HasMat

My thought is that it (nothing) explicitly is. Nothing is, regardless of whether something also is. I think the better framing is "why something, as well as nothing". It's not in place of, its on top of. Real is in addition to (and from) the imaginary, not mutually exclusive with. The Big Bang singularity is nothing. There is no meaning, complexity, density, time, etc inside it. All these terms are empty. It's "existence" is imaginary at this point. As men we seek emptiness (especially of balls). Well, there it is at the singularity. It's where we come from, and the cosmic egg we try to return to. Men seek emptiness, while women seek fullness (psychological reason they struggle with overeating). Why something? This sounds like a question for a feminine aspect of creation (fractal ethereal Eve), who eats the fruit and reality ensues. We had nothing, and emptiness. Now we have something, and fullness. Pandora's box is open. Men strive to crush reality into an understandable box, to solve the rubix cube, to enclose all options into a single objective hierarchy/system as a mastermind determinor. Women try to experience the whole thing, to sample the breadth without containing it, to live inside the subjective, as a leaf on the wind without agency nor control. Nothing is. It's attached to the last eyelash on your right eye. Tell me how its not. I don't think one can really understand the question without also understanding why men work themselves to death trying to get $ for their family (expend their strength to achieve emptiness). The quest to consume oneself in the service of a higher objective is part of a pair. The other half is why something. When a man actively ejaculates into the passive woman he spends his lifeforce on her. He experiences a mini-death. Not a dirtnap, just a nap. He is empty, and can rest (now passive). She is then empowered with fullness (no longer passive), and life proliferates. Probably a good time for her to go into the kitchen and make a sandwich. For me, I also see this as the 2 ends of the Dunning-Kruger spectrum, ignorant confidence and aware fecklessness. In the movie AI they discuss a painting and how it requires a willingness to err to take the first brush stroke. I see in all of us a combination of these 2 qualities, feminine and masculine. Is initiative a masculine or feminine trait? Is ignorant confidence male or female? As granularity increases the separation of these 2 qualities continues to mix. Saying a trait is all male, or all female isn't very true. Depends on the framesize (granularity). When its sandwich-making-time, women are active. But as a general rule, men are active and women are passive. Truth depends on the frame. I think the big bang explodes (real from imaginary) because of a willingness to be wrong, and a desire to consume others resources into something anything (no purpose). I've felt that impulse while playing legos with another kid. You sit there with your pile, and look at their pile, and you are like "nice laser gun ya got there..., sure would look cool on my spaceship" All of this assumes "creation" instead of eternal elements, as well as agentive First Cause. I get the feeling you would have emotional objections to these assumptions. I've never heard an emotionally-neutral intellectually-driven alternative. Quote: Nothingness cannot be aeternal because nothingness is not a substance and therefore cannot explain itself, cannot justify its own nonexistence. I don't think this is good thinking. If a thing cannot justify its nonexistence, it ceases to exist? If this happened to nothing, it would THEN satisfy its identity. You are treating it like something when dealing with what makes it true. Nothing always is. It's unstoppably there. Before reality, in spite of reality, after reality. Nothing is non-contingent. If a part of it BECOMES contingent, it separates from it and assumes a new identity. The Big Bang is a contingency-naming process. Constraint and limitation is what definition and differentiation are about. "Let there be light" implicitly creates darkness, BY DIVISION. They are constrained to not be the same thing. Before that, not so much. That's what singularity means.

I am a person who would love for this to be true because I am not socially dominant but can relate to children very well and enjoy helping them. My experience is that many people see the world thru a lens of continuous power dynamics of who is socially superior. They are constantly shit-testing and stress-testing as well as trying coupes and other social gambits. I would prefer to have equality, and not enter into any lopsided social arrangements. Some ppl will refuse this entirely. Based on the context they may approach me as an inferior trying to flatter me or tell me I'm better than they are or how amazing I am, and it makes my skin crawl. "Normal" ppl know how to absorb these statements in a way that creates a stable power dynamic of alpha-beta, and all are made "happy". I don't, so these inferiors get confused, and try to become my alpha. I also reject that. So these ppl are an annoyance to me, and I am quite certain I annoy them too. Children, especially the younger ones, haven't developed these patterns yet. So they are great for me. I think the original post has some merit to it. How we treat vulnerable ppl (who can't do us harm) shows how a person feels about NAP. If you only follow NAP to those who can use force on you (because your ethic is about physical punishment or social ostracism, not intellectual reasons), then you will resent treating children humanely. As VoB says above, I think there are many reasons a person may not treat children great, which don't reflect on their character.

Objectivity is existentially defined as viewpoint invariance. The same thing will occur/appear regardless of who/when its observed, if done exactly the same way. This is measured by having 2 separate sentient witnesses. The creation of 2 witnesses is a social world. Science does peer review and tries to repeat tests to accomplish this. Objectivity is a social construct. This is why global warming enjoys high truthiness, along with much of the liberal cultural trappings. All the major companies are bowing to the feminist and BLM dogmas. At a certain point of social proof, truth doesn't even matter. For a claim to be regarded as falsifiable it must be easily done by an average joe. Stuff they do at the hadron collider are not falsifiable by independent witnesses. Everyone they let near that thing is on board with their basic beliefs about reality. The more basic fact about reality is that it is ITSELF relative, as in the general theory of relativity. The whole thing is subjective. Just like values within social worlds. It's subjective turtles all the way down. Objectivity is just what monads call data inside their own frame. To all other observers its subjective. You might say you objectively exist, but can you pass any/every Turing test? Your existence is subjective to all but you. When Plato looks at shadows on the cave wall, he thinks of them as subjective phantoms of what is really there. To anything not inside a thing, access to internal data is reliant on the honesty of the monad in question (and its limited grasp of language). Peer communicated truth is epistemologically subjective. It's a social product.

I would argue that meaning is not the objective of epistemology, and that putting god at top to derive higher meaning is misguided. Find meaning AFTER epistemology, not during. I would rather that we strip off layers of potential error and ask what remains, ala des cartes. When adding them back, we recognize we are adding a filter that makes derived knowledge more suspect, and of a qualitatively inferior nature. I don't think the essence of identity involves god. I think it's about personal control. We differentiate between what our will effects, and what is independent. This is the great realization of 2 year old children. The first thing we develop is a reality strategy (weighting inputs for truth level), the second is a dividing line within reality between self and other (identity). We decide we exist at the same time we recognize things being outside 'us'. God, as a concept, is a member of the set 'other', and can't be conceptualized until after we accept the premise that we exist. Determinism (monism of any stripe as well) makes identity a farce. There are no non-arbitrary distinctions of self in a determinism reality: all causal mechanisms are universal in nature and don't map to individuals in unique manner. Saying a set of matter is a human child is as true as saying a group of trees is a forest. It's a conceptual distinction that has no seam, no conceptually absolute points to serve as landmarks, around which to name a self. Determinism, as a conception of identity, undermines any further certainty of truth because it is precludes personal identity, and is the edifice all later knowledge relies on. Therapists are asking "tell me about your mother" because this colors how we see ourselves and what caused us to be. Here are the landmarks I see Re: identity: freewill (causal magic), spatial contiguity (parts have direct access to each other, and claim to a non-collapsed area), material form (parts or subject that gets acted upon). Determinism only allows for spatial contiguity and material form. These are decent markers to determine possession (as in property rights) but insufficient to produce identity, because these ultimately have a predetermined outcome that precedes self-awareness and is traced to external causes. Identity requires process, locale, content. All 3 are required to box in non-temporary non-arbitrary identity/self-ownership. Identity is a necessary pre-text of all secular ethics. But identity requires freewill. This is why some argue a secular ethic is impossible (because most secularists deny a ghost in the machine), and how Stefan (by omitting a proof of identity) is able to make one. Once you accept identity then a logical ethic is possible. Monists who believe in freewill just haven't explored identity to its conclusion. If only universal causes then only universal agency. A unity of causation, space, matter (and ultimately responsibility). Monist identity (of space and matter) is missing that 3rd required leg to produce actual identity for discrete individuals. For monists, the Big Bang differentiated space and matter into a duality from a singularity, but did not differentiate First Cause into anything other than permanent universal physical laws. Their causality is a unity of universal forces, not a cataclysmic explosion of First Cause into innumerable elements. When 2 parts of a 3 element set are unique, but the 3rd is fungible, it is a contiguous set. It's a single body with 2 sets of spiny protrusions. Nobody can be morally responsible under that schema. Each individual is really just an extension of the whole, and perceptions of individuality are the result of limited thinking. Spines inability to see its a protrusion from a larger mass don't make them separate. Besides reality strategy, all other epistemology comes after awareness of the above. Causation, space, and matter are the physical elements our senses give us of reality, chunking into cohesive agencies is job #1. Epistemologically I think the next important objective is God, but I don't think its the next knowable thing for mortals born in a fallen world. Once you realize you exist and aren't omnipotent, the next job is finding out what other agencies exist, and your pecking order, and how to helpfully integrate with, improve, or otherthrow that power structure. If God makes a rule that voting for Hillary Clinton will earn you an eternity of being ass-raped in hell, it doesn't much matter if that rule is ethical (in determining whether you should obey it). You just obey it to avoid consequence, because you love yourself and don't want your self to be ass-raped in hell for eternity. I think the big error most atheist make is strawmanning god from parts gathered from less intelligent theists. God doesn't make rules about voting for Hillary getting you hell. He makes rules about NAP, and encourages benevolence. The same stuff Stefan advocates. Meanwhile Stef is slaying strawman gods, up to and including Zeus, but especially the god of the old testament book. To be fair, he has quit doing that as much. Social worlds are arbitrary and relative. They are fortresses built in the sky from the aggregate preferences of many freewills. I think this is the next epistemological truth we can obtain after identity. 1. reality strategy 2. identity 3. social worlds 4. rationality 5. morality The populism of science and the strangle-hold of peer-review are baked into reality. We can't get a more close view of rational truth than social perception. Who will watch the watchers? Rational truth is always filtered thru social world.

Possession has at least 2 ways. 1 is physical enclosure, the other is spatial occupation. This is what happens during coitus, and both can claim to own a portion of the other. Land as property isn't as bad as IP, but it has flaws. Self as property is good. I don't think property rights for land is a slam dunk. You can't enclose it by your self, but you can occupy a portion of it.

Your understanding of freewill needs work. Freewill requires uniquely owned causality. To say god created us, in the "from nothing" sense, makes freewill impossible. There must be some indestructible permanent quality about us that is impossible to dominate and control. We must have a parity with god on some level. If he is omnipotent in the hyperbolic sense, there is no control left for us to exercise agency and assume liability. Any other conception of freewill makes your BS about "god being evil" true. God as creator of man can only mean something like strapping us into the rollercoaster, as an impartial, even if loving, ferryman. You mention becoming aware of moral obligation as a curse, but its an opportunity for growth. Something can be both good, and beyond your ability to properly handle. If you know your kid will skin his knee if he learns to ride a bike, do you keep his bike locked up? He needs the growth and he is a willing striver. Maybe you shield your face while he errs, but its not your fault his knee is bleeding. You didn't have the omnipotence to rewrite consequences. God is not hyperbolically omnipotent.

I see this differently. In the book "Sleight of Mouth" the most basic belief we have is called a reality strategy. This is how we transmute stimuli into experience. I think this is the most basic level of epistemology. How do you know you read the previous sentence I wrote? You probably have some trailing memory of having been reading this paragraph, and use that as a reference point. After that I would go to Kant and his discussion of a priori. Experience is made of (synthesized by) 2 components: context and content. The most basic grip we can get on reality is the context, which is analytic. The overall experiences are synthetic (synthesized from content and context). The content is empiricism. If something is intuitive (analytic), it is gleaned from the context. If something is imaginable (synthetic), it is gleaned from experience. If something is reasonable (empiric), it is gleaned from reason and MUST (should) be fact-checked against observation. (Pure reason, as in Critique of Pure Reason, would be the first half before its checked) This is how we can perceive the world, compute it (or reverse-engineer), and then verify our conceptions are sane. Intuition leads to imagination leads to reason (3 thought forms). An example of intuition: objects appear larger the closer they are. An example of imaginable: image of person An example of reasonable: person is near (idea) / stimuli occupying majority of field of view (empiric evidence) Intuitive models are known regardless of content. Contextual knowledge is content-independent. There is reason to discriminate on where knowledge comes from (a priori/synthetic/empiric), and cases to be made for why each is better/worse. When it comes to the future, imagining a specific "better world" is mostly about imagination. We bring a better world into existence by our dreams and visions. I don't think intuition nor reason have decent guesses here, just like prisoner's dilemma sucks. Deterministic models do not represent our known reality. Human progress is an inevitability and STRONGER than 'someone is going to ruin it for everyone'. This is a function of imagination beating reason/intuition. We can imagine a better world. Pure determinism says we have no choice. Without choice there can be neither good nor evil. Does that match your personal experience in your heart, or what you have seen in the world? Determinism, the thought-form, fails the empiricism test. This is how science works: hypothesis creation, testing/observation, comparison. Determinism doesn't match my experience either. Determinists aren't empiricists, they are idealists when they pedestalize communal reality over their own subjective experience. Both forms are reality, not just the 1. Back to your hierarchy, I think therefore I am (des cartes) is a reality strategy, not a proof. And if there is no freewill, your existence is not true. We take this as self-evident, but its logically impossible if you aren't a moral agent. Again, this fails basic experiential empirics. It is a deception.

This kind of dull analysis drives me crazy. The utility in following the herd when you are in a state of ignorance is blatantly obvious. I have major social issues because I have a natural inclination to avoid ppl and their slow/incorrect thinking. But even my response in that scenario would be to look for environmental cues to explain what was going on, talk to a person about it, or else follow them if I couldn't resolve it. Now if I walked into a room and everyone was holding a can of coke, and lying dead on the floor, I would avoid holding a can of coke. I wouldn't even know why, I just don't want to share their state. Conversely, if something weird was going on, I would try to emulate the state of those who were safe. This is all rational, albeit subconscious. It drives me crazy when pseudointellectuals take rationality, and shit on it to look smart, and pretend others are inferior when they are not. They try to create these hierarchies based on garbage litmus, thus interfering with ppl actually creating a hierarchy that is sensible. This is why I just prefer to avoid the muggles, because these kinds of dumb divisions work on them.

Math starts with discrete observations about the granularity(divisibility, quantity) of reality and moves towards abstraction. Language begins at abstraction, joint-attention of 2 individuals designating representations of reality (this is the creation of a fantasy), and moves towards the real. Mapping these designations more specifically to actual instances of reality. I would argue that math and language are just opposing strategies to gap the divide between abstraction and reality. One is moving towards abstraction and the other towards reality, with opposite beginning points.

I would suggest defining "The Good". We use words like better, improvement. What is a good terrorist? What is a good plumber? What is a good boy? All of these things imply there is a valid guiding principle behind each role, and there is a spectrum of how to fill that role successfully. To be 'good', a thing must accomplish towards the object of its creation. A good terrorist kills many ppl. A good cook makes tasty and healthy food. But back to the terrorist, some would argue the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. They see his reason for existing to be heading towards death. His only valid goal is to become dead. IMO once you get the definition that good is inevitable, then the simplicity and raw nature of consequentialism stops looking so formless, because you know there is more than needs to be build beyond and on top of it. It's not the final word in morality, but it is the first. Moral development in stages 1. ends justify means (consequentialism-Saturnalia) - represented by r selected individuals and dictatorship forms of govt 2. means justify ends (collectivism-deontology) - K selected individuals and collectivist govt 3. synthesis of 1 and 2 (individualism-expedience) - synthetic aristotlean mean behavior and constitutional republic forms of govt One of the major philosophic arcs of the Star Trek franchise is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. This is Kant's deontology, This is collectivism. This is the edifice that immediately follows on consequentialisms footsteps. If I'm not mistaken, Plato's The Republic discusses some of these things, especially about rulers using Might (consequentialism) sometimes backfiring on them. Yes because consequentialism isn't a fully completed moral code. Sometimes consequentialism gets it wrong. Especially in the Prisoner's Dilemma. The "Rights" being voiced in 1 are negative rights of the King to not be aggressed upon (masculine aspect of morals). The "Rights" being voiced in 2 are the positive entitlements of charity for the downtrodden (feminine aspect of morals). Good isn't just not harming others, its also doing charity work. The problem with inferior codes is that these virtues are applied too broadly for some (king) but not others (peasants), or that they are backed by non-voluntary coercion, such as the case of positive entitlements. Refining these moral ethics into a scalable economy that all can enjoy without "Rights" overlapping and fighting each other, is the purpose of individualistic governance. Imagine a world where the king can swing his arm however he likes, but I have a right to not be punched. In that economy, the same terrain (me getting punched) has been delegated to 2 different groups prerogative. And so the king must accept limitations on his positive rights, and not infringe on others negative rights, if we are to have a consistent legal framework. I understand your reluctance to accept consequentialism as a moral code. I would argue the reason this is hard for you is because it so utterly incomplete. It doesn't consider that the ends are justified by the means. Group-think has the same issue, because its not synthesizing consequentialism and collectivism into individualism. They are just stunted codes traveling towards a higher good.

I would suggest defining "The Good". We use words like better, improvement. What is a good terrorist? What is a good plumber? What is a good boy? All of these things imply there is a valid guiding principle behind each role, and there is a spectrum of how to fill that role successfully. To be 'good', a thing must accomplish towards the object of its creation. A good terrorist kills many ppl. A good cook makes tasty and healthy food. But back to the terrorist, some would argue the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. They see his reason for existing to be heading towards death. His only valid goal is to become dead. IMO once you get the definition that good is inevitable, then the simplicity and raw nature of consequentialism stops looking so formless, because you know there is more than needs to be build beyond and on top of it. It's not the final word in morality, but it is the first. Moral development in stages 1. ends justify means (consequentialism-Saturnalia) - represented by r selected individuals and dictatorship forms of govt 2. means justify ends (collectivism-deontology) - K selected individuals and collectivist govt 3. synthesis of 1 and 2 (individualism-expedience) - synthetic aristotlean mean behavior and constitutional republic forms of govt One of the major philosophic arcs of the Star Trek franchise is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. This is Kant's deontology, This is collectivism. This is the edifice that immediately follows on consequentialisms footsteps. If I'm not mistaken, Plato's The Republic discusses some of these things, especially about rulers using Might (consequentialism) sometimes backfiring on them. Yes because consequentialism isn't a fully completed moral code. Sometimes consequentialism gets it wrong. Especially in the Prisoner's Dilemma. The "Rights" being voiced in 1 are negative rights of the King to not be aggressed upon (masculine aspect of morals). The "Rights" being voiced in 2 are the positive entitlements of charity for the downtrodden (feminine aspect of morals). Good isn't just not harming others, its also doing charity work. The problem with inferior codes is that these virtues are applied too broadly for some (king) but not others (peasants), or that they are backed by non-voluntary coercion, such as the case of positive entitlements. Refining these moral ethics into a scalable economy that all can enjoy without "Rights" overlapping and fighting each other, is the purpose of individualistic governance. Imagine a world where the king can swing his arm however he likes, but I have a right to not be punched. In that economy, the same terrain (me getting punched) has been delegated to 2 different groups prerogative. And so the king must accept limitations on his positive rights, and not infringe on others negative rights, if we are to have a consistent legal framework. I understand your reluctance to accept consequentialism as a moral code. I would argue the reason this is hard for you is because it so utterly incomplete. It doesn't consider that the ends are justified by the means. Group-think has the same issue, because its not synthesizing consequentialism and collectivism into individualism. They are just stunted codes traveling towards a higher good.

My conception of "The Good" is that it is what is inevitable. In mathematics, the limit as x approaches infinity may look complicated, but it irons itself out over time and is going to have a specific quality. Why be good? Because that is what "will be". Everything else is futile and a waste of time and effort. If you don't improve and build, creative destruction will eat you, and something better will come along in your place. The organizing principle of the universe is growth and increasing complexity. It's the corollary to entropy. Entropy and good are the same thing. Energy doesn't dissipate into random directions. It evolves into higher information by sacrificing its density. How many meals does it take to support 1 child thru their educational years? All that food energy is being converted into information. Doing x right or y wrong may seem like it doesn't matter in the long run, and won't effect the inevitable. But as time approaches infinity, it all does because of Murphy's Law. Anything that can go wrong, will. Someone who requires deception to hide his immorality has 1 more thing that "may" go wrong. Murphy is gonna bite his ass. Lower levels of understanding the inevitable make it appear as Saturnalia. Hollywood's idea of a Anarchists Purge Day. It is from this primal origin that all morality exists. The harshness of this INEVITABLY leads to in-group preference, which inevitably leads to other higher forms of morals, such as individual rights, after in-group preference mobs drown witches (who can float on water?). The mob doesn't like knowing it is a murderer after the fact, so it inevitably comes up with rights. (assuming a particular western christian population) The inevitable looks ugly at the start. When ppl have sex they are bumping uglies. But sex is good. That which is inevitable is The Good. If you don't want to be useless, be good. All evil is eventually creatively destroyed and was a waste of time. Vengeance is mine, and I will repay. By the wicked are the wicked destroyed. Evil has a purpose, albeit like a photographer's negative print. You don't have to be good, the way is open for you to be whatever you want. But if you choose to be evil, your utility will be as an unwitting destroyer of evil, instead of a contributor to The Good. All things work for the good of those that believe in Christ. <insert your Higher Power or universal moral code/UPB if you like> All things work for the good of those that believe in UPB. Good works for good, evil destroys evil. Good wins, because it is inevitable. That reality is baked into the fabric of the universe as deeply as entropy. You just need a wide enough frame to see its omnipotence. The consequences of a shitty life aren't very apparent in any given 30 second time-frame, of a single individual's experience. But when you take the virtue of an entire civilization over several generations, you can look at it and "by their fruits you shall know them". Those who enable economic liberty enjoy prosperity. Virtue produces fruit. You could also argue to be good for the SWAG... Personally I find obeying my conscience to be the best reward of any type. I just like the way it feels, as qualia. But without a witness behind the eyes, an observer who experiences the life, there is no rational reason to 'be good'. That is just a robot. A mechanism, not an agent. Good is impossible without agency, just like preferable (UPB) is impossible without opinion. You need a freewill for any of this stuff.

There are several threads on this forum that I think would benefit from a widely accepted understanding of information theory (language/meaning, morality, theism). One definition I found on the internet of information is: what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things. My definition of information: context and content. Example of context is "english dictionary". Example of content is "dog". In information theory the quantity of information can be encoded in both the dictionary and the content. If you work out with your buddy that the safeword "September 11th, 2002" means you are being held hostage, then that string of letters has its own dictionary entry. As the size of a dictionary approaches infinity, a single bit of content becomes able to encode infinite information. That is not the most efficient way to encode data, unless that single bit is very commonly used in communication. But it is still possible. What this means is that physical signals can be informationally represented as anything else. Up can be down, black can be white. In a purely physical world none of these perspectives or dictionaries have any more validity than any other. The theory of relativity says that anything can be represented as something else given the right frame of reference. Occam's razor says we should prefer the less complex explanations with the smallest dictionaries. Fair enough, but preference is prerogative. Libertines may want to have sex with their dog. Preference is not a strong enough organizing principle to convert a physical signal into an absolute truth. Preference doesn't get you from "I don't like sex with dogs" to "Nobody should have sex with dogs". To me the great challenge is converting viewpoint invariant interpretation of information into meaning. I see this as the overarching thread missing across this forum. We have language to propagate mechanistic physical signals, but for it to become something more than a mechanism it needs a wall to bounce off.

I think the Art of War by Sun Tzu is highly applicable here. The reality in which we live has 3 aspects: process, pattern, and contents. correlating that to an individual means behavior, matter, and info. We dont just own our bodies, we own our choices and control over our data. Our physical bodies are only a third part of what we 'own' as corporeal individuals who travel forward thru time. One great philosophers said something along the lines that man owned his body, the product of his labor, and the works of his mind. I would argue that privacy is an essentail subset of the works of the mind. Would it be surprising to see man not owning the product of his labor (taxation), not owning the works of his mind (privacy), and then lastly to have the state disavow the individuals ownership over his physical body? its the natural evolution. The NSA and social media are hard at work.

morality is the product that results from the contrast of 2 causalities. The power balance of the causalities determine the form. Ragnar Rothbard says "Might is Right". All non-arbitrary powergrabs are moral. When you kill a chicken for food. When you cut down a tree. When a man sneaks into another mans house to steal his property its expressly arbitrary. The other man could just as easily rob him, and if the owner was aware then he could challenge the aggressor and likely kill him. Is it moral to kill a lion? its not about physical strength, its about ability to ensure outcome. The key to might equating to right is that is must be non-arbitrary. The more dramatic the contrast between the causalities, the less arbitrary incursions inherently are. If a race of omniscient omnipotent beings arrived on earth, and wanted to exterminate us, I would argue it would be their moral prerogative. Just like its mankinds prerogative to exterminate any species here that we dont need to survive. for it to be 'might' it must come from a power source that is not removed by its action. killing all honey bees would be immoral because we wouldnt have the Might to kill them once their absence destablized the worlds ecology. its mutually assured destruction->immoral. What most of mainstream morality is concerned with is the economy of power between arbitrarily positioned peers. You were born to money, you were born to be a slave, you were born stupid and ugly, strong/weak, etc. In those cases, the first rule is integrity, the second is NAP, and the last is 'get paid' or 'might is right'. take initiative and powergrab. If you are honoring yourself (integrity), honoring your peers (NAP), then take whatever you can get away with. its the right thing to do. yet the only place this type of initiative is really celebrated is self-help, but it applies literally everywhere. For these reasons I find your (OP) definition to not be of morality, but more precisely NAP. You are really only interested in morality between arbitrarily positioned peers, not between self and self, and not between individuals in a drastically unequal power dynamic. Many of my countless hours pondering morality comes from a sports context, and the dilema of written rules and umpire enforcement. I've always been concerned with doing what I considered to be morally right. For some reason i got it in my head that the written rules dictated morality, yet it was the officials who DETERMINED outcome. morality is the contrast between causalities. it caused me no end of torment bemoaning the sensation of being cheated and despising those who actively and intentionally skirted the rules. my own brothers who would be considered highly upright citizens felt that 'cheating' was not only acceptable, but preferable. my problem was 1. not understanding the source of morality 2. not understanding the effects of contraining circumstance Maybe its my theology, but i would rather die than succumb to temporary might. basically i dont respect arbitrary fleeting power. maybe someone else has a better grip on constraining circumstance because i am quite inflexible here, and i would love to learn it. i would never murder someone out of coercion. its a matter of principle. if you put me in a 'mad max' situation i would still feel bound by my moral beliefs. that means no robbing other survivors unless they needed a death-penalty for their own crimes. if you want to see a depraved lot, go to the 'Walking Dead' forums. there you will see some ppl who like coercive manipulative lying murderers. its like TMZ downloaded their values and the poor souls have no room left for morals. Showing empathy at the right time to the right group erases guilt (in some viewers minds) from heinous acts. i imagine these ppl have a deep understanding of 'constraining circumstance'. Apparently I missed school the day this was taught, cuz it goes right over my head. I suspect it comes from an awareness of the arbitrariness of rules and systems. But in the moment, that cant be changed. So then what? pragmatism? I've always hated the notions of seniority and hazing. Now I'm starting to understand why. I think constraining circumstances only apply if there is no judgment day with god. otherwise all circumstances are within an eternal context. in atheism, the moment is all you have. gotta give your cellmate a blowjob or else he kills you? the moment is the only context with causality (sans metaphysics). for an atheist, it would be immoral to NOT survive. it changes things when the strongman of the universe wants you to be 'honest' and 'straight'. his causality would trump all. even if he was inconsistent, it would still be immoral to deny him. kill, dont kill, steal, dont steal, etc. Might is Right. do what he says or you are f#$%ed. if you think killing infidels will give you immortality, then your eternal perspective basically demands you to kill them to powergrab immorality. letting that slip away has permanent and lasting results (which are detrimental to your Might). at the end of the day, it all comes down to how things really play out in the largest perspective frame. if allah doesnt eventually reward you then it was wrong, if he does then it was right. if no metaphysics, then the only source of causality is GUT (electro-weak, strong, gravity). In that universe, there IS no contrast of causality between persons, they are each mere functions of GUT, played out on arbitrary groupings of matter. Its no more wrong to kill one of these then it is to close a web browser.

My take is that free-willers refuse to acknowledge what causality really is within the hierarchies of discovered science. If you look at photosynthesis and say its a 'law unto itself', a distinctly unique causality, you are wrong. All 'scientific' laws are aggregations of the grand unifying theory. Mystifying 'laws' just clouds the issue. Either causality plays out according to solely the grand unifying theory, or else we have magic. The defining characteristic of free-will is uniquely personal ownership over your causality. a billion ppl cannot each uniquely 'own' GUT, and in a monistic universe GUT is the only option. you need more causality fields for free-will to exist. if quatum chaos is a universal and distributed property of the universe then ppl cannot uniquely own it. The idea that quantum 'chance' can hide free-will is hogwash, unless that chance (as a legion of distinct chaoses) has some special binding to each 'you'. Where that the case (legion of distinct chaoses, mapped to specific 'you's) you have a strong argument for spirits.

I was unable to make a table with the UI, so I arranged it in place. Space/energy/law are columns; singularity, contrast, emergent are rows. Space-time (location) Energy-matter(massivity spread across a Law (causality) location(s)) singularity Point A Massivity level A universal (causality A) contrast (separate unique) Point B Massivity level B self (causality B) Emergent property of contrast time information morality The initial state of the big bang has 1 unique location, 1 unique mass, 1 unique aggregation of law. A split-second after, when other unique points enter the equation/become distinct its creates a contrast between them. This contrast creates a new property altogether, but without contrast, the emergent property simply cannot exist. In the dimension of law, lack of contrast = all states are simultaenously the same. causality is singular, universal, and permanent; and emergent property cannot arise. morality requires a causality contrast. you need distinct agents. unique standalone agents of causality. they WILL BE robbing/violating universal law at times. [explicability of universal law] and [distinction/uniqueness of agents] are logically mutually exclusive. Whatever boundary you set for 1 will destroy the other. you go trying to explain what happens inside a self, and it stops being a distinct self, then its just an extension of known law. And if you DONT try to explain it, you give up on exlicability. this is why ive said selfs are fantasy in a nonmetaphysical universe.

Let's just say I wouldn't consider an intentionally nonsensical proof to be an act of good-faith. IOW I respectfully decline to interact with you further. Your quest for a definition you already had in your pocket was fruitless, and you succeeded in never having to make a point in spite of raising an issue. Much ado about nothing. That's 2 acts of bad-faith.

I stand by my definition. causality is integration with reality. rules as to how its applied is dependent on the system. the essential aspect of producing an outcome is mere nontrivial integration, methods of communication and relationality are also dependent on the system being integrated with. now is your big chance to knock it down. should be easy since its so vague. just show something that falls in my definition that ISNT causality and you are done (thats the easy way to break a vague definition). or show something that IS causality and doesnt fit. is this hard yet? the vaguer/more specific it is, the easier it breaks. you said its very vague so you will win quickly. atleast then i get good feedback to fix it, right? maybe i can learn from you. its well past time for you to stop asserting my definition is wrong, and just disprove it. And once disproving it I just know there is gonna be an earth shattering point to be made. There must have been a reason to belabor this point. (teabagger's definition was 'relationship between events') i claim a dog is a thing. you say its too vague. i say no its spot on. (dog is named spot btw) you say a cat is a thing. i compare the 2 ideas and agree. the definition is larger than what it was intended to represent. something falls inside my definition but outside the word. too hard? you can also use logic but that is harder cuz you have to actually back it up when you said my first definition is circular, or the many other times you said vague, or whatever new you may assert.

Are you talking about causality, or the specific methods of causality in this universe? I think I have given more than adequate definition of causality. I am perplexed by your responses. the concept of causality means x causes y. CAUSE. this is not rocket science, and in my experience reasonable persons would not stumble here. causality in this universe is thought by science to include electroweak, strong, 'gravity', indeterminacy. so there you have it, definition and example. definitions are SUPPOSED to be vague so as to INCLUDE all possible examples!!! random fluctuations have no bearing on selfs, they are just environment, unless they are attributable to selfs. if random stuff happens, as a natural course, on all matter, living, inanimate, whatever, then you cant logically say its a property of life. its happening everywhere. Now on the other hand, if you are saying we cant create life, and that there is still a mystery therein, where new laws of causality might exist? wow that would be cool, huh? if so, they immediately get added to physical laws of universe, and ownership of cause is distributed across cosmos. the concept of self precludes freewill from being explicable of this universe. to have an explanation is to merge with physical law, and selfhood to wink out of existence.

I honestly dont know what you are asking, or on what level. on an everday level i define causality as factors that produce an outcome. I punched that guy which caused his bloody nose. if i was talking about quantum level i would say universal law controls causality. The previous definition I gave is IMO the purest and most correct (integration with reality, or reframed as non-zero relationship with reality). What do you feel is not explained that should be? Online dictionary says relationship between cause and effect. If you are trying to lead me to an answer it might be easier to just posit the idea and explain why its useful to your reasoning. Your response was to repeat the question i answered, ask for definition of my answer, say "Just tell me" as if i am holding out on you, saying why i had a duty to provide a definition and not to use circular logic, and finally asking the original question once more. I just gave you 2 NEW definitions (factors->outcome, cause->effect) and 1 example: universal law. Maybe you can define the requirements you think i'm missing. As in what I'm leaving unexplained.

I would call it integration with reality. The terms of that integration defining the effect. It doesnt matter if a fancy ghost is screaming bloody murder if you cant see, hear, touch, feel him. No ability at causation without integration on some level.

self = unique ownership of personal causality physical law = universal causality the moment a self appears, its immediately tramples on physical law via whatever small causality is does have.

I don't understand how you misinterpreted me to mean "physical law is illusion". I dont think I was unclear on this point. This is not what I was saying at all. I was saying that 'laws' (biology/astronomy) that aggregate the effects of 'real' laws (physical laws) are not real. This means life/biology, as a set of laws, isn't real, its just a complex aggregation of normal SOP of physical law. The distinction between causality in inanimate and living thus becomes one of coincidence in simplification/description, not generative cause. Causation for inanimate and causation for animate are both universally applied to each in just the same way. We just have some shorthand for 'living' things since they are arranged in ways that cancel out need for lower level calculations. Unique ownership of causation is the genesis of self (my definition). So if 'higher' functioning matter (life) is determined by the exact same rules as inanimate, then they have the exact same owner, and are in fact, part of the exact same 'self'. In a non-metaphysical universe all causality is subordinate to universal law. If causality is universal, "selfs" can have no claim on responsibility. Kevin said: "You cannot say anything meaningful about randomness or else you are saying that it's not random. It can have no discernable properties or characteristics to describe or else there is order, and thus is not random (randomness being defined as having no order)." Randomness necessarily has boundaries. You cannot define any random quality without giving it boundaries. Just try. in computer programming when you ask for a random number you give a range within which the response should come. Give me a number between 1 and 10. Your above quote is 100% false. According to your reasoning, if i ask you a question, and there are a limited number of responses, that means your answer cannot logically be random. total bs. enormously large random returns can also be truncated into sectors. Statistics is a field of study based on quantifying chaos. Its a science that has real world application and discovery. Since you got randomness wrong, maybe try to reanswer the question. Do you believe in science's grand unifying, all encompassing perception of causality (including indeterminacy)? It feels like you dont want to commit to something most atheists fanatical profess as fact. wtf? its not a trick question, its about setting a base-line for causality. It wouldnt matter to my argument if you had a newtonian view of the universe. I would take that view and dissect it from self, just like i would with current science. Without a base-line, what is the self logically distinct from? It needs a backgrouind to be contrasted against to exist. and then, contrast violates whatever 'science' you affirmed. whether the self is metaphysical is independent of the true nature of the universe's laws. Back to randomness, without a range it is ideologically identical to science's view of magic. inexplicable, impredictable, unreproducable. Kevin said "You cannot address me personally without acknowledging a self here to know who you are and what you are saying, and you don't argue with plants or rocks, I presume. Your actions necessarily imply you accept the existence of selves." This form of persuasion isnt working on me. I will state my defintion of self again. You can challenge it if you want. We tried to have you state a defintion and I would challenge it, but you declined. A self is: a thing that uniquely owns the means of its personal causality. As you just laid out [interaction] as an axiom of self... Interaction is not a proof of selfhood. ppl can interact with inanimate computers, rocks, twigs, etc. Thats a counterexample to disprove. Selfs must own their causation and have some property of independence from physical law. If not, they are just a reflection of physical law. Reflections arent accountable for its choices. selfs, by definition (the only one on the table atm is mine, which says self means to uniquely own personal causality), violate known science. It feels like some of you are trying to move the conversation away from certainty, just for the sake of obfuscation. Whether a law is 'real' doesn't apply to a discussion where its effect is being calculated. Its a philosophical question, at a time when its power to causation isn't disputed but is in fact the crux of the conversation. Who owns causation? The true nature of universal laws doesnt even matter to that question. Whether its right in human mind is beside the point. unique ownership of universal laws is possible for exactly one (1) self.

Ok Kevin, you had a lot of feedback. So I'm conflicted about trying to simplify as you requested or meet all your requested questions. The first thing I think would clear up some confusion would be to know if we are on same page about science. If we trust it, if we understand its claims. Science says the universe, at the smallest level, is like a boiling pot of water. That matter suddenly exists, stays a little while, and then vanishes. I have been refering to this in my posts as quantum randomness. These so-called 'virtual particles' could mean the difference between you falling off a cliff or balancing your weight and staying alive. (not to mean it would regularly change your mass by anything perceptible, just to show it does in fact exert change on the universe) My contention is that this quantum randomness is universal, meaning it applies everywhere. Do you believe any of this? Secondly, if this universe has this innate chaos, do 'selfs' have an ADDITIONAL quality of randomness? Like suddenly there is a solid average of 4 virtual particles inside your head, whereas there tended to only be 2 spontaneously occuring per second before you were a 'self'. So to recap, 2 questions to keep it simpler. As from above, do you believe in mainstream science's claims about the forces of the universe, including virtual particles? Do selfs have a property of chaos above and beyond this quantum randomness? -------------------------------------------------- some quick responses. i have been using natural law, physical law, universal synonymously. "You keep saying i'm violating metaphysics" I actually dont think thats accurate. When using the word violate it was physical law that was victimized. You say "Saying chaos is a law is like saying that contradiction is truth". Chaos is a known cause of reality. Accounting for everything that 'causes' means we admit its there. I can understand your reluctance to see it in this light, but if you want to fully measure and predict, you will need to account for it. In a scientists theory of everything, this has to be addressed. Its literally a part of reality. The existence of this property has no bearing on whether a selfs chaos is metaphysical. But i think we are having a hard time with this issue looming in the way. You said: "I don't understand the point you are making about self. Hopefully we can at least agree that selves exist since you are addressing me and I'm addressing you. You aren't responding to someone else, or responding to a glass of water, right?" Selfhood is the crux of my argument. I conceded defeat if you could prove it. Now you want to ignore and pretend? Im glad you brought this up. I'm actually a computer. Responding in this thread was my 'final exam'. A california judge ordered me to pass a 'Turing Test', and your acknowledgement of my selfhood means I will be granted a drivers license. We are one step closer to having driverless cars. Thank you. remember my 2 questions. I see this post as playing the victim card. Its too hard to define self, its there trust me, we just havent gotten there yet. Won't you please believe me? I have no problem with you taking that intellectual opinion, but the emotionalism is repulsive. Would you be willing to put that much effort into defining self? Children develop a concept of self before 2 years. I think before 1 but im not sure. If the concept is so easy, why would it be so f'ing hard to define for an adult, for a centuries old society with tons of scientists? kiddies cracking a puzzle (that we all still easily use to know we arent lamps), but we cant put it into words? the occam razor reason why is it never existed to begin with. i would rather have intellectual proof, but the fact toddlers can understand the concept but adults cant define it implies to me its mythology. Do you have any explanation why this should be difficult? I suspect the key to disproving self lies with events (property of space-time) and their obedience to physical law. events like photosynthesis are not really laws. They are events where groups of matter obey known physical law. Thus there are no biological laws. Anything above the basic physical laws is a theoretical collection, like a forest. The laws 'governing' the orbit of a planet is not a real thing, its a simplification of natural operation of physical law acting on large quantities of matter over large distances and times. The same applies to life. Life is an event, a selfperpetuating event, where every process, every outcome is attributable to physical law WITHOUT describing it in terms of biological law. IOW these laws dont exist, they are just rewordings of the regular physical laws in simplified form. thus life is an illusion, for complex groupings of matter and chain reactions.