Texas v abortion

[tstorm823]

Physicists are coming up with new particles all the time. What makes them physical as opposed to not physical?

I'm gonna go with mass and/or energy. I'm sure a thoughtful comment would be more detailed than that, but that is probably sufficient.

Yes, but if something can interact with what is "real" then that something must also be every bit as real, and therefore part of nature.

If it is completely separate from what is "real", then it may exist but is functionally irrelevant to us, because it has no effect on us whatsoever.

You seem to have focused out the word "physical", which is the important word. "Real, therefore part of nature" is not an axiom I would agree to, and is really just assuming the conclusion here.

Like, you all seem to have a different definition of nature than human civilization has for millenia. And the definition you've all chosen inherently precludes the supernatural. "Anything that is real is part of nature" means by definition that anything supernatural isn't real. To say then that you don't believe in the supernatural is tautological, basically "everything that is real is real". Once we account for differences in how the terms are being used, you're not even stating a disagreement, you're just telling me to use your terms rather than those used by centuries of great thinkers who discussed nature as a subset of reality (rather than all of it) for useful communicative reasons.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

The "great thinkers through out history" didn't know jack or shit about how the world actually works. Electricity is relatively new knowledge. Lightning was supernatural until it wasn't.

You can believe whatever you want about the supernatural world. You do not have the right to force other people to follow the rules set out by your supernatural world.

 

[Agema]

I'm gonna go with mass and/or energy. I'm sure a thoughtful comment would be more detailed than that, but that is probably sufficient.

You seem to have focused out the word "physical", which is the important word. "Real, therefore part of nature" is not an axiom I would agree to, and is really just assuming the conclusion here.

Like, you all seem to have a different definition of nature than human civilization has for millenia. And the definition you've all chosen inherently precludes the supernatural. "Anything that is real is part of nature" means by definition that anything supernatural isn't real. To say then that you don't believe in the supernatural is tautological, basically "everything that is real is real". Once we account for differences in how the terms are being used, you're not even stating a disagreement, you're just telling me to use your terms rather than those used by centuries of great thinkers who discussed nature as a subset of reality (rather than all of it) for useful communicative reasons.

Christians believe that miracles really occur. For instance, Jesus turned water into wine. In order to do this, Jesus needed to alter the chemical composition of a fluid in the real world, from H2O (with small quantities of minerals) to H2O with a relatively dense and complex mix of mostly organic chemicals. And we can all agree that is the realm of the "natural sciences", mostly physics and chemistry.

So Jesus must have used some sort of power capable of interacting with the real world to do so. Not only that, but the Bible is explicit that Jesus was a mortal man: so a real being accessed power to change a real fluid. That necessarily means that power would have to be real, or how else could it work? How else can a real man exert a change to real world energy and matter without that power also being real? For instance it would be theoretically measurable, if only we had the right equipment in the right place at the right time to do so. And this also would mean that even a fully divine being that created such a power would need to be part of the real world, because it must have some connection (be that energy, mass, or some form of exotic power as yet unknown) with the real world to do so. As identifiable phenomena in the real world... that is nature.

There is nothing tautological to not believe in the supernatural, it is a simple statement of factual belief much like "God does not exist" and "The world is not run by a clique of alien lizards". I think there is room for "supernatural" to exist in a sense, which is more along the lines of "beyond current scientific understanding": the same principle as Arthur C. Clarke's quotation "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

My philosophy is hardly first rate, but it strikes me that "everything that is real is real" is essentially a form of the Law of Identity, which goes at least as far back as Aristotle.

 

[tstorm823]

Christians believe that miracles really occur. For instance, Jesus turned water into wine. In order to do this, Jesus needed to alter the chemical composition of a fluid in the real world, from H2O (with small quantities of minerals) to H2O with a relatively dense and complex mix of mostly organic chemicals. And we can all agree that is the realm of the "natural sciences", mostly physics and chemistry.

So Jesus must have used some sort of power capable of interacting with the real world to do so. Not only that, but the Bible is explicit that Jesus was a mortal man: so a real being accessed power to change a real fluid. That necessarily means that power would have to be real, or how else could it work? How else can a real man exert a change to real world energy and matter without that power also being real? For instance it would be theoretically measurable, if only we had the right equipment in the right place at the right time to do so. And this also would mean that even a fully divine being that created such a power would need to be part of the real world, because it must have some connection (be that energy, mass, or some form of exotic power as yet unknown) with the real world to do so. As identifiable phenomena in the real world... that is nature.

Magically turning water into wine without any means to do so is considered a miracle because it is violative of the laws of nature. I'm confident you don't believe Jesus turned water into wine, but the premise you're setting up here is that if Jesus did turn water into wine, that just means our understanding of nature is insufficient to explain how that one guy had super powers. That's... an odd stance, I'll say. I don't think I've ever spoken to someone who took the position that a man walking on liquid water is natural, and we're just ignorant of the mechanism.

There is nothing tautological to not believe in the supernatural.

No, of course not. But it is tautological to argue with others based on that, given the definitions you're operating under. You've defined "nature" as "everything that is real". That makes it logically absolute that supernatural things aren't real. Which is fine, but at the same time, it tells me nothing. Typically, if someone says that they don't believe in the supernatural, you can confidently extrapolate that they don't think gods, ghosts, miracles, magic, etc are real. The way you've positioned yourself, you could believe in any of those things, you just define them as natural if they exist. I have no idea if you disagree with me on a point here, beyond how to use the word "nature". Like, if I recall where this whole tangent started on, we were talking about free will. Do you think that free will (if it exists) is violative of our current understanding of the laws of nature? When you insist free will isn't supernatural, it actually doesn't answer that question.

 

[Agema]

Magically turning water into wine without any means to do so is considered a miracle because it is violative of the laws of nature. I'm confident you don't believe Jesus turned water into wine, but the premise you're setting up here is that if Jesus did turn water into wine, that just means our understanding of nature is insufficient to explain how that one guy had super powers. That's... an odd stance, I'll say. I don't think I've ever spoken to someone who took the position that a man walking on liquid water is natural, and we're just ignorant of the mechanism.

You can say that no-one you've ever spoken to thinks that a man walking on liquid water is natural, and that makes sense. But it's an oddly narrow and oblique way to approach the issue.

I can't help but point out that once upon a time, no-one understood how earthquakes happened, and they imagined gods shaking the earth. What was believed magical became understood as natural. One might point out that plenty of modern day magicians have (apparently) walked on water, but I think most people realise it's a trick understandable with modern science, not supernatural powers. The history of scientific development involves a continually increasing list of things once ascribed to the divine / magic / etc. which have progressively been explained as nature instead. And thus we might realise that a man (apparently) walking on water is natural: we would only think it isn't when we don't know how it's done.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

No, of course not. But it is tautological to argue with others based on that, given the definitions you're operating under. You've defined "nature" as "everything that is real". That makes it logically absolute that supernatural things aren't real. Which is fine, but at the same time, it tells me nothing. Typically, if someone says that they don't believe in the supernatural, you can confidently extrapolate that they don't think gods, ghosts, miracles, magic, etc are real. The way you've positioned yourself, you could believe in any of those things, you just define them as natural if they exist. I have no idea if you disagree with me on a point here, beyond how to use the word "nature". Like, if I recall where this whole tangent started on, we were talking about free will. Do you think that free will (if it exists) is violative of our current understanding of the laws of nature? When you insist free will isn't supernatural, it actually doesn't answer that question.

Free will is supernatural in the sense that we don't know the mechanics of why it occurs, we cannot test for if it exists in the minds of other species, and we aren't 100% certain of its actual existence in humans or other species. Like, crows have communal communication, octopi have emotions, there's at least one bird out there very into beastiality (and a very patient guy is helping save their species because of it), and every animal likes to play and hates being bored in some fashion or another.

So who's to say that we are the sole inheritors of Free Will? And that it's the Divine Providence of the One True God? Even if free will remains supernatural, if we never figure out the mechanism by which occurs or how to test for it, the other arguments you've stapled to the side of it still don't matter. Likewise, even if we live in a fully deterministic universe, it's fantastically unlikely that we are ever going to be able to parse the insanely huge dataset required to accurately predict anything but the most basic of behaviors or choices with any degree of certainty, so why bother worrying about it?

 

[Trunkage]

Christians believe that miracles really occur. For instance, Jesus turned water into wine. In order to do this, Jesus needed to alter the chemical composition of a fluid in the real world, from H2O (with small quantities of minerals) to H2O with a relatively dense and complex mix of mostly organic chemicals. And we can all agree that is the realm of the "natural sciences", mostly physics and chemistry.

Just want to point out that just because you are a Christian, that doesn't mean that you think miracles happen.

That Venn diagram is not a circle

 

[tstorm823]

I can't help but point out that once upon a time, no-one understood how earthquakes happened, and they imagined gods shaking the earth. What was believed magical became understood as natural.

Exactly. Had they been using your definition of "nature", they would have still claimed gods were shaking the earth and called it nature.

So why bother worrying about it?

Because choice is the only thing people really have that is theirs and theirs alone. It is the central concept of life. Almost all conceptions of the purpose of life involve choice. Morality becomes a shallow list of preferences without choice. Existence is slavery without choice. I'm not saying you have to worry about it, or you can't live your life happily without caring about it, but you have to understand why people think about free will so deeply.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Exactly. Had they been using your definition of "nature", they would have still claimed gods were shaking the earth and called it nature.

Lol, wut? It's the fundies that are claiming natural disasters are the Will of God my dude,

Because choice is the only thing people really have that is theirs and theirs alone. It is the central concept of life. Almost all conceptions of the purpose of life involve choice. Morality becomes a shallow list of preferences without choice. Existence is slavery without choice. I'm not saying you have to worry about it, or you can't live your life happily without caring about it, but you have to understand why people think about free will so deeply.

You believe that I've come to my conclusion without deep thought. This is because you believe that anybody giving the topic the correct amount of consideration would automatically mean that they'd end up agreeing with you, because you are objectively correct. That's a sheep's way of thinking. Which makes sense, given you are part of a religion that considers itself a flock. I used to be too. I know the rhetoric, tstorm, all that happened is I stopped believing in it.

You are free to believe that Life (generalized proper noun) has some overarching plot it's supposed to play out, with right choices and wrong choices, but what you cannot do is demand that other people believe in your specific unprovable and unfalsifiable version of ghosts.
And considering that your specific version of ghosts very heavily punishes people who make "wrong" choices, then people have the same ability to make choices as I have a realistic opportunity to say "no" when my mom asks if I want to help with the dishes. Only less, because my mom could not actually condemn my immortal soul to an eternity of suffering, she could only make me feel like it. Of course, even the worst treated of slaves had the choice to obey their masters or suffer enormous and disproportionate consequences, so...is religion slavery then?

Conceptually, I like religions. I like myths, I like ghosts, I like fairy rings and fortunes, yokai and charms, etc. I don't believe any of it, but it's neat and there's no reason to be rude. Just because I don't believe in fate doesn't mean there's any reason to tempt it. And if they bring people a sense of community or focus or comfort or happiness, that's great! But when fuckwits start demanding that the government force people to accept their narrow definitions of values, determine that anybody who doesn't believe their specific ghost story is inherently immoral, that everybody should be forced to follow their objectively correct religious rules, I draw the fucking line.

 

[tstorm823]

You believe that I've come to my conclusion without deep thought.

This was the laziest non sequitur yet.

Edit: because there's never going to be a better example than this. @Silvanus, I sometimes put my thoughts down and get accused of telling other people what they believe (typically just for arguing a semantic point). You wanna see trying to tell someone else what they believe, check this out.

 

[Kwak]

This was the laziest non sequitur yet.

Edit: because there's never going to be a better example than this. @Silvanus, I sometimes put my thoughts down and get accused of telling other people what they believe (typically just for arguing a semantic point). You wanna see trying to tell someone else what they believe, check this out.

This bit implies that -
"I'm not saying you have to worry about it, or you can't live your life happily without caring about it, but you have to understand why people think about free will so deeply."
Implying he doesn't or hasn't thought deeply enough about it, because if he had he would have inevitably have come to your position on the matter.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Free will is supernatural in the sense that we don't know the mechanics of why it occurs, we cannot test for if it exists in the minds of other species, and we aren't 100% certain of its actual existence in humans or other species.

Compatibilists are sure. We don't get hung up on incoherent understandings of what is necessary to constitute "free will". If you can do otherwise if you want to, your action is freely willed. It does not particularly matter if you cannot want otherwise, randomly or for some other reason, because freely willed actions need only account for what you do want rather than what you don't. If you can do what you want, then you are free.

It gets more complicated in instances where one is being manipulated in some fashion, but nowhere near as complicated as it gets absolutely always for any incompatibilist analysis of literally anything relevant to the philosophy.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

This was the laziest non sequitur yet.

Edit: because there's never going to be a better example than this. @Silvanus, I sometimes put my thoughts down and get accused of telling other people what they believe (typically just for arguing a semantic point). You wanna see trying to tell someone else what they believe, check this out.

Oh, we're well aware that you are bound and determined to argue semantic points instead of anything of value.

 

[Trunkage]

Because choice is the only thing people really have that is theirs and theirs alone. It is the central concept of life. Almost all conceptions of the purpose of life involve choice. Morality becomes a shallow list of preferences without choice. Existence is slavery without choice. I'm not saying you have to worry about it, or you can't live your life happily without caring about it, but you have to understand why people think about free will so deeply.

Like, how can you think this and be a Republican?

They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to force poor people into work they dont want to do. I.e. they focus on deleting choices

 

[Kwak]

Like, how can you think this and be a Republican?

They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to force poor people into work they dont want to do. I.e. they focus on deleting choices

No, there's always the dogma of 'choice' and free will to justify the callous disregard - "just get a better job, you just made bad decisions, it is all your fault, you were free at any time to choose the 'right' way."

 

[Trunkage]

No, there's always the dogma of 'choice' and free will to justify the callous disregard - "just get a better job, you just made bad decisions, it is all your fault, you were free at any time to choose the 'right' way."

They also keep saying that they have to stop any social security to force people to work. This got way worse during the pandemic. See also abortion laws, this whole CRT thing, sex ed outcries, war on drugs, Patriot act etc. Most of the CARES act was trying to force people into work

 

[tstorm823]

This bit implies that -
"I'm not saying you have to worry about it, or you can't live your life happily without caring about it, but you have to understand why people think about free will so deeply."
Implying he doesn't or hasn't thought deeply enough about it, because if he had he would have inevitably have come to your position on the matter.

No, it doesn't imply that. I was responding to "why bother worrying about that?" I can see in a vacuum how you might take that as a personal assessment of gx, but it was 100% the general "you". My response to "why bother worrying about free will?" is essentially "I'm not saying people have to worry about free will, but it is completely understandable why they do". That is not a statement about MysteriousGX's position on anything, it's just an answer to the question "why bother worrying about it?"

Oh, we're well aware that you are bound and determined to argue semantic points instead of anything of value.

If there is any overarching theme in my posts here over time, it's the belief that we're all in much greater agreement on most things than people act like. I can't even begin to guess how many times I've said "we're not actually disagreeing" on the Escapist. And the reason to argue over something we actually agree on is always semantics. It's always different assessments of the meanings of words that lead people who believe the same abstract concepts to conflict in the specifics. In situations where people agree and don't realize it, semantics have all the value in the conversation. Hence, that's what I argue about here with basically everyone but Seanchaidh, who genuinely sees the world upsidedown from my perspective.

Like, how can you think this and be a Republican?

They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to force poor people into work they dont want to do. I.e. they focus on deleting choices

In your specific example of forcing people to work, nobody is forcing people to work. Existence forces people as a whole to work or die. No political party invented that requirement, nor can any political party undo it, and pretending that people won't have to work as hard is part of how communist countries repeatedly create massive famines.

In a general sense, I don't think the Republican Party is for or against choice. Whether choice is considered good or bad varies by issue, as is true of anyone. Choice to murder people? Everyone thinks that's bad. Choice of ice cream flavor? Everyone thinks that's good. Choice to own a gun? Now we're getting controversial. I don't think any lawmakers put "choice is universally good" on their list of guiding principles. Even if they did, I don't think any of what your imagining is actually the foundation of Republicanism.

You should understand, the Republican Party that you're exposed to is at the federal level, and occasionally down to the state level. That's not the whole picture. The premise of the federal government being minimal is to refer those powers back to the most localized entity capable of wielding them. A Republican in Congress and a Republican at the municipal level are often doing opposites by design. Not to defend Mitt Romney or the Affordable Care Act, but it's a good example: Romney helped design what was basically the ACA for his state, and then went on to oppose the ACA federally, and that's not a contradiction. That is the Republican view of federalism. If you try and take only the nation-wide positions on specific issues as representative of the Republican Party, you won't ever understand the dynamic. Like the argument I had with Agema about refugees in Oklahoma: at the federal level, the Republicans acted as the skeptics of the program, but locally they were volunteering on the welcoming committee, because different levels of government have different responsibilities in America's constitutional system.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

They also keep saying that they have to stop any social security to force people to work. This got way worse during the pandemic. See also abortion laws, this whole CRT thing, sex ed outcries, war on drugs, Patriot act etc. Most of the CARES act was trying to force people into work

The pandemic is where the Republican party went from "work or die" to "work and die".

 

[tstorm823]

They also keep saying that they have to stop any social security to force people to work.

That's not it. The push was to end expanded unemployment benefits. Unemployment typically is "if you lose your job, we will support your basic needs until you find a new job". That's a good thing, that's a safety net that offers people security. Unemployment during the pandemic became "we will support your existing lifestyle for as long as you avoid working". Paying people explicitly not to work isn't really any more choice reducing than paying people to work. This is why you get people like me open to the concept of UBI, why things like blanket stimulus checks or child credits are pretty easy to pass in downturns, because they can help those who need it without encouraging people to be more helpless.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

If there is any overarching theme in my posts here over time, it's the belief that we're all in much greater agreement on most things than people act like. I can't even begin to guess how many times I've said "we're not actually disagreeing" on the Escapist. And the reason to argue over something we actually agree on is always semantics. It's always different assessments of the meanings of words that lead people who believe the same abstract concepts to conflict in the specifics. In situations where people agree and don't realize it, semantics have all the value in the conversation. Hence, that's what I argue about here with basically everyone but Seanchaidh, who genuinely sees the world upsidedown from my perspective.

So, you actually agree with me that the government shouldn't be using religious definitions to support policy, nor should the government force people to be incubators against their will?

Because we disagree on a hell of a lot, but you don't argue that bit. You've been waffling about with "but free will is supernatural" when the government is using ghost stories to enforce a certain brand of morality.