possible under physical law) between these kinds of events and my personal experience. - - - - - Feb24/89 21:55 129:59) Brian Holtz: But John, neither falsified obituaries nor clouds of CO2 gas are ruled out by the laws of physics as we know them. By contrast, there are plenty of miracles in the Bible which do contradict the known laws of physics; these aren't simply cases of not being able to "make sense of one of the observations". Remember, by "unobservable" I mean "unable, to the best of our knowledge, to ever again be able to newly exert even indirect influences on our senses". Our senses are practical, not theoretical, so you'll have to explain your distinction between practical and theoretical unobservability. As is clear from my definition, it is impossible to consider something "temporarily" unobservable, as I use the term. - - - - - Mar05/89 20:28 129:61) Brian Holtz: Clark, I _am_ a science major, although computer science is more like mathematics than it's like the natural sciences. My whole _point_ was that the belief that indeterminacy at the quantum level can have an effect at the macro level is erroneous (or "bufoonish", in your argot). But I think I'm right in saying that that belief is what Schroedinger was trying to show to be a consequence of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics, which he disagreed with. At least, this is what is related by Heinz Pagels in _The Cosmic Code_ and Paul Davies in _God And The New Physics_. However, neither cites Schroedinger's original reference (if indeed it was published), so they both might be wrong. But I doubt it. - - - - - Feb23/89 01:09 153:4) Brian Holtz: I'm free of superstitions, knock on wood. - - - - - Mar02/89 23:59 153:22) Brian Holtz: You'll have to forgive John; he's a very scientifically-minded fuddy-duddy. ;-) Lee, in any properly equipped laboratory I can reproduce evidence for protons, electrons, and atoms. Now, if you can't do the same for ESP, tarot cards, witchdom and warlockism, and say that these things are unique, situation-dependent, chance events, why do you even have _names_ for them? Today, my elevator opened for me as I was walking up to it, even though no one had pushed the button and it had been sitting there on the ground floor. It was a one-time, probably irreproducible event, so you won't see me naming a branch of para/pseudo/anti-science for it. So why are the allegedly situation-dependent phenomena _you_ describe so uniform as to have names, or even their own specialized deck of cards? By the way, any telepathy-like phenomenon that occurs when the telepathee is within eyesight or earshot of the telepathist is not "telepathy" at all, but simply perceptiveness. No controlled, reproducible experiment has ever found evidence for "telepathy". Sharks are known to have a pair of extremely pressure-sensitive ventral nerves, and other (especially ocean-bottom) fish are known to sense their prey electromagnetically. Alas, humans still have to use radar and metal detectors. Sorry. - - - - - Mar03/89 19:28 153:27) Brian Holtz: Oui, oui. Andrea, you can turn in your unused 90% of your gray matter for a refund at the front desk. ;-) [Geez, two big beefy responses from John about science and epistemology, and not even a byte to quibble over. What is the world coming to?] - - - - - Mar04/89 21:57 153:31) Brian Holtz: Ian, the existence of X can _never_ be scientifically _dis_-proven, whether X be flying cows, black swans, or ESP. But when there's no repeatable evidence _for_ something's existence, the smart thing to do is not believe in it. Now, tell us what kind of "precogniscient" abilities were owned by this guy your research turned up. I presume we can find him at the horse track, right? But no -- in one day he should be able to make tens of thousands of dollars, so by now he should be on Lifestyles of the Rich and Non-existent, right? John, I don't see why an intelligent person like you should be so mystified by animals (including humans) being able to tell a lot about each other by looking at each other. Just think of it: all animals have been under enormous selective pressure for hundreds of millions of years to be able to tell the emotional and threat status of their confronters. Why should it amaze you that they (and we) are able to make such appraisals without our being able to verbalize all the information gleaned by whoever's doing the appraising? As an analogy, think of human faces. You know tens of thousands of distinct human faces by both recognition and recall, but I doubt if you could produce more than a few hundred distinct verbal descriptions of human faces. What I'm saying here is that just because a picture is worth a lot more than a thousand words, don't go presuming that the camera has ESP. - - - - - Mar05/89 00:18 153:35) Brian Holtz: Lee, I think I've heard of the phenomenon you mention. I think the brainwaves they looked at were not those occurring before the number was shown, but those between the time the number was shown and the time the response was made. What apparently happens is that the brain knows sometimes that it's making a mistake, even as it is making it. It's like when you know you've made a typo even as you type it, or like what Rich Hall calls the "ignosecond" between the time you realize you're locking your keys in the car and the time the car door slams shut. Sure, I believe a whole lot of what I feel, but not all. When I feel hungry, I believe it's time to eat. When I feel thirsty, I believe it's time to drink. But when I feel, say, that a portrait's eyes are following me as I pass it, I believe it's only an optical illusion. Ian, I don't understand. What does it mean to predict the "result" of a random image? And where did this guy find the time to make 1 million such predictions? At one per second, that's almost 2 months of 9-to-5 predicting! Do you have a reference for the article this was in? - - - - - Mar05/89 20:36 153:41) Brian Holtz: Exactly, Tom. It's like the meme that Alice Cooper used to play Eddie Haskel on Leave It To Beaver: common knowledge, but also quite untrue. - - - - - Mar06/89 21:42 153:49) Brian Holtz: John, just because a particular channel (e.g., human faces to human eyes) has a high bandwidth and no obvious mapping from the data transferred to the data derived doesn't mean that the derivation isn't possible. Nature has a 3 billion year head start on us in the problem of recognition; don't expect us to outperform, or even understand, Her solutions any time soon. Lee, my explanation of intuition as an expression-reading skill does not require that the map from expressions to moods be wired in at birth. It's far more likely that what is wired in is the ability to perceive and remember a wide range of both expressions and moods, so that a general or specialized learning mechanism can figure out how they map. As an analogy, most songbirds don't know any of their species' songs at birth, but at birth they do come with the ability to differentiate, store, and replay the particular kinds of songs their species sings, and _only_ those songs. - - - - - Mar12/89 11:39 153:57) Brian Holtz: Hmmm? I _was_ talking about mutual perception among members of the same species, Lee. - - - - - Mar12/89 11:42 169:38) Brian Holtz: Julio, that's just the kind of fatalism that we atheists find so disturbing. As long as you believe in some kind of divine father figure, you can always say "X was meant to be" for _any_ X, no matter how awful or preventable. - - - - - Mar12/89 19:42 169:45) Brian Holtz: You can't be _sure_ there aren't flying cows or black swans, either, but I don't see you believing in _them_. - - - - - Mar14/89 23:58 169:62) Brian Holtz: No, Mindy, you were absolutely right. We atheists are above all humanists; we put man first, and god last. Theists put god first and man second, and while that doesn't make them 'antihumanists', it certainly doesn't make us _not_ humanists. - - - - - Mar15/89 00:24 169:64) Brian Holtz: I never said "A belief in god [...] necessarily impl[ies] subordinating oneself to" him, because it's logically (but not currently) possible to believe in god without doing so on the basis of _faith_. A "theist" is someone who has unquestioning faith in god, and such people do by definition subordinate everything to their faith. All theists are deists, but deists are not necessarily theists. - - - - - Mar15/89 18:19 169:69) Brian Holtz: Clark, your analysis of deist is probably right, now that I recall how the term was used during the Enlightenment. I was (or at least am now) stipulating that theist and deist mean "having faith" and "having a god", respectively, since the Greek roots of these two words mean "faith" and "god". Dan, when I said that it's logically possible to believe in god without faith, I meant it in the sense that it's not logically _im_possible to believe in god without faith. For instance, if God visits me tonight and can convince me he's the real McCoy, then I will believe in him even though I will not be doing so on faith. - - - - - Mar16/89 21:20 169:73) Brian Holtz: I'm sorry, Dan, I read "existence" for "nonexistence" in your :66. An argument for the provisional nonexistence of God (and black swans, flying cows, etc.) that requires no faith to accept is one based on parsimony. The Principle of Parsimony (Occam's Razor) says that you shouldn't believe in an entity if the evidence doesn't require you to. There's no good evidence for gods, black swans, or flying cows, so we shouldn't believe in any of them. The Principle of Parsimony itself requires no faith: as the primary tool of science, it has proven its power many times over. - - - - - Mar23/89 23:31 169:82) Brian Holtz: Yes, I think Lee is sneaking a little fatalism in there somewhere... David, the most I've ever heard about the possible genesis of cells is that it may have been caused by the aggregation of molecules that are asymmetrically repellant to water, so that they sort of 'circled the wagons' against the primordial soup. Also, some people have suggested that cellular subcomponents (e.g., mitochondria) were once free-living, but they turned to cooperative life in what became cells. - - - - - Mar24/89 19:34 169:85) Brian Holtz: Sure: records from the beginning of recorded history are fucked up. - - - - - Mar24/89 20:01 169:87) Brian Holtz: I think he means that the Bible says Moses lived to be 900 or so, and stuff like that. Much more remarkable to me than people living shorter lives is the remarkable dirth recently of seas parting, water turning into wine, people being raised from the dead, floods covering the whole world up to the top of Mt. Ararat, etc. Or is there a pattern in there.....? ;-) - - - - - Mar25/89 23:59 169:91) Brian Holtz: Then enlighten us: what differences does it make to you once you are confronted with your mortality? I hope you're not just referring to the numbing of the imagination that is the almost inevitable result of the responsibilities for family and work. - - - - - Mar26/89 20:53 169:95) Brian Holtz: Ron, do you mean what Clark took you to mean -- merely that it's sophomoric to try to prove or disprove God's existence using only a formal system (say, the predicate calculus, or Aquinas' Summa Theologica), without reference to the physical world? I'm taking you to mean that it's sophomoric to try to reason about the existence of God, and that knowing whether God exists or not is irrelevant. If that's what you mean, you are quite clearly wrong. If you take God to be at least a supernatural being with the power (perhaps in an afterlife) to reward and punish human behavior, then whether or not such an entity can be reasonably thought to exist is _very_ important. In a certain sense, being "sophomoric" is a good thing. Anyone who loses the childlike impertinence of asking one more question (e.g., a 5-year-old's "But where did God come from?") already has one foot in the grave, and perhaps their mind in the grave as well. John, what you are forgetting about early recorded history is that it's not journalism [ < L. "day" ]; it was most often written down decades or centuries after the events it describes. No conspiracies are necessary to exaggerate oral traditions of this sort. - - - - - Mar28/89 20:38 169:100) Brian Holtz: Ron, are you saying that some things can only be understood by some faculty other than reason, or that some things cannot be understood at all? In either case, can you give an example of such a thing? I don't think reason is the only faculty one needs to make the judgments that comprise a good life, but I do think that it is the final arbiter of those judgments; that is, while for some judgments reason does not speak, for no judgments should reason be silenced. I'm not sure what you mean by "consciousness", but at least one human's _existence_ can be apodictically shown to exist: mine. (Cogito, etc.) Descartes gave a funeral for apodictic certainty of anything else, but only solipsists and theists showed up to mourn. - - - - - Mar28/89 21:58 169:102) Brian Holtz: As I remember it, the order is that he "proves" that God exists next, then he "proves" that God wouldn't let our senses totally deceive us, and so then he lets his senses "prove" that the world (and other people) exist. His proof of God's existence was flawed (I think he used the ontological proof), and so the rest of his certainty must come crashing down. The only certainty we are left with is the solipsist's. - - - - - Mar29/89 19:03 169:104) Brian Holtz: Hari, your fourth paragraph pretty much says what I wanted to say. I _was_ using "solipsism" only in the narrow epistemological sense, but that's only because we're discussing epistemology here. Epistemological solipsism is nothing more than the belief that one can have apodictic certainty only of the self's existence, and nothing more. - - - - - Apr01/89 13:48 169:106) Brian Holtz: I never said that everything was rational, John. I only advocated that reason not be silenced on any decision that we make. - - - - - Apr06/89 00:25 169:120) Brian Holtz: Well, to get things back on track: Ron, have you decided how you'd answer my question in :100? What are the things that can't be "understood" with the faculty of reason? - - - - - Apr08/89 11:49 169:124) Brian Holtz: I didn't ask what can't be "appreciated" by reason, I asked what can't be "understood" by reason. When I appreciate a daisy, it's not my reason that is doing the appreciating, but with my reason I can certainly understand _why_ I appreciate the daisy: its symmetry, its bright color, its fragrance, and its delicateness. I reject the notion that a feeling is any less a feeling for its being understood. - - - - - Apr09/89 21:43 169:127) Brian Holtz: Pretending that your response isn't sarcastic, symmetry is a pleasant stimulus because its presence in our perceptions gives us valuable clues as to what it is we are perceiving. Bright colors occur in nature to alert observers in some way (e.g., "try to attack me and I'll hurt you", "come mate with me", or "eat me and spread my seeds"), and even when what we are being alerted to isn't directly pleasing, the thrill of being threatened can itself sometimes be pleasing (e.g., roller coasters). Scents can work the same way, but more often they are the inevitable emissions of things that can tell us about the world: what's good to eat, who's visited this fire hydrant lately, etc. Aesthetics isn't illogical. If you've been born with built-in machinery for deriving raw pleasure from certain otherwise harmless things, then if you value pleasure you'll think it worthwhile to stop and smell the roses. On the other hand, if you _don't_ value pleasure, why do you bother to eat, drink, screw, and spend? - - - - - Apr10/89 23:12 169:129) Brian Holtz: (Parade on, then! ;-) _I_ says we're born with built-in machinery to derive pleasure from certain meaningless things! As an extreme example, deprive the Homo sapiens of your choice of water for two or three days, and then offer said Homo sapiens a tall glass of ice water. I predict you will then be able to detect signs of relative pleasure from the subject. You see, if you're going to argue that we aren't built to derive pleasure from certain kinds of stimuli, then you've got your biology all wrong, and I'll be content to entrust the validity of my case to our gentle readers and their experiences with drinking water. - - - - - Apr14/89 23:42 169:138) Brian Holtz: My point exactly! Pleasure isn't "meaningless", so there's no reason to shun the pleasures that your constitution can offer you. - - - - - Mar25/89 21:27 202:11) Brian Holtz: What's the problem here? Isn't it obvious that personal attacks amount to intellectual surrender by the ignorant? When someone stops attacking your argument and starts attacking _you_, cheer up: that means you won! Rick, I think it's the _entire point_ of reasoned debate to expose the differences in people's fundamental assumptions. Only by making people enunciate their assumptions can you ever hope to change a mind, be it yours _or_ theirs. - - - - - Mar26/89 21:08 202:15) Brian Holtz: Exactly! Intellectual masochists like Clark should be looked (down) upon as free entertainment... ;-) - - - - - Mar27/89 20:35 202:21) Brian Holtz: So what you're saying, Clark, is that the cruelest thing one can do is to politely demolish the arguments of one's opponents, while the least damaging thing is to froth with impotent personal invective. By that way of thinking, you are indeed a humanitarian. - - - - - Mar28/89 21:54 202:25) Brian Holtz: But Clark, I reject your premise that you are what you opine. Your premise is an example of the extreme relativism that grips modern thought. Too often you hear people say, "I'm not saying you're wrong" or "this is only my opinion". The thinking seems to be here that since there is no absolute Right and Wrong, people's opinions must therefore be the inexorable product of their environment and experiences, so that to disagree with those opinions is to somehow indict the opinion-holder's entire life. I think that idea is wrong. Just because there is no absolute Right or Wrong doesn't mean that everything is absolutely relative; ideas can still be more right or more wrong than other ideas. All ideas might be created equal, but under the light of reason some wither and others blossom. - - - - - Mar29/89 19:37 202:28) Brian Holtz: Your first sentence confuses me, Hari. Does it mean anything other than "ideas that are more right are usually those that can be shown to be more right"? Your second sentence troubles me. What is so special about a "deepseated OPINION made objective by the use of logic"? Are you saying that if I memorized 1+1=2 at church instead of in school, my addition would turn out wrong? You can impute all the psychohistory to me that you want (especially if that will let you dismiss more conveniently what I have to say!), but you're wrong: my experiences with religion have been uniformly pleasant (I'm an ex-Roman Catholic), and I chose atheism after analyzing some Bertrand Russell and Hans Kung. Your river metaphor is touching, but in fact I'm not try to destroy people's only support against the current; I'm trying to show them that what appears to be a mighty current is merely a pleasant wading pool. - - - - - Mar30/89 20:06 202:32) Brian Holtz: Bobby, I whole-heartedly agree a) that 100% certainty of anything but my own existence is impossible, and b) that the provisional truths we operate with are always subject to refinement and revision as new evidence becomes available. My point is that even though apodictic certainty isn't available, and even though we suppose that more evidence might become available, we can still (and indeed _must_) compare competing ideas in the light of the evidence that _is_ available _now_. What else can we do? For example, would you have freed Ted Bundy, on the basis that someday a videotape might surface of me killing every one of the people he was accused of killing? - - - - - Apr01/89 14:12 202:38) Brian Holtz: I share your distaste for fanatics, Bobby, and in fact that is why I argue the case against religion. But if you're taking "fanatic" to mean anyone who argues any case at all, then not only are _you_ a fanatic by your own definition, but also the word "fanatic" ceases to tell us anything interesting about its referents. I think the crux of the matter is that you perhaps think one should only argue a case unless it can be shown that the case is 100% Correct. If so, I disagree; I have no qualms about trying to convince people, say, that God does not exist, even though right now we can only be 99% sure of it. - - - - - Apr02/89 00:29 202:44) Brian Holtz: I still think you're making a fundamental mistake here, Bobby. That nobody can be Absolutely Right or Absolutely Wrong doesn't mean that someone cannot be more right than someone else. This being so, I don't see how you can call for people who can be shown to be more right than us to keep their insights to themselves, and deliberately leave the rest of us in the dark. - - - - - Apr02/89 13:34 202:46) Brian Holtz: I disagree. You can't prove mathematically that not carrying out the Holocaust would have been "more right" than the alternative, but it still wouldn't be too hard to convince many people of this, even if you _would_ have to invoke such admittedly subjective notions as human rights and such. - - - - - Apr02/89 19:54 202:50) Brian Holtz: But Keith, I think I could convince many more people with my subjective notions of human rights that the holocaust was wrongish than a Nazi could convince with her notions of racial superiority that the holocaust was rightish. In fact, I bet I could convince _you_ that the holocaust was more wrong than right, so I don't see how you can agree with Wendy-o that right and wrong are completely indeterminable outside of mathematics. Clark, Kant was just plain wrong that synthetic a priori truths exist. - - - - - Apr02/89 21:04 202:54) Brian Holtz: Well, yes, the truth-value of certain mathematical statements is provably indeterminate, but what's more important is that the validity of mathematical proofs is never in practice indeterminate. That is, mathematicians might disagree over whether Fermat's last theorem is true, false, or indeterminate, but they will never disagree for long over whether a particular proof of same is valid or invalid. - - - - - Apr03/89 00:25 202:56) Brian Holtz: Jeez, Keith, how many times do I have to say this? I _agree_ that there is no "complete certainty" in ethics; what I _deny_ is that there is complete _un_certainty in ethics. No, I don't think that the majority opinion is necessarily the moral opinion. While I don't think that Objective Morality exists, I do think that a good approximation of an objective morality can be derived through the "ethical marketplace", just as a good approximation of objective reality can be derived through the "scientific marketplace". The only problem is that the "ethical marketplace" doesn't have as well-grounded a "currency" as the "scientific marketplace": in science, your theory either gets you to the moon or it doesn't, and it's easy to tell the difference between the two; in ethics, your theory can make society either "better" or "worse", but the difference can be very hard to tease out. So the closest I think we can come to an "objective" morality is: adopt the morality that can be seen to be the most successful in providing for the enduring health and happiness of the members of the societies that adopt it. The tricky part is that this requires mostly thought experiments and therefore a good working knowledge of human nature, since real experiments on whole societies are usually impossible to perform. - - - - - Apr03/89 19:31 202:59) Brian Holtz: Clark, I reject your premise that the way to measure a society's enduring overall happiness is to subtract the misery of the oppressed from the enjoyment of the oppressors. The worst misery of all is that inflicted by your fellow person, because that kind of misery is the easiest for persons to prevent. - - - - - Apr04/89 00:05 202:61) Brian Holtz: What I meant, Warren, is that misery inflicted by persons is easier for persons to prevent than misery by drought, earthquake, and hurricanes (pace Pat Robertson). - - - - - Apr04/89 21:05 202:63) Brian Holtz: No, Daniel, I think almost anyone would consider a misery imposed by some evil person's whim to be worse than a misery imposed by natural accident. - - - - - Apr05/89 20:03 202:67) Brian Holtz: You folks are missing a distinction in levels, here. Lee, in :56 I didn't say that utilitarianism is "more morally correct" than other systems; what I said was that one should adopt the morality (be it utilitarianism, racism, pacifism, etc.) that can be seen to be the most successful in providing for the enduring health and happiness of the members of the societies that adopt it. My position is therefore a sort of meta-utilitarianism, in which the only subjective premise you have to accept is that "enduring health and happiness" is somehow a good thing. That is a far cry from the conventional sense of utilitarianism, which is "to judge all acts (not just system-choosing ones) on the basis of the net happiness they will cause". Clark, my statement that "the worst misery of all is that inflicted by your fellow person" was not a statement about ethics so much as a statement about psychology. I think I made this a little more clear in :63, when I amplified my remark by saying that most people would concur. In short, I was saying something more like "slamming a car door on one's finger causes misery", rather than like "slamming a car door on one's finger should be considered by an ethical person to cause misery". - - - - - Apr06/89 00:46 202:70) Brian Holtz: Oh, I agree completely with you guys that this ethics business is both fundamentally subjective and empirical. Like I said above, conducting thought experiments in ethics requires a really good knowledge of human nature, of which no one I know has enough. Still, Lee, I think there is an objective basis for my holding that the good of the many ought not to justify the misery of the few, if that misery is to be inflicted by the choice of persons. Research seems to show that people are naturally risk-averse when the status quo is an option; people readily embrace risk only when some form of loss is already certain; and that misery is greater when one can readily imagine an action having been taken/avoided that would have led to a more desirable outcome ["The Psychology of Preferences", Scientific American, Jan. 1982]. So one should countenance the inflicted misery of the few only if one thinks inflicted misery is inevitable, and cannot readily imagine otherwise. - - - - - Apr06/89 19:02 202:72) Brian Holtz: Clark, how can you call my position "absolutist" when I said I was based both on my own _empirical_ impressions of human nature and on _empirical_ psychology research? I'd like to think I'd kill myself to save the rest of humanity, especially since you stipulate that I will be killed in either event. And yes, I think I'd kill one innocent to save the rest of us. That I would do so is I think irrelevant, since I'm willing to argue that the empirical evidence surrounding the human condition is that the misery of the few is not _necessary_ for the happiness of the many, all your thought experiments notwithstanding. - - - - - Apr07/89 18:59 202:75) Brian Holtz: To be precise, Clark, I didn't just say "I think", I said "I think and am willing to show" that the misery of the few is not necessary for the happiness of the many. If you dispute my proposition, say so. I didn't say that preventing the misery of the many _does_ justify the misery of the few; I said that preventing the misery of the many _can_ justify the misery of the few, if the situation is a contrived thought experiment. If I say "I believe X because I believe Y", and you ask "Suppose not Y. X?", don't be surprised when I don't then reaffirm X. - - - - - Apr07/89 19:22 202:77) Brian Holtz: Clark, I defy you to name the response in which I said "the misery of the many can never justify the misery of the few". And no, I never meant to say "the happiness of the many can never justify the misery of the few"; I said that given what can be shown about human nature, the happiness of the many shouldn't justify the misery of the few. - - - - - Apr08/89 12:10 202:79) Brian Holtz: Clark, as gratified as I am by this, the first indisputable evidence that you've actually _read_ a clause from one of my responses, I'm still left wondering when you will be able to master an entire _sentence_ of mine. In the sentence in question I said "I think there is an objective basis for my holding that the good of the many ought not to justify the misery of the few." Then I went on to describe that objective basis. Let me repeat this, slowly, so you can understand. I don't think morality is absolute. I think morality is relative to the merely-empirical human condition, and that even then one has to accept without evidence that human health and happiness are somehow "good" things. Now, you asked me that if the human condition were _contrary_ to how it in fact is (viz., if the existence of all humans depended on my killing one innocent), would I contradict my morality and kill the innocent? I said yes. But I also said it would be no contradiction, since the ethical principle in question is _based_ on an objective determination that the inflicted misery of innocents effectively never promotes the enduring health and happiness of anyone. So yes: if the world were such a place that I could routinely save two innocents' lives by merely killing one innocent, I'd probably do as much such killing as possible. But I'm willing to argue that the world is _not_ such a place; are you willing to argue that it is? - - - - - Apr08/89 17:34 202:80) Harold Seldon: Someone is boring me. It must be me. It must be. Well, I think we all have learned a great lesson from this last little series of messages. Foremost among them: Never discuss ethics where you actually have to write down your opinion. As Mill said, the happiness of the individual is paramount. I believe, he must have been talking about people like me. Oh, how I do like Mill. Or, as Nietzsche called him, (and rightly so) "That blockhead Mill." ` I personally wouldn't kill one person, to let two others live, unless that one person were Brian Holtz, of course. (heh heh) - - - - - Apr09/89 16:32 202:84) Brian Holtz: No, Daniel, I'm taking "enduring health and happiness" to be an atomic and irreducible synonym for "the good". That is, I don't think happiness is good "because" it causes pleasure (or because of anything else); I just think happiness _is_ good. Take it or leave it. - - - - - Apr11/89 00:13 202:86) Brian Holtz: It would be if you could convince me that being socialized to love kissing trees leads to _enduring_ health and happiness. Good luck. - - - - - Apr11/89 01:09 202:89) Brian Holtz: "Again"? I said all along that I rely on one premise for which I offer utterly no justification: that "enduring health and happiness" is somehow a "good" thing. Take it or leave it. - - - - - Apr11/89 19:02 202:92) Brian Holtz: You're right, ICFP, ethics is at bottom simply take it or leave it. But the utility of ethics is getting people to agree on the same logically-unjustified premise(s), so that useful behavior results. And how much do you wanna bet that more people would "take" my premise that enduring health and happiness is a good thing than would not "leave" your premise that eating grubs is good? - - - - - Apr12/89 17:48 202:94) Brian Holtz: Perhaps, but you have to lack any faith in humankind to think that in the long run the idea that "enduring health and happiness is a good thing" won't win out. I don't see how you can find an objective basis for ethics. If there were an objective, repeatable, verifiable, observer-independent way to figure out what the rules of ethics should be (like there are for math, physics, chemistry, ...), why do you think no one has done it? - - - - - Apr14/89 01:08 202:98) Brian Holtz: The space analogy is better than you think: "up" is "away from the (arbitrarily-determined) direction of the local gravitational pull". There is no universal, absolute "up", but there is a local, relative "up". I disagree that all moral codes have the same validity of zero. "Valid" comes from the Latin word for "strength", and some moral codes _do_ work more strongly than others at furthering the basic aims that are built into the human animal. So, to use the space analogy again, you determine if one moral code is better than another not according to some universal standard, but according to whether it works better in the system at hand -- here, human society. - - - - - Apr14/89 23:59 202:100) Brian Holtz: Well, you will find in me a rapt audience for arguments that show an objective basis for ethics. I've never heard one before. Yes, I do admit that holding enduring health and happiness to be good is completely arbitrary, but I don't think such a premise suffers all that much in the way you say. While my premise might not carry much weight with psychopaths and Vulcan logicians, I do think it would appeal to the vast majority of people, and that is why I think it is "valid" (strong). - - - - - Apr15/89 19:32 202:102) Brian Holtz: Yes, but the point is that that definition is arbitrary. Yes, by "objective" here I mean "absolute", or, more accurately, "a priori". - - - - - Apr16/89 12:14 202:104) Brian Holtz: Steve, I _never_ said "If most people believe that P, then P", and I defy you to identify a response in which I implied anything of the sort. Second, I have never tried to present an argument that ended with "Therefore, enduring health and happiness are good". That enduring health and happiness are good is my _premise_, not my _conclusion_. The argument I _have_ been making here is: 1. [arbitrary premise] Enduring health and happiness are good. 2. [empirical observation] Most people agree with (1). Therefore, people who agree with (1) and acknowledge (2) should not be excessively troubled by the arbitrary nature of (1), because the empirical nature of (2) assures us that Nazis and such who disagree with (1) will rarely be able to foist (not (1)) on an entire society. - - - - - Apr16/89 17:23 202:105) Harold Seldon: Mytek, (Damn, I can't see what I am typing. How do you switch duplex on these Apollos?) You are in that quagmire of quagmires! Good is a definition. What brings you happiness, health is nedcessarily good. Much the same way that a bicycle is defined. If I point to a machine that is a bicycle, (because it satisfies the definition of a bicylce, then it is necessarily a bicycle. However, if iwanted to really screw myself up, as you are doing, I could ask, what is the essence of a bicycle? Then, I lose my foothold in reality, and hence the definition of bicycle, and become a compelte and total asshole. Note: this may be a stupid message since I can't see what I am typing. If it si, do me a favor, and blame it on Brian Holtz. Thanks and L8r 0n Dudez - - - - - Apr16/89 19:24 202:106) Brian Holtz: Hari, you're conflating two problems here: the problem of attaching labels to abstractions, and the problem of identifying instantiations with the abstraction they instantiate. I agree that it is pointless to ask "what is the essence of the label 'bicycle'", because that label is just a character string we map onto a particular abstraction. However, it _isn't_ pointless to ask either "what is the essence of the abstraction labeled 'bicycle'?" or "what is the essence of all these perceived things that we label 'bicycle'?" (especially since they are the same question). Under this sort of analysis, "good" is the label that we all agree to attach to an abstraction on the order of "desirable, fitting, and proper". Further, I propose (with no justification whatsoever) that enduring health and happiness be considered an instantiation of "the good". Others here are persuaded that something like "enduring health and happiness" can be _shown_ to be an instantiation of "the good", and I am waiting for them to convince me of it. (As a footnote, let me say that I hope we're all good anti-Platonists here, and don't believe for a minute that these "essences" and "abstractions" have some kind of existence independent of their instantiations.) - - - - - Apr17/89 22:34 202:109) Brian Holtz: That's pretty close, Steve, except you forgot to add my empirical contention that people are basically good -- i.e., that they usually agree with me that enduring health and happiness are good. So in simple terms, I'm indeed saying that all definitions that I've heard of what is the good are arbitrary, BUT that people mostly agree with my personal arbitrary definition of the good, and so we indeed might as well choose this definition of the good. Hari, what exactly _is_ Hegel's notion of the Absolute? Being such an empiricist, I never could really grasp Hegel very well. - - - - -