I don't think it matters objectively what happens. In the interests of fulfilling my own personal desires, I think it is helpful for society to determine the actions of it's members. On the grounds of logic I would not be able to find any reason to act in any way. I would however be compelled from within to help the man being beaten. Utilitarianism has nothing to do with it. I am not promoting utilitarianism. I'd guess that, evolutionarily, we'd have evolved in a certain way that inclines us to help members of our society. I do not think that all our moral instincts are evolutionary though, there are many other factors that influence them. I'm not saying that we should act utilitarian and I'm certainly not saying that we should act in a way that is evolutionarily advantageous. I'm saying that evolution has probably had an effect on our basic moral instincts. I'm not sure. You'd think it would be an advantage in forming societies if we did not allow groups to kill individuals. Forget utilitarianism, I never said we should be utilitarian. I think evolution shapes our moral instincts, as does our upbringing, the culture that we exist in and probably many other influences. I do not however think we choose what is right by deducing it from a set of axioms. I disagree. I never said it was. I have an example in my last post, with Mozart, of instincts that are not simply evolutionary. What axioms would you use then? You could build up a system and call it morality, but it would be completely arbitrary. There would be no logical reason to act morally in that case. No I didn't. I explicitly said I was trying to explain what it is. Exactly. I think that there is no way we can logically work out what how we ought to behave. Therefore you can only trust your instinct or use flawed reasoning (as any reasoning will have to have started with a false axiom). After you realize that there can be no true axiom, we are forced to act instinctively. But how would you choose the axioms? There is no way to discover them, other than to just invent them. This invention is simply an instinctive action; you choose what "feels" right. I haven't claimed that it is. The whole evolution of morality was only meant to be a likely explanation of how we got some of our strongest, most basic moral instincts, that seem to hold in almost all cultures through time. I'm not trying explain the origins of morality. I suggested a possible explanation, but that was not really important . We obviously assign negative value to harm because it makes us feel bad. Fine, revenge and the fear of the crime being committed in the first place. I'm not saying that he didn't think about it, but he clearly did not logically deduce what would constitute a good composition. I still count instincts that we've developed culturally as instincts. We are instinctively repelled at the thought of being imprisoned. I don't know what you mean. Where else can we find objective truth? I don't claim that all our instincts must be natural. We can alter our instinctive reactions to certain events. I do however (even though it makes very little difference to my main point), think that it is natural to be horrified at the torture of another human being. When you see someone being beaten up badly on the street, you feel sickened, regardless of your principles. I don't think so. The point is, you didn't logically deduce that it is wrong to spread lies though. You did not decide that 1) Lying (or tricking others) is wrong, 2)These people are lying. 3) Therefore these people are morally wrong. You instinctively felt that their deception was wrong.
I think Euclid's parallel line postulate was doubted before hyperbolic geometry was even considered. In fact, as fact as I know, the early work in hyperbolic geometry was a consequence of trying to prove the parallel postulate from more self evident axioms. I don't really see how anything can be self evident. At best I think we can take empirical observations that seem as obvious as possible, then assume them to be true. For instance, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which turned out not to be true (under gravity at least). You obviously know far more about this than me, but you can see what I'm getting at.
I know, but they only think that they have good evidence because they're only paying lip-service to science. Most of these guys only became interested once it was found that science was generally seen to be more credible than religion. No. But look to the reason why they use the Bible as evidence. Why do they take the Bible to be evidence? Through faith? What will their justification for faith? The trail almost always leads to how they have 'experienced' Jesus in the way he has transformed their lives. When you ask for inspiration, it's never scientific, historical or philosophical arguments. The root is always the personalities of Christians who have enchanted them. The 'evidence' is always used merely as lubricant to help them squeeze their faith past their critical thinking. The real motive for their faith is elsewhere.
Spherical geometry, actually came first, I think. edit: I just looked it up, and I think you're right that hyperbolic geometry came first, which is kind of surprising.
I guess spherical geometry seems more obvious looking backwards, especially considering our Euclidean bias, but when built from the ground up, so to speak, by ignoring the parallel postulate, both were just as viable and perhaps hyperbolic was a more obvious route to take. Also, bearing in mind that the man was trying to prove by contradiction that the parallel postulate must hold, maybe the hyperbolic route was more obvious as it seems less plausible.
You guys know already that oil and water don't mix right? Why is the religious faith and scientific fact trying to be mixed? There's a story told that Jesus turned the sea into wine. But do you think science would agree to that? Of course not, science depicts of what scientists see of what it's nature is composed of. I personally think, religious people can be open minded spiritually, and scientists are narrow minded they don't tell stories based on religious faith, mostly on fact and need the straight hard evidence. In the Bible there are some things that have happened and are happening currently but just some people are taking the Bible way too seriously that everything in the Bible is justified and written in stone. It was written in many years ago in Hebrew. What if there were translation errors? Or what if some people misuderstood of what the sentence actually mean't? Well I used to believe that there was sin then get punished and go to hell for doing something wrong. Religion is making people fearful of the unknown, it's desensitizing children, adults. I don't believe in sin nor a hell. We all make it ourselves of how we want it to be from our perception.
The axioms of logic are self-evident. They do not need to be proven, nor can they be proven. In fact, they are the means by which proofs are possible to begin with. Soctrastein explained this previously LJoll: “But surely to show that logic is true you need logic. So you're stuck either way.” Socrastein: “You don't need to show that logic is true, that's the point. It is based on axioms, and axioms are self-evident. Logic neither can be proven nor need be proven, and that's what a lot of people get hung up on. You can't prove that A=A, but you don't need to either. By definition, A is A. It's that simple, and people try to make it more complicated and they spin circles in their heads trying to unravel the mystery of logic. Another great example is the law of non-contradiction. For any proposition P, P can not be both true and false. You naturally would ask why? How do we know that? Can we prove it? Well, we don't need to: it's undeniable. By definition, true means not false, and false means not true. So by definition, the two words cannot apply equally and in the same way to a given statement. No proof required, and yet that doesn't make it questionable, or threaten the integrity of the law. You don't need to prove that a triangle has 3 sides, because by definition a triangle is a 3-sided polygon”
I think that a good definition of 'self evident' is that if you understand the words involved then you know it is true. e.g. a rabbit is a rabbit Anyone who has a good grasp of the English language should find the law of non-contradiction self evident.
Religion useless? There are issues, there are niggles, there are oddities however... Think of the hundreds of orphanages, aid projects, farmschools, community outreach projects run by the church. The amount they do, the hope that is given to so many is far from useless.
Ah! But was religion really responsible for all those good things or did it just lie and try and take credit for them? That's the question at hand. I personally think that religion does deserve credit for many of these things, although I think that it will eventually be replaced by secular philosophy that'll do the job better.
