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Is religious fundamentalism a disease of the mind?
Topic Started: Apr 7 2007, 12:38 AM (5,013 Views)
TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
Moonbat
Apr 12 2007, 03:43 PM
Quote:
 

there is certainly no objective concept of good and bad. If 40 million Germans think that killing Jews is "good" for Germany. (With real objective results.) Maybe killing Jews might not be a bad thing.


It's bad overall though. The net effect, when considering all of conscious experience, the utility of the universe, that effect is bad.

No offense, but you're a monster. Nothing personal.
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
Moonbat
Apr 12 2007, 01:43 PM
Quote:
 

there is certainly no objective concept of good and bad. If 40 million Germans think that killing Jews is "good" for Germany. (With real objective results.) Maybe killing Jews might not be a bad thing.


It's bad overall though. The net effect, when considering all of conscious experience, the utility of the universe, that effect is bad.

What does "bad overall" mean? By whose estimation? There simply is no objective viewpoint from a human perspective. The same with "the utility of the universe, that effect is bad". Shift your frame of reference slightly and all that changes. You cannot be serious about any of this.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
It's uncanny how hard it is to get rid of all that metaphysical stuff, huh?
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
It seems like every time it's done we end up with another Cultural Revolution. Funny how that works...
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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Moonbat
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Pisa-Carp
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This I can respect -- at least you are trying to be consistent, even if both "evil" and "bad" mean a privation of a good. What you are really saying here -- perhaps unintentionally -- is that without theology there is no difference between any evaluation of a thing (bad as a general category of deficiency) and morality (evil as a specific category of a moral deficiency).


Only consequences are good or bad, there is no moral efficiencies or deficiencies. There are only outcomes and those outcomes are graded as better or worse by considering the effect on all conscious observers.

Quote:
 

So the bottom line is that what you call "ethical" is a descriptor for those biomachines that produce the response to stimuli that thinks it knows what a better world would be and will do whatever is necessary to achieve it?


I don't call biomachines good or evil, i call results good or evil whether they are caused by hurricanes or by biomachines is irrelevent.

Describing another biomachine as ethical or unethical becomes as incoherent as describing an avalanche as unethical. There are simply consequences.

Quote:
 

Also, I am concerned that by this definition there can be no moral imperative to even try to build a better world. Yet ethics must have an *ought* -- a moral imperative -- to recommend human action. You even presuppose a "what ought to be" -- namely a better world.

So it seems that by this definition either there is no moral imperative for any of us to build a better world -- and that your term "ethics" is an idiosyncretic word for your hobby; or that ethics classically understood is still a valid discipline. Which is it?


The Moonbat biomachine seeks clarification on this "ethical imperative" input stream? Request IvoryThumper provide appropriate protocols.

If the IvoryThumper biomachine seeks to understand the *ought* algorithm. It should enable it's empathy module for the *ought* algorithm makes extensive calls to the empathy hardware.

There is no requirement for an objective ought, indeed such a concept seems fundamentally incoherent. We posess the faculty of empathy which means we can understand that others experience as we do, and we can understand what that entails. From that comprehension springs your *ought*. As evidence for the irrelevence of an objective *ought* i cite myself and all the other people who behave in an ethical fashion without it.

Quote:
 

Not misplaced at all. Once one determines that the project of "improviing the experience of all conscious minds" can most efficiently be accomplished by tweaking the neurochemistry, it all depends on what one decides "improving the experience" entails. For many people, the tension of choosing between conflicting goods is what makes life worthwhile. It is also the foundational understanding that classically allowed biomachines to be considered "moral beings" and to make "ethical choices".


There is an objective meaning to the term "improving conscious experience". Some experiences really are better than others.

The Moonbat biomachine suggests the IvoryThumper biomachine examine it's internal state with regards to the response to stubbing its toe and compares it to the response to listening to Bach.

The choosing between conflicting goods, equates to a Utilitarian calculation regarding maximal benefit, if the IvoryThumper biomachine's internal state responds positively to this manner of analysis it need not fear comprehension of the nervous system for such an analysis will continue.

One can only approach such calculations approximately and there are many different approaches to this. Continual analysis and discussion of these methods will be with us for a long time.

Quote:
 

This phenomenon that was classically considered "free will" now must be presumed to be a mechanical process, and therefore able to be manipulated to achieve the desired output of whatever another biomachine determines is "improving the experience".


This is no different to the past. People have been manipulated mentally through propaganda or physically through forced labour or incarceration for a long time. There is no philosopphical distinction and all the safeguards of today against rogue biomachines making poor utilitarian calculations and then making poor subsequent decisions still apply. Democracy, public debate, etc. etc.

Quote:
 

Yet it is precisely that faculty which is the source of all "evil" or bad choices that adversely impact the experience of other self aware biomachines. So that must be the ultimate object of your "ethics".

yet without free will there is no ethics. Now that we see that free will can be reduced to a mechanical process, once the process is tweaked free will is destroyed and with it ethics.


The loss of your concept of ethics if it is indeed lost is of no consequence. The people who realise it will be no more likely to maim or kill than anyone else. The loss of a theological style free-will is equally unconsequential. (well they are unconsequential to maiming and raping, stealing etc. for more nuanced areas there are consequences but they are consequences beneficial to net conscious experience)

Quote:
 

Materialism has a wonderful track record in this regard -- lobotomies, electric shock therapy, chemical castration, and other magnificent experiments on biomachines, all under the guise of "attempting to build a better world for all entities to which the term "better" can apply."

You project will most like do monstrous damage to humanity.


What you cite is merely power. Materialism or rather science has given us power, whether we use it poorly or we use it well it is up to us. There are poor decisions made by people who think the world is made of atoms and by people who believe in immortal souls like the religious fundamentalists blowing themselves up with dynamite every 2 seconds - they are hardly scientific rationalists.

It is a struggle to try and work out what the best course of action is, whilst there is a best course of action, we are forced to use approximate methods to try and find it. There are many perspectives on how to about finding this, should we go for simple rules? Should we go for maximising people's wants? There is a continual proces of evaluation and discussion. That is how it is now, and it is how it will be in the future.

You need not fear comprehension of the brain Ivory, you need not run from reality. It think we will build a better world but not by mass enslavement, rather by enabling humanity. There are real dangers, and perhaps there will be another Hiter or Pot but in the end a better world for all biomachines seems very likely as it is the most stable state. Further there appears no alternative, we cannot fight off knowledges advance, we cannot hold on to the status quo, for it will be torn from our grasp. I for one don't want to hold on to it. We can do better. We will do better.

Quote:
 

It's uncanny how hard it is to get rid of all that metaphysical stuff, huh?


Can you find metaphysics in anything i say? (If you can then i'd guess I have no issue with that manner of "metaphysics", my only objection is to descriptions that try and say incoherent things about the objective world)

P.S.

The "biomachine" language sounds scary because using it makes it hard to see what the real world is like at 'higher' levels (and hence seems to strip away the things we care about, the aspects significant to ethics). For that reason it's inappropriate language for ethics and we won't and don't use it. We talk about people not biomachines for "people" captures the essential differences between thinking feeling organisms and washing machines. I simply went with your terminology because you like to use it in these discussions.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Moonbat
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Quote:
 

What does "bad overall" mean? By whose estimation? There simply is no objective viewpoint from a human perspective. The same with "the utility of the universe, that effect is bad". Shift your frame of reference slightly and all that changes. You cannot be serious about any of this.


Bad overall means actually bad overall. Meaning if you sum the effect on conscious oberservers the net effect is bad.

There is an objective reality. People have real experiences. There really are good and bad aspects to conscious experience.

You can get a bit of a grasp on what that would mean by considering yourself doing all the experiencing. Suppose we take an instance of torture. Suppose you experienced both the torturer's delight and then you jumped back and experienced everything from the sufferes perspective.

Now suppose we change the scenario such that the torturer is a bit gutted he didn't get to rip someone else to shreds and but the victim doesn't get his testicles clamped in a vice. Now you experience both realities again.

Clearly the latter one is preferable. Clearly the net experience is better in the latter scenario. Now take this perspective for every conscious observer in the universe. That is what i mean by net good.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Moonbat
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No offense, but you're a monster. Nothing personal.


No worries, the Victorians thought transplants were monsterous.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
Moonbat
Apr 12 2007, 05:00 PM
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No offense, but you're a monster. Nothing personal.


No worries, the Victorians thought transplants were monsterous.

And the Germans thought killing Jews was ethically moral. Go figure. :rolleyes:
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Moonbat
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Pisa-Carp
Guess we'll have to let the future decide.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
Moonbat
Apr 12 2007, 05:30 PM
Guess we'll have to let the future decide.

That way it's going it looks like "Allah" will decide. :lol:
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AlbertaCrude
Bull-Carp
TomK
Apr 12 2007, 11:32 AM
AlbertaCrude
Apr 12 2007, 03:31 PM
Savages, every last one them. Just like Islamicists.

Then what makes us so special?

Science, technology, commerce and our ability to combine all three elements together to wage war.

Survival of the fittest.
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TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
AlbertaCrude
Apr 12 2007, 06:22 PM
TomK
Apr 12 2007, 11:32 AM
AlbertaCrude
Apr 12 2007, 03:31 PM
Savages, every last one them. Just like Islamicists.

Then what makes us so special?

Science, technology, commerce and our ability to combine all three elements together to wage war.

Survival of the fittest.

Those people just may just be the Christian Fundamentalists. :thumb:

I guess we've gone full circle on this thread. :lol:
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AlbertaCrude
Bull-Carp
Unlikely, as the three elements presuppose a throrough understanding of physics, chemistry and biology; an insatiable desire to evolve and adapt technological advancement and; a wholly amoral approach towards commercial opportunism and profit.

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TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
AlbertaCrude
Apr 12 2007, 07:17 PM
Unlikely, as the three elements presuppose a throrough understanding of physics, chemistry and biology; an insatiable desire to evolve and adapt technological advancement and; a wholly amoral approach towards commercial opportunism and profit.

All that and believeing the world 6000 years old. :thumb:

Till the Rapture! :lol:
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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
The only fundamentalists I've seen in this thread have been Moonbat and Jeffrey.
Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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AlbertaCrude
Bull-Carp
TomK
Apr 12 2007, 03:56 PM
AlbertaCrude
Apr 12 2007, 07:17 PM
Unlikely,  as the three elements presuppose a throrough understanding of physics, chemistry and biology; an insatiable desire to evolve and adapt technological advancement and; a wholly amoral approach towards commercial opportunism and profit.

All that and believeing the world 6000 years old. :thumb:

Till the Rapture! :lol:

Once again you are incorrect. To accomplish all that, fundamentalism would be actually be a serious detriment. A step backwards. What you need is a solid education for everyone- no discrimination either- EVERYONE.

In short, a solid Jesuit education.

Anyone who disputes this well known fact is a misguided and dreadfully wrongheaded fool (and heretic)- a fundamentalist.
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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
Dewey - You claimed above that it was not possible to "prove" either religion or atheism, and both were non-provable "faiths". My question is: is it only religion (or its lack) that you think cannot be proven, or does this apply to all beliefs (which would make you a total skeptic).
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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
IT: "Materialism has a wonderful track record in this regard -- lobotomies, electric shock therapy, chemical castration, and other magnificent experiments on biomachines"

It is interesting that almost all your references to science are negative. Science has done more for human well being (and therefore moral progress) than any other human endeavor. One of the main goals of morality is the improvement of human well-being. (Note, that human well-being is an easily observable fact of nature, in accordance with ethical naturalism. If you don't think human well-being is a primary goal of morality, please say so.) The human lifespan has doubled in the last 100 years, and the population increased many times. All of this is due to the scientific advances of the last 100 years. Religion has accomplished suicide bombing and the Inquisition. Hardly seems that religion has any particularly interesting conception of human dignity in comparison with the progress in the human condition caused by science.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Jeffrey
Apr 12 2007, 06:22 PM
IT: "Materialism has a wonderful track record in this regard -- lobotomies, electric shock therapy, chemical castration, and other magnificent experiments on biomachines"

It is interesting that almost all your references to science are negative. Science has done more for human well being (and therefore moral progress) than any other human endeavor. One of the main goals of morality is the improvement of human well-being. (Note, that human well-being is an easily observable fact of nature, in accordance with ethical naturalism. If you don't think human well-being is a primary goal of morality, please say so.) The human lifespan has doubled in the last 100 years, and the population increased many times. All of this is due to the scientific advances of the last 100 years. Religion has accomplished suicide bombing and the Inquisition. Hardly seems that religion has any particularly interesting conception of human dignity in comparison with the progress in the human condition caused by science.

Hey, I'm completely down with science and modern medicine.

I am glad that there are lots of good scientists and doctors out there. Nothing in your screed is the least bit problematic except that you can ONLY point to perversions of religion (and even based on inept history of the inquistions).

Whereas I can acknowledge all sorts of great things for humanity that science has done, all you can say about Catholicism is that you like some of its cultural artifacts. You're the only one here with blinders on.

It's hilarious that you pick at nits about interpretations of history, but if that's all you got go for it. :lol:
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
ivorythumper
Apr 12 2007, 01:03 AM
No, Jeffrey, I don't mean the specifically "post J-C" view. All of your ethical memes developed before the Enlightenment, and were predicated on worldviews, anthropologies, and scientific understandings that are now outmoded and universally discarded.

Do you deny this?

And you still haven't redressed the point that your statement "Understanding the material basis of these things, does not make them into something else (a point you seem to pretend not to get)." is a fallacy for the reason I stated. Do you prefer to avoid the issue?

Bump for Jeffrey. Don't want to lose the thread. :lol:
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
IT: "All of your ethical memes developed before the Enlightenment, and were predicated on worldviews, anthropologies, and scientific understandings that are now outmoded and universally discarded."

???

Obviously, some of past thought holds up and some does not. Even those who like Aristotle's ethics think his views on slaves and women are dated. You seem to think that you either have to accept every argument someone gave, or none of them. For example, Plato's argument against the connection of religion and ethics in the Euthyphro has been considered decisive, the Theory of Forms was abandoned even by Plato himself. Your point is overblown.
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
In other words, Jeffrey, Uh...humma-humma.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Jeffrey
Apr 12 2007, 07:44 PM
IT: "All of your ethical memes developed before the Enlightenment, and were predicated on worldviews, anthropologies, and scientific understandings that are now outmoded and universally discarded."

???

Obviously, some of past thought holds up and some does not.  Even those who like Aristotle's ethics think his views on slaves and women are dated.  You seem to think that you either have to accept every argument someone gave, or none of them.  For example, Plato's argument against the connection of religion and ethics in the Euthyphro has been considered decisive, the Theory of Forms was abandoned even by Plato himself.  Your point is overblown.

As I pointed above, you overstate the case against religion from the Euthyphro -- but it is in your interest to do so.

The point is that it all a complex of memes that are being perpetuated at this point.

These memes developed in a premodern world view. They are predicated on a series of things that can no longer be maintained. Strange how you claim to be so thoroughly modern, yet refuse the "zero degree of history" mental discipline, and continue to engage in your arguments from authority as if Aristotle or Plato or Mill has any bearing on modern society.

You have to assume on some level that you might be too enmeshed in them to have any archimedean vantage to evaluate these things. Why? Because you are still holding on to them even after you are willing to point out that such primal human experiences such as love can be reduced to chemistry. If love, then why not free will? If free will is reducible to chemicals then it is not free. It just seems to be free but actually the chemicals govern us. You'd have to show some mechanism by which we are not automata. This is hardly my issue, it is a common concern in neuroscience and ethics.

you err in thinking my position is a fallacy, and your retort "Understanding the material basis of these things, does not make them into something else (a point you seem to pretend not to get)." is in fact a fallacy.

The historical contingency of having called that particular chemical sequence "free will" and then deciding that we really are not subject to chemical interactions cannot stand up to modern scientific scrutiny. Eventually it will fall.

The only way around that conclusion is to posit that for some reason chemicals do not operate as chemicals operate everyone else in the known universe if they are interacting with human brain material. Why might that be? I am sure you don't want to be accused of special pleading for these particular chemicals, right?
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Jeffrey
Apr 12 2007, 07:44 PM

Obviously, some of past thought holds up and some does not.  Even those who like Aristotle's ethics think his views on slaves and women are dated.  You seem to think that you either have to accept every argument someone gave, or none of them.  For example, Plato's argument against the connection of religion and ethics in the Euthyphro has been considered decisive, the Theory of Forms was abandoned even by Plato himself.  Your point is overblown.

So tell us, Jeff, what do *you* hold on to from the ancient Greeks? Their science? Their cosmology? Their medicine? Their theology? Their anthropology? Their ontology? Their social views? Their politics?

You'll have to let us know if you expect to be able to build anew a convincing theory of ethics that is not enmeshed in that whole outmoded worldview.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
IT: "If free will is reducible to chemicals then it is not free. It just seems to be free but actually the chemicals govern us. You'd have to show some mechanism by which we are not automata. This is hardly my issue, it is a common concern in neuroscience and ethics."

Obviously, free will works with the laws of nature, not by some magic process against them. The chemicals do not "govern us" as if they are some alien force imposed from the outside. They are the way by which our will dictates what our body is to do. We are "not free" when people tie us up, or blackmail us, or we live in a society where the government tells us what livelihood to follow. We do not become "not free" when we start to understand what electrical and chemical impulses are behind dreaming, memory, willpower, love and so forth. This is a misuse of the term "free".

We are not automata, because automata (e.g. a car) do not have the electrical and chemical impulses that allow our brains to control our bodies when we will it. Love does not become not-love, because it is caused by serotonin (or whatever set of chemicals it is). It is still the exact same thing. We just know more about it, and why we have it. You come up with imaginary examples of using such knowledge to cause harm, but of course one could come up with much better stories about using such knowledge to increase human well being.

"You'll have to let us know if you expect to be able to build anew a convincing theory of ethics that is not enmeshed in that whole outmoded worldview."

No building "anew" is needed. There is a sufficiently high degree of commonality of life and method of discussion from Greek and Enlighenment writers to the present, that modern 20th century writers basically elaborate on the same basic issues they did. It doesn't matter that Aristotle thought heavier objects fell faster than light objects, since his ethical reflections concerned how people live together in society and improve themselves, a situation we currently also face, being a social species that lives in groups and seeks stimulation. I did not cite writers of the past as an argument from authority, but to document that your weird history of ideas was simply bad intellectual history.
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