/lit/ - Literature

>Has a thought
>Stops halfway through
>Posts about it anyway
I’ve been banned for posting about authors.

>be atheist
>believe you can have ethics without any metaphysical or theological grounding

>>13896552
>be an atheist
>have ethics without any metaphysical or theological grounding

>be anti-materialist
>refuses to read any metaphysics except the fallacy-ridden and historically-contingent 'systems' of individual meme philosophers instead of anonymous and immemorial schools of thought honed by the immeasurable wisdom of countless sages

>>13896407
yeah so what, fuck you butt hurt fly

>>13896581
Morality is an evolved trait in social creatures beneficial in so far as it improves cooperation. No god needed butterfly faggot.

>>13896734
Pretty much what I said, yeah.
Is "trait" metaphysical?

>>13896581
that's.. quite contradictory isn't it ? you can't create an ethical system based on empiricism can you ? maybe pragmatism then ? but that wouldn't be ethics.
ok... we can settle this, what do you mean by ethics ?

>>13896315
No atheist worth his salt denies metaphysics, i think you mean scepticism but that is more a agnosticism than anything

>>13897068
I’m thinking I should have taken “metaphysics” out. Does that make it sensible?
I’m not at all good with academic philosophy jargon, I admit

>>13896602
>>13896407
>Butt hurt fly
Lol what a fucking King!

>>13897092
no, i'm not familiar with academic philosophy either, we're on the same level here, i think. But, what i meant is, for me, ethics is a study about morals and human behavior, whilst trying to resolve human problems, that is my definition of ethics. So, you can have, yes, an empirical data for ethical study because we deem some actions good and others bad, but that wouldn't be all of it... since you have to abstract a value for that action, since, in itself, it can't be good or bad. Am i making a lick of sense ?

>>13897130
You can lick me ohoho

Idk why they would be mutually exclusive. Why do you think they are?

>>13897140
no. Be ashamed of yourself.

>>13896315
What does it mean for something to be metaphysical? I guess the term is ok if you only mean to imply that there -may- be something beyond the physical, but we've never had any indication of that. Instead I see pseuds throwing the term around, as if by virtue of its etymology and historical use alone non-physicality can be assumed.

We should lose the the term 'metaphysics' and place ontology as the prime 'meta' category, concerned with all aspects of existence. Whatever your bias, at least then we'd have neutral, non-assumptive term instead of a loaded one.

>>13896734
>Morality is an evolved trait
>morality evolved
>evolution

>>13897221
you metaphysically picture this text in your mind before you brought it into existence. You can say your thoughts were merely synapses, i won't disagree, but you didn't picture electric pulses, but a voice or an image.
Math is metaphysics. So it's geometry.

>>13897221
Of course there are things other than the physical. Unless you deny the subjective-objective split. Metaphysics is just the study of the abstract.

>>13897265
Thoughts, abstractions and all aspects of my post are physical processes. At no point does a thought, or what leads to a thought, or a recorded thought, leave the physical realm (or at the very least, there is no evidence or established logical probability that it does). Nor did I 'bring the thought into existence', it is the result of physical processes transforming the organization of matter/energy that already existed.

>>13897544
Perhaps, but it's far easier to represent and understand through abstract constructs. It's like how math is an abstract simplification of physical processes. It's the same thing, you're just creating systems with subjective concepts.

>>13897550
>>13897544
Like, when you describe a series of thoughts it's much faster to condense them by describing them as the abstract concept of "thoughts" than it would be to describe the individual synapses and processes that led to creation of the thoughts, and what the thoughts are composed of.

>>13897495
I do deny it, it's a false dichotomy. All indications are that we are continuous with reality -- that subjects are a subset of objects (objects that experience). There is no reason to assume the split, and it seems reasonable to suspect a readiness to make that assumption as being borne of psychological conceit (mysticizing experience).

>>13896552
I nuked your God. He withstood the blasts but the radiation poisoning did him in.
Where is your teleological grounding for ethics now?

>>13897550
Certainly, capacity for abstraction is our most powerful tool -- it defines us. My issue is that many thinkers seem to automatically treat practical dichotomies/categories as concrete ones. I think it's important to emphasize that an abstraction of practical use does not necessarily imply a concrete duality, split or 'class' of existence.

Subjectivity is a useful way to describe the necessarily limited and unique perspectives of objectively different observers, but that is all contained within objectivity.

Abstraction is a crucially important capacity, but abstractions themselves (as thoughts/information) are concrete things... They are abstractions because they describe symbolic representations of the concrete as you say, but that in no way indicates an actual 'abstract realm' that is not contained by the concrete.

To summarize, we should remember that purpose of abstraction (in the context of philosophy) is to more accurately describe reality (the concrete). It would seem prudent then, to adopt a more neutral term which doesn't contain the assumption of 'beyond physical' in the language.

>>13897631
I can see your point, but metaphysics doesn't necessarily mean "beyond the physical," despite the etymology. It just means the study of the abstract. It seems mostly pointless to create an entirely new term.

>>13896315
>be atheist
>say you deny metaphysics whilst unknowingly embracing them in the form of substance-materialism

>>13897649
Fair enough, but I think you're underestimating the effect of loaded language. I frequently observe people employing the term in an assumptive, non-neutral way; you can see it in this thread.

>>13896789
they don’t get it

>>13897221
In metaphysics there are different fields
>Ontology: What are things?
>Rational psychology: What is the mind?
>Rational cosmology: What is the universe?
>Rational theology: What is god?

can some one properly explain metaphysics for me? And if you can, why would it be the Christian God or another God?

>>13896734
The evolution of social behavior can't guide moral facts.

>>13897805
You haven't comprehended my objection to the term, or are disingenuously ignoring it. The language 'metaphysical' contains an implicit assumption of actual dichotomy between the physical and something not contained within the physical (which has not been logically or empirically indicated).

If you employ the term neutrally, that's great, but many people wield the term as an unexamined equivocation between abstract and concrete dichotomy.

>>13897808
You're quite vague here. What do you think a moral fact is? Do you assume morality to be truly universal (even though our natures are not)?

>>13897785
It's just others peoples beliefs man, calm the fuck down Big Brother.

>>13897806
read Guenon

What would imply denying metaphysics? It's pretty obvious that abstract concepts as consciousness are beyond the physical ground. You just deny sentience?

>>13897841
No it doesn't. Nor is e.g. metamathematics something outside mathematics. Read up on the ontic-ontological dichotomy.

>>13898536
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system

>>13897841
A metaphysical claim is a claim concerning any of the domains I laid out. If someone tries to use it for something else, then they are probaly lying/ not knowing what they talk about.

>>13897857
I should have used the word "moral statement" or "moral proposition", possibly moral sentiment would be better, or moral belif.

If social behavior created by physical processes is what determines morality, then we can either say that the the behavior created by biological processes is moral or that the behavior generated by biological processes has the trait of beibg moral. In the first example, the definition of a behavior that is moral is the whole evolution thing while in the second, things has a property of being moral. If it's the definition of morality, then it's meaningless. This is becuase "social behavior that is generated by biological processes is social behavior that is generated by biological processes" would then have the same meaning as "social behavior that is generated by biological processes is moral". Theese two sentences have different meanings, meaning that "social behavior that is generated by biological processes" and "moral" can't have the same meaning. The second alternative, "social behavior that is generated by biological processes has the trait of being moral" needs to be proven by showing that "social behavior that is generated by biological processes" has the trait of being moral, which require a definition of morality and a proof that "social behavior that is generated by physical processes" has the property of being moral.