Gregg R Thomas

The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the “wrong” beliefs.

–F.A. Hayek

Unseen wrote:
Mathematics may have originally grown out of a need to solve real world problems in physical reality, it has gone way beyond that. One obvious example is prime numbers and another is imaginary numbers.

My point is that in the same way that mathematics has grown way beyond its beginnings, morality is the response of normative…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Mathematics may have originally grown out of a need to solve real world problems in physical reality, it has gone way beyond that. One obvious example is prime numbers and another is imaginary numbers.

But 97 rocks can never be divided into groups of the same size, because 97 is a prime number.  Similarly, even imaginary numbers…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
OK, so now absolute morality is just values “one holds dear”. So, if one culture holds sex with minors in high regard, and another will lock you away in jail, they are both following absolute morality. Got it. Yeah, see I don’t buy that.

When religious folk talk about absolutes they are talking about specific laws set down by th…

[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
Facts are in one realm and values are in another one and never the twain shall meet because facts are value neutral

You’re right, I’m being a bit glib and disingenuous. It’s true, they’re different realms, and we don’t treat them the same when making judgments of what to do. We take both into account. In a way,…

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_Robert_ wrote:
absolute morality

There’s “absolute morality” – whatever that is – nobody can say – and “moral absolutes”, which are the strict rules necessary for ethical behaviour.

@unseen – if moral values are absolutes, then what do we do when two or more values apply?  Which one is “absolutely” correct overall?  Are the others wrong?  Do…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Facts are in one realm and values are in another one and never the twain shall meet because facts are value neutral

You’re right, I’m being a bit glib and disingenuous.  It’s true, they’re different realms, and we don’t treat them the same when making judgments of what to do.  We take both into account.

In a way, moral values are j…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
So there are really no “absolutes”. “Killing is wrong” is  meaningless.

No phrase I can understand is literally “meaningless.”

There are an infinite number of “killings” possible. And when you say “If one person feels” as in your fetus example, well that’s not exactly an absolute.

When someone expresses a feeling in a moral…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:

Unseen wrote:
You can’t have any sort of ethical system without absolutes. You can make ethical pronouncements till the cows come home, but without some sort of absolute value(s), you have no foundation to build one on.

It seems that with any sort of absolutes there ends up being a gazillion exceptions. Give us an absolute that h…

[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
You can make ethical pronouncements till the cows come home, but without some sort of absolute value(s), you have no foundation to build one on.

Yes you do, you have physical and scientific facts to build the foundation on.

Facts are in one realm and values are in another one and never the twain shall meet…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
But it doesn’t follow from that that it can’t be intelligent or conscious in a way it that serves its interests rather than ours.

You’re right, it doesn’t.  But your statement is also consistent with the idea that it can never be human.

Unseen wrote:
You can make ethical pronouncements till the cows come home, but without some sort of absolute value(s), you have no foundation to build one on.

Yes you do, you have physical and scientific facts to build the foundation on.

You can’t have any sort of ethical system without absolutes. You can make ethical pronouncements till the cows come home, but without some sort of absolute value(s), you have no foundation to build one on.

Simon Paynton wrote:
An AI can never be human-centred, because it’s Artificial.

But it doesn’t follow from that that it can’t be intelligent or conscious in a way it that serves its interests rather than ours.

Unseen wrote:
Your considerations are all human-centered. An intelligent AI needn’t be.

An AI can never be human-centred, because it’s Artificial.

State-of-the-art, which is to say, pretty dumb in some places but fair enough a lot of the time.  Yes, the AI has done a good job of summarising the field in my opinion.

The question of whether morality must originate from an absolute authority, particularly a supernatural one, is central to a lot of philosophical debate between theists and secularists. Many religious apologists argue that without a divine authority, there can be no objective basis for morality, meaning there’s no ultimate “right” or “wron…[Read more]