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What is Morality, Anyway?
Posts
Idealism.
Ok, but what separates Idealism from the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion? Idealism solves a lot of problems with Physicalism, but where do you go when dealing with real world problems?
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
You don't turn to metaphysics to solve real-world problems.
EDIT: Also, idealism is not a position one takes on faith. It is a position one takes because it is the only sensible and coherent option.
I think we agree. But where does this leave idealism? Physicalism gains ground every time we discover something new. Idealism is stuck in ancient Greece.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
According to idealism, an object is a pattern abstracted from subjective experience. According to physicalism, an object is... what, exactly?
Metaphysics has no utility unless you have regard for truth for it's own sake.
I can't think of any discoveries that would gain ground for physicalism, unless all you mean by physicalism is weak supervenience. On the other hand, pretty much all the great discoveries of QM make hash of physicalism. The problem is that philosophers are generally very poorly educated in physics, and physicists are likewise poorly educated on metaphysics.
Ok now I must confess a lack of understanding of the nuances of the various isms. I think of Plato when I think of idealism. You are absolutely correct that an object is a pattern abstracted from subjective experience but I have many subjective experiences I can relate to the subjective experiences of others. I may not ever be able to know what is down there, but there is something down there that affects me and you and a spider and Britney Spears pretty much the same way.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Ok, the fact that this sounds like nonsense to you is not actually a persuasive argument against anything except your intelligence. If you just don't understand the sentence, say so. If you understand and disagree, say why.
I'll try and skip about three exchanges here, and say that physics acknowledges only a very small number of fundamental properties, and none of these properties could be said to mean anything except for the observations that they produce.
Plato's is a kind of idealism, as is Kant's Whitehead's, Berkley's (sp?), etc. Yours sounds like Kant's. The problem I have with this is the idea that there must be something "down there." Why? We don't imagine there is something "out there" that is the basis of physical laws. What makes objects different? And what would this unknown something, of which we can neither conceive nor have evidence, contribute to our understanding?
There doesn't need to be something down there and actually there probably isn't something down there that we could ever really get a grip on. This doesn't kill physicalism off. There is what there is. I suppose I am a pragmatic empiricist. But the only way I can interact with the world in a meaningful way is to deal with its physical reality. A physical reality that I share with you. Or so I believe. I guess faith is something all ismists are stuck with.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
And again, you completely misunderstood what I said. I did not say that physics did not adequately describe any properties whatsoever. I said that physical properties have no meaning, i.e. no non-mathematical content, except in the observations they produce.
You're mistaking what physicalism is now. You can believe that we share a physical reality as an idealist - in fact, every idealist who isn't also a solipsist believes this. A physicalist believes that a description of all the physical states of the world completely describes the world, while an idealist believes such a description is only a list of the rules which govern mental events.
But this just exemplifies the uselessness of tags. It may be turtles all the way down but I'm going to take very seriously the turtles I run into, and it seems to me we all run into the same turtles.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Quantum mechanics, our best effort at understanding the world, is only intelligible to an idealist.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
So now we want to talk about Locke's metaphysics? Because that is exactly what your short little post resembles, to a very surprising degree.
There are numerous problems with this concept of object, not the least of which is physical identity. If we take objects to be made up of textures, shapes, and densities, how do we tell one object apart from another? What if Object A has properties x - but then their properties change over time to properties y? Would it still be considered the same object? By the admittedly short post you have made, it doesn't seem like it could be considered the same.
The other objection that I would like to bring up has to do with objects themselves. They are problematic as a philosophical concept. Due to something which is often overlooked by all modern philosophy up until the 20th century (Time), I find it incredibly difficult to say that objects exist.
Indeed. I was just going to bring this up. Heidegger does an excellent deconstruction of Descartes in this manner. How do we, exactly, interact with an object. The ONLY way that you can do it from your manner is from a purely neurological standpoint, in which Language and Sensory communication determine objects. (In which case they are not actually PURE objects at all.)
What's a thought without consciousness? Behavior of an arbitrary complexity?