Recent content by cogito

Thanks for the update. Why is it relevant that animals do not have moral responsibilities? Presumably, the debate over whether it is morally permissible to eat meat involves determining whether it makes sense to say that a human being can owe an obligation to an animal, not over whether a...

This thread is so long, I'm not sure anybody has pointed out extremely obvious and equally absurd consequence of this argument, so apologies if this is redundant. This argument implies that it is permissible for humans to kill and eat other humans if they desire to. So, Oneeye, how do you...

You think the subject of ethics is supposed to train people to be moral? Weird. Have you ever taken a class in ethics, or read a work on ethics?

First, studying what we value and why we do doesn't answer the normative questions I asked above. Second, you mischaracterize descriptive hedonism. Descriptive hedonism is the claim that all human action is motivated by a desire to maximize pleasure/minimize pain. If you'd like to see two...

How do you think you ought to go about establishing scientifically that which we ought to value. How should you go about establishing scientifically what type of character you ought to cultivate, or what type of life you ought to live, or what acts are permissible, obligatory, or forbidden? In...

Interesting. So, you think that the subject of ethics over the last couple thousand years contains very little of value?

Season the example to taste. Suppose the animal has a belief that 'that animal moves whenever I do" while looking in the mirror. Again, the self-referential content of the belief indicates self-consciousness, even though the animal fails to recognize the image in the mirror as its reflection.

On that definition, active euthanasia qualifies as murder, even when done at the behest of the person euthanized.

It's obvious that self-recognition is not necessary for self-consciousness, as an animal may know that it is the subject of various experiential states without knowing what it looks like in a mirror. It is possible that an animal, when looking in a mirror, believes something of the form "there...

So, why do you think that cows don't have such a capacity? I remember when I brought my cat home as a kitten. He used to get all sketchy around windows and mirrors, thinking that the reflection he saw was another cat. Now, he seems clearly to know that the reflection he sees is himself. If...

I don't think this was intended as a claim about the eyes (though I could be wrong). I think the author's intention was to point out that, hypothetically, it could be the case that although the physiology our respective visual systems may be the same, the phenomenological character of our...

The terms will seem vague to anybody that doesn't know what mean. The term 'abduction' for instance, refers to a type of inference. If you think the term is vague, then you are unfamiliar with the type of inference to which it refers. If you would like the term to be less vague (that is, if...

I asked you some questions above about the scientific theories. Are you going to answer them? What do you know about the way scientific theories are justified. Why do they give us reasons for belief. Given that almost all scientific theories have been shown to contain false statements, why...

How would you know? When has anything been successfully explained to you? :biggrin:

Do you not understand the terms 'distinct' and 'continuous'? Washington state is a distinct state from Oregon state, and yet they are continuous with one another in that they have a boundary where they intersect (in the Columbia river, as a matter of fact...). Similarly with the disciplines I...