Видео

We just play via Zoom. I know it's probably better to play via Roll20 or smth, but I've never bothered to learn how to use it.

@@Keior55 I've never played V:tM, but I like the video game that came out in 2004 or so. However, this channel is and has always been exclusively devoted to Call of Cthulhu actual plays.

This is set in Boston, not east Asia.

@@modernmoralist ^ this person gets it

There seems to be an underlying assumption here that property only really exists because of state violence, but I don't think that is quite true. The threat of violence is definitely necessary for violence, but that violence can be from the property owner or the government. In the case of the government, it seems the most natural interpretation is that the property owner voluntary gives up their right to violence to protect their property in exchange for the government protecting their property. So, the second arrangement does add violence to the system because absent government, the first arrangement of violence to protect property still exists, but the second arrangement doesn't.

@@MIKAEL212345 Property does not exist, though, in the first arrangement. There is nothing stopping the strong from simply taking from the weak, so there is no principle of ownership apart from the personal ability to violently defeat others. The critical question, though, is this: how are disputes over lines of property actually resolved absent government? There is no way to objectively enforce a delineation of property in that arrangement because to do so is in itself the invention of government.

@@VinylTees "Property does not exist, though, in the first arrangement. There is nothing stopping the strong from simply taking from the weak, so there is no principle of ownership apart from the personal ability to violently defeat others. " But isn't this true with government as well? It seems to me that whether it is you defending your property under threat of your personal violence, or whether it is your family's violence, or whether it is a group of people you hired or whether it is government, it is all the same. It is all property in any case. So, I disagree that property doesn't exist absent government "The critical question, though, is this: how are disputes over lines of property actually resolved absent government? There is no way to objectively enforce a delineation of property in that arrangement because to do so is in itself the invention of government." Without government, the dispute resolves with might makes right, but so too in the case with government. Except in that case, instead of the right being who among Person A and Person B has more might, all the might lies with the government, so they are right. I don't really see a difference. Either way, with or without government, all property is is might makes right.

@@MIKAEL212345 I think this is basically not in conflict with my ultimate point, we’re just disagreeing on definitions. To me “property” refers to there being an ordering of ownership based on some sort of principles, those being defended by violence but violence not necessarily being the principle itself. If there is no government, then violence is the only principle and thus I don’t think “property” is the correct descriptor but I suppose you could call it that if you want. I’m saying that if you claim something to be yours in some sort of grand moral sense, that does not actually do much without some mechanism that uses coercion to enforce that claim against other claims including the claim of force. Perhaps the way to put it that’s closest in agreement with what you are saying is that every arrangement of ownership inherently comes with the threat of violence to uphold it, so the question of justice in property relations cannot be whether a given distribution is upheld by the threat of violence since that’s true of literally every distribution.

@@VinylTees Ahh, I see what you mean now. Yeah, that makes sense then

My view (and I think the view of Ralph) is that *no* physical object can, strictly speaking, be conscious. The subject of experience is really the soul. When we say that an organism or a brain is conscious, what we really mean is that the organism is associated with a soul in a certain way. So to say that a computer could be conscious is really, on this view, to say that the computer could be associated with a soul. So, in a way, I agree that it isn't conceivable that water flowing through siphons be conscious--but I don't think, when we ask why that is, that there's really anything special about the fact that it's water flowing through siphons as opposed to electricity flowing through nerves or whatever. This is roughly the point of Leibniz's mill, I guess. No physical system could be conscious in its own right. It can be associated with a soul. But could the system of water gates be associated with a soul--I don't see why not. It sounds weird. But I think the weirdness comes from focusing on the unusual implementation rather than the functional structure being realized.

@@dustin.crummettRight, I see, thanks for clarifying. So if I understand it, you meant to say "at some level of functional organisation, it will be possible for an AI to become conscious/associated with a soul"

I dislike when Americans say "Chinese surveillance state" as if oversurveillance isn't also a problem in the US. I also feel Dr. Vallier massively downplays the level of internal debate in modern China regarding political and economic matters.

Glad you enjoyed it! Not all substance dualists in contemporary philosophy are Cartesians (some are emergent dualists, etc.). As for Cartesianism, I have never been able to figure out what the problem about mental and physical substances interacting is supposed to be, if it isn't just the causal closure argument we discussed in the video. I think I know what the problem was when Princess Elizabeth raised it: causation was supposed to require contact, and Cartesian souls can't make contact with bodies. But nobody thinks that anymore, and post-Hume, we know that causation is fundamentally obscure anyway. So why is a soul interacting with a body any worse than any other two things interacting? That said, I do agree that there is a significant difference between contemporary philosophical conceptions of the soul and folk conceptions, which tend to be more ghost-like and even sort of quasi-physical (made out of mysterious soul-stuff). I almost asked about that in the interview, but we ran over time anyway. I think Ralph could say the philosophical conceptions represent sort of a charitable development of the folk conceptions, just as is necessary with many other things.

Fair point about emergent dualists, and yes I suppose the point I'm making will matter more to those concerned by causal closure. The part of the video that addressed this was perhaps the bit I understood least - causality may not require contact, but in modern terms doesn't causal closure of the physical just amount to the idea that events related causally fall under strict physical laws? We may have little idea what happens in the brain in any detailed sense, but surely we do have strong inductive reasons to believe that no laws of physics are violated there. But then it seems the substance dualist is forced either to say that some brain events are causally overdetermined or that there are indeed violations of physical laws (I couldn't quite work out from the video whether Ralph would see his position as committing him to the latter). Very possible I'm missing something here.

Water is this watery stuff around us. "Could water have been something other than H2O?," in the sense that's confusing to you, means "could this stuff--this very stuff--have been something other than H2O?" The answer turns out to be no, since that stuff *just is* H2O. But we had to learn that empirically. People used to have all sorts of ideas about water--that it was one of four fundamental elements, say. We didn't know that water had to be H2O until we learned, scientifically, that it actually is H2O. There's another question, which is what you're thinking of, and which confusingly could perhaps also be expressed with "Could water have been something other than H2O?," which is something like: could some *other* stuff have played the same role that water does on Earth--could there have been some other substance that has the same macro-level properties as water and fills up the lakes and rivers and that we called "water" and so on. The answer to that is presumably yes. Indeed, you might think that the answer being yes is precisely why we had to learn empirically that water is H2O, rather than one of the other things that could have filled the watery role. So, on Twin Earth, XYZ is the substance that fills the watery role--and therefore there is (speaking English now) water, even though there is twin water (which they confusingly but correctly call "water" in their language). (Very very roughly, the distinction between those two questions is what forms the basis of two-dimensional semantics, and the associated defense of the conceivability argument against materialism. Cf. consc.net/papers/2dargument.html, esp sec 2.)

Thank you, this was all very helpful. Re: your second paragraph -- yes that's what I was getting at, though I was focusing more on the phenomenological properties of water and you generalized it to all macro level properties.

Give one example of Pearce's argument which Oppy dismantled and in what way Oppy did this.

Estamos esperando? mister mentira.. Como oppy desmanteló?

“Emergence” is philosophy speak for “it just happens dude and we can’t give a good materialist explanation for it”

Oppy didn't argue that arguments for God's existence that work. What he argued was that arguments for and against God's existence are equally persuasive depending on which side of the debate you are. If you ask me, naturalistic explanations for the existence of the universe can't work because necessarily existing causes/grounds for the universe don't exist in the naturalistic explanation as anything they can pick as a candidate doesn't have existence as its property. Naturalism also can't explain the purpose of the universe - the telos or most important explanation according to Aristotle.

@@mathewsamuel1386 Hi Mathew. I think he's said that he doesn't think arguments on either side ought to persuade a person to change his mind. I disagree with him. The arguments are not balanced on both sides because of the features that are thorough-going in theistic arguments noted by Paul Draper - Understated Evidence , i.e., consciousness in general is evidence for theism but when you look at the kind and features of consciousness we have (embodied, temporal, tightly dependent on the brain) it isn't what we'd expect on theism. And overt reliance on controversial premises, i.e., premises that only a minority of philosophers AND scientists think are true. Most atheistic arguments (problem of evil, divine hiddenness, argument from scale etc.) don't have these problems. So, I don't think the sides are equally balanced regarding both Strength and Persuasiveness (I, myself, was a theist and I was persuaded by a variant of the Problem of Evil), as Oppy seems to think. I'm not sure if that answers your first point. I didn't mean Oppy said that only the theistic arguments fail - he thinks that both sides fail. I disagree with him both regarding the persuasiveness and the strength of the arguments, I don't think they're balanced as he seems to. Hence I wrote "why theistic arguments fail", because I think (some) atheistic arguments succeed while all theistic arguments fail. To your second point: I don't see how you can infer that from what we know about physics. It seems to be question-begging in my opinion. If you say that God has properties that make us understand why he necessarily exists, how do you know that Oppy's singularity (the naturalistic necessary entity) doesn't have those properties that would make us say, " ah! That's why it necessarily exists!", how do you know? I don't think that you do. If you appeal to experience, that's insufficient because you're stretching experience where it can't yet apply. If I said that the minds we know of through experience are embodied and temporal, so God can't have a mind (he's not embodied and he's atemporal) - you would disagree and say that our experience is limited so we can't make that conclusion. I'm speaking to that same intuition here about the naturalistic singularity. You simply can't assert that it doesn't have properties that would make it so. As Simon Blackburn said, it is simply prejudiced to conclude that God is in good standing when it comes to properties sufficient for existence and that nothing naturalistic could be on that same par. Secondly, I don't believe that the universe has a purpose, and neither does Oppy. At least a purpose that is objective and independent of our minds. So, there is no 'telos' that the universe has that Oppy and I need to explain, because we think Aristotle's purpose-oriented metaphysics was incorrect. Because my metaphysics (and I assume Oppy's) is heavily informed by Fundamental Physics - which says that the universe is mechanistic and described by patterns as formulated by differential equations but has no goals/desires. This is roughly how I think about these things. I've recently diverged from philosophy of religion, however, because I just don't find it interesting anymore (I'm also not convinced that it's oriented towards any insight or truth) so you've chosen very late to engage, lol.

@siviwejavu8827 Ok, a few points here. First, the problems of evil, divine hiddennness, etc., don't support atheism. First, you are presuming that God couldn't have a genuine reason for allowing any of those be the state of affairs. E.g., evil could be allowed by him to build human character, endurance and innovation in the same way that a university professor will make you go days and even weeks sleepless to do difficult assignments to build your intellectual muscle. Divine hiddennness might obtain because God wants humans to exercise their free will. Etc. Furthermore, none of these prove that God doesn't exist. At best, you can argue that maybe God doesn't quite fit the description of, say, Abrahamic faiths. On why Oppy's singularity fails, I'll give you 3 reasons. 1. Either this singularity is stable or it isn't. If it is stable, then it would just remain a singularity and never give rise to anything else. If it is unstable, then it couldn't have even existed in the first place - unless it was part of something originally stable which was subsequently perturbed - in which case the singularity couldn't be the first cause, neither could the thing which was perturbed since the causal power would lie with the source of perturbation, etc. 2. A singularity, by definition, lacks structural features. Accordingly, a singularity can not explain the diversity of structures in the universe or the phenomena that we observe. Phenomena, for example, require mechanisms which, in turn, require structure. 3. Then you've got to ask, a singularity of what and where? Which immediately tells you that a singularity could never be an ontologically prior entity. About minds and embodiment, I think you just answered your own question when you said I couldn't appeal to experience because it's insufficient. You must apply your own principles, too. You also don't have any evidence that the only material there could be is the stuff of our natural world. Our universe has no purpose? How do you know that? Science surely can't answer that question. It has the wrong premise for the question of purpose. Science is based on the premise that the universe and the things in it are a sort of machine whose mechanisms could be discovered, described and replicated. So science is not designed to look for purpose in the universe, but to unravel the mechanism behind the functioning of the universe. How can you answer a question you do think about or even equipped to ponder? But one can even argue from scientific data that it is false that the universe is purposeless. Science have found patterns in the universe. So, at the very least, you could argue for an aesthetic purpose to the universe based on those patterns?

​@@siviwejavu8827Que piensas sobre las matemáticas explican cosas y echos ..No te párece eso a inteligencia , como un plano mapa en el cual vas descubriendo cosas ya echas de antemano por una inteligencia? Y tu solo vas descubriendo eso ya dado por una inteligencia mayor a nosotros?

Circular reasoning

You need to defined than what is an explanation for you.

@yadurajdas532 God is an assertion, not an explanation. In order for God to be an explanation you would first have to demonstrate that God exists in order to be able to explain anything at all before God can be the explanation for anything specific, and that’s where the problem lies. Theists haven’t even gotten past step 0 in using God as an explanation for anything because no theist has demonstrated God’s existence in order for God to then explain anything else. The reason that the naturalist has a head start here is because, insofar as we can know anything, we know that the natural world exists in some capacity

@@yadurajdas532how is it circular?

@@yadurajdas532not really. there isnt that many definitions of "explanation" that it needs to be clarified further.

We shouldn’t always take intuition as a surefire indicator of some moral truth. When reason wins out (as I believe it does in the case of considering the moral status of nonhuman animals), we should reject our intuitions. What we find intuitive is deeply connected to the kind of society we live in.

@@cole4808 not clear what you mean by reason ‘reason’ here

@@muhammedshanushan3931 Reason, at its simplest, is the process of evaluating our grounds for action and belief. We come to the conclusion that 2+2=4 is a necessary truth not by intuition, but by reason. In the same way, we come to the conclusion that animals have moral status not by intuition, but by considering the reasons for our beliefs and intuitions and evaluating them as good or bad.

@@cole4808 what reason you have to accept Peano axiom ?

I think I talked about that here: www.researchgate.net/publication/364087588_The_ethics_of_consuming_meat Though I don't remember everything I said.

Livestock production requires planting and harvesting more crops than raising plants directly for human consumption. I'm not sure anything else needs to be said to dismiss this objection.

@@AlexSocarras To be clear, the burger veganism claim is not that all current forms of animal agriculture are better than non-animal agriculture, just that the optimal cruelty reducing diet includes some meat sourced from animals raised in very particular conditions (For instance, free grazing cows eating grass diets in areas that are geographically unsuitable for plant agriculture). That’s totally compatible with your observation as far as I can tell.

@@AlexSocarraswhy is there plastic in livestock feed?

@@dustin.crummettthe global annual income per household (4.5 people) is estimated at around 9 thousand dollars USD it would appear that “most people” eat meat for nutrition purposes. The UN 🇺🇳 has been quoted calling Dairy ( dried milk powder) as a malnutrition remedy from plant based diets, high in calories but poor in macronutrients.

I think I might have talked about that somewhere here, although I can't remember: ruclips.net/video/2p4cOlaKgOM/видео.html I'll probably do a whole video on Christianity and animal rights at some point. Basically, I think the issue you raise seems like maybe a Christian argument in favor of thinking consumption of some animal products is permissible for people in circumstances relevantly like those of poor people in first-century Palestine; much less clear that it means much for people in modern industrial societies.

​@@dustin.crummett What would the difference between us and first century Palestinians be such that it was ok for them to eat animal products but not ok for us (even if we didn't factor farm)? Is the idea that they had to eat animal products because they didn't have various legumes and plant milks fortified with B12 etc. and so they wouldn't have been very healthy if they were vegans?

It is rational , did u come to learn or troll?

@@pabloandres06183 If it were rational to believe in an invisible being with miraculous powers who can be used to explain everything one does not know and with whom you can communicate but only in one direction, one would expect intelligent people to realize the existence of such a being through good reasons. Not through indoctrination, not through the need to belong to a group, not to appease the fear of death or the idea of unrepairable injustices, and so on. Not rational. Believing in people walking on water simply because someone said so, as Christians do, or believing that people split the moon in two because someone said so, as Muslims do, is about as far from rational as you can get. Reason has nothing to do with that business. The belief in gods is purely irrational and is based on emotional dependencies and self-identity, as Low Bar Bill clearly exemplifies. That's what it boils down to. There are no reasons but rationalizations. Don't you realize how defensive your comment was? That's not a coincidence, it's a psychological defense mechanism. I'll bet you haven't even read the holy book of the religion you believe in.

@@vejeke I believe in Jesus via tradition. The Catholic church was began by Peter, chief disciple. I would have believed in a God because of creation. A rational belief.

@@koppite9600 IF it was a “rational belief”(an oxymoron if there ever was one), then you could show the evidence and logical steps you used to arrive at that conclusion. The fact that nobody has ever managed to do that shows that belief is not rational at all.

@@FourDeuce01 beliefs just have to be supported, it is the nature of beliefs. It is not far from gambling. Believing there's no God is also a gamble. Many atheists despise the topic when they shouldn't.

Debate with Pearce🤣

@@juanfelipearteaga9022 He can’t prove any god exists either.😜

@@FourDeuce01 he just has to support his belief, and that's it. No proving needed.

@@koppite9600 Too bad he can’t actually support his belief. All he can do is try.🤡

@@FourDeuce01 thats only your opinion! You also believe God doesn't exist.

Why did you take time to insult them? Your heart is either full of hate, or you see yourself superior (pride)

@@koppite9600 So, those are the only two possibilities? You know that is a fallacy? Fallacies are what makes the theist brain go round.

That was hallarious.