Philosophy Discussion!

I was debating rather or not to put this here or in 'incoherent babbling' because, when one gets down to it, the vast majority of philosophic claims and theories are based on presumptions and opinions as opposed to facts. The famous 20th century linguistic/analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that Philosophy itself is just a circle-jerk of misunderstandings of language.

We can argue over rather or not he was right, or we can discuss anything else.

Here's some starter questions to get debates going:
1. What is just?
2. What is unjust?
3. What is real and what is not real?
4. Is there objective truth?
5. Is there a God?

Well I think im going to group Just and Unjust in one aswer cause they really come down to the same thing.

This is something that should be seen in the light of rules,Laws,morals,... . Not some set rules or morals wich I think are non existing but more laws made by society. Being just is following laws that are agreed on by the people they apply to. for example if a person decides he wants to live in a country he accepts laws and it is just to punish him should he break those laws.It's needed to prevent chaos and have people trust in order and laws that protects them so they can get rid of their fears.

3. What is real and what is not real?
4. Is there objective truth?
Ill group these together because they also come down to the same.

Like Wittgenstein said both are empty questions, there is no way of percieving a difference with what we see and what is "real" so that makes it an empty question to search for this thing.
As Kant suggested our mind is what gives things a shape it bend to our perception. The "ding an sich" is unreachable and ultimatly doesnt matter.

5. Is there a God?

Well there could be but not in the way it's typically assumed. If there is a god he has no impact on anything that goes on in our world so why bother with him anyway.
Men made the idea of god as it is today because we are scared of responsibility and our own mortality. We like to give up our freedom because freedom scares us so we build cages. The only restictions men has are physical restrictions any mental restrictions like god or set morals are a threat to progress and ultimatly just a tool we use when we can't stand the troubles of life.

The problem is, this definition only works if the concepts of 'just' and 'unjust' are arbitrarily defined. Thing is, they aren't.

Take murder for example. There is an actual, practical reason why societies outlaw murder. If they didn't, there would be chaos, as you said before. Now, lets imagine that, for some reason, a government on Earth decided to allow each person to murder another person once in their lifetime free of punishment. Why do we not see this happening anywhere? Because it is impractical and only creates further chaos. By contrast, outlawing murder in general creates less chaos. And so I argue that morals are not arbitrary, and that there is a clear way of indicating rather or not something is more or less 'just'. We can use the state of society as a whole to gauge just how 'just' certain laws are.

This is taking a utilitarian stance, of course, but I think you get what I mean.

There are some rules that are very typical yes these probably derive from basic human desires and fears but this is because most rules have a similar goal. If your goal is a strong structured society well then there are certain rules that are almost mandetory.

This being said just is still arbitrary it's the goals that uses rules as tools that give it meaning. Maybe you could see it like evolution there is nothing defined but somethings were just better at surviving and thats why they are still live today.

1. What is just?
2. What is unjust?(same question as i'm taking it.)

Just and unjust-nest is perception; something created by humans. Which means the answers are malleable to the situation.


3. What is real and what is not real?

Something is real to me as soon as my mind is able to conceive such things. Something that i have no evidence for isn't true until i have evidence for it. Something is real to you as soon as you can perceived it; but not real to me until i also have such evidence.

4. Is there objective truth?

No, because we only precise the right answer. The correct answer to something changes as we go; and "Objective Truth" mutates to remain "Objective Truth".

5. Is there a God?

God is an assertion without evidence. When someone gives me evidence, that doesn't falter to logic; i will believe in the claims. Until then, it's up to that person to verify their claims or live with the fact that they have found a truth that they can't relay.

1/2. What is just?/What is unjust?
The concepts of justice and injustice are subjective and based upon cultural as well as personal ideals. Perhaps we should consider the motivations for our concern from them, analyze them, and work out from there. It was mentioned before that we as a society have agreed to certain prohibitions because they are harmful to us and our loved ones. Murder, robbery, rape, and other crimes are physically or psychologically harmful so we've decided they need to be punished.

Justice is a societal agreement, nothing more. There is no indication in objective terms that justice exists in a supernatural sense.

3. What is real and what is not real?
Excellent question. Reality isn't necessarily that which we live day to day. Reality is the principles of physics, chemistry, and other sciences that work together to achieve what exists outside of the filter of human bias, fears, experiences, ans so forth that we're so apt to insert into our own version of things.

4. Is there objective truth?
There should be certain truths that cannot be subject to outside opinion. Mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other sciences show us results that have not been disclaimed outside of unproven theory. Drop an apple from the Eiffel Tower and it can been be guaranteed that ten out of ten times (barring external interference) gravity will pull that apple to the Earth's surface.

5. Is there a God?
This is largely the philosophical circle-jerk mentioned by the OP. Nothing proves nor disproves the existence of a First Mover. Any attempt to do so fails spectacularly when one accepts the sheer arrogance of trying to argue the case. I figure I have better things to do with the short time I've got on this world than argue whether or not god(s) exist.

You sure because I think quantum mechanics destroyed that very idea




Well there is lots of evidence that we can't just rely on our senses. A classic example of this is that all things fall to earth with the same acceleration so light objects fall at the same speed a heavy objects.
What about people who have pain in severed limbs, is that real?

Another fun Example I find is the following:

Let's define a color called "grue", an object that is grue will be green until 2015 after that it will become blue.
Now based on your perception is grass Green or is it Grue?

1. Conforming to what is morally right.
2. Conforming to what is immoral
3. Real is any entity that exists with specific characteristics that makes it identifiable. Not real is any entity that has fake characteristics or exists only as an ideal.
4. Nothing I can think of is an objective truth. For instance, if I were to say "nothing lasts forever" or "everything has a beginning", someone could counter that by saying matter and energy can't be created or destroyed. Maybe every truth being subjective is an objective truth within itself.
5. I believe God is existence, other than that I'm not sure. People in the past were sure that nature was God, later on the idea evolved to supernatural beings creating and controlling nature. I find it funny though, if the people in the past claimed they saw or heard something supernatural in the present time, they'd be considered mentally ill. There weren't any psychologists or medicine in the past that could treat people who see or hear things. So its no surprise that those types of people went on thinking that angels, demons and god existed. There's also the possibility that extraterrestrials visited them. Maybe they got mistaken as gods.

The real test of whether your concept of quantum mechanics can supercede my concept of physics and biology is to observe what happens when a person takes a swan dive off of the Eiffel Tower into the concrete below. Another example would be that quantum mechanics doesn't disprove that when you measure specific objects using mathematics, you can build a structure.

Quantum mechanics is a valuable discipline. I won't deny it. I just disagree that it claims to answer everything in existence. The activities of certain areas of inquiry, yes. But I have serious doubts theoretical physicists will start saying the theory of natural selection is invalidated because electrons can exist in multiple places at the same time.

Things falling to earth at the same speed is provable, and has been shown. Henceforth i can conceive it.

Pain in a severed limb is a bit more complected, it's probably the shock they are feeling from a severed limb; and the bodies still assuming it's got a limb to feel with.

This color grue would be green to me until it turned blue; after which i would see blue, you'd have to prove to me decidedly that that grass really was green, and that it all turned blue because it is grue. Which means providing a experiment that shows the grass was grue; if you can't i would continue to say it's green. I'd probably say grue is more of a type of affect,like rust, then a color; since it affects color, but isn't one its self.

It's a simple idea overall, i know what i know and can only guess at to what there is. Anything that is claimed should be thoroughly researched before it is considered known. But know doesn't mean it is right; it can still be changed if there is enough new contradicting evidence.

If I drop a feather and a stone from the same height then the stone falls faster, my senses would tell me the truth is that heavy objects fall faster.



SO what sends the pain impuls to the brain?



Fact is you can never know what is true based on perception, you can say grass is green and I can say it's grue and we would both have all the evidence of our perception pointing us in this way. You can't prove something is Grue but the fact that all the grass we observe shows the characteristics of something grue,
the same evidence as we have for grass being green.



Well the question was if there is a definite truth so saying it might ne right and can be changed means that you don't beliebe it a definite truth

No, i don't believe in definitive truth; but i can preceve the "correct" answer, but whats correct is changeable. Sure grass can be called grue; but calling it that dosent mean anything utill you can prove it has some unique charactoristic to me. Otherwise it's like saying the sky is purple, eventhough it's blue: it's just warping the meaning of the words we use. If everyone started calling blue yelllow and yellow blue; would that be right?

The biggest thing we keep digging into is perception vs. devine knowlage. I take what i can understand and utalize it; i understand i don't have the full picture and that what i believed was right could be wrong.

Perhaps there is definitive truth but we haven't even the slightest clue how to prove it (since you would have to disprove all other posible answers); who knows if tomorrow we will wake up and the universe flips a switch and everything green is blue.

Also the feather is affected more by drag then the rock and the arm feels pain sice the armless man preceves to still have an arm.

The problem with summarizing anything Wittgenstein said is that he was not consistent in his views throughout his life. What he says is generally considered a difference between, "Old Wittgenstein" and "new Wittgenstein". Old Wittgenstein did think that philosophy was a simple subject, all problems are solvable and he could do it, everyone else has been sitting on their haunches being douchebags. New Wittgenstein, I.E. by the end of his life and career, he changed his mind about that, deciding that things are not even partially as simple as he first thought, even going so far as to disprove his own past work. But let's move on.



1 and 2 kind of go together in the question of what is justice in the first place. Unjust is simply the notion of 'not being just'. Put more simply, something that is unjust is an action taken that runs counter to what is just.

Justice is a strange concept that has ties to meta ethics, a subject that's not too entirely settled one way or the other with a multitude of different notions of what is right and what is wrong.

There are a lot of different actions that can be taken that one can say wiht little difficulty, "Oh that's good" or "oh that's bad."

If someone were arrested for stealing bread for a starving family, and inprisoned, tortuered, and brutally beaten for 40 years...many people would pretty much immediately say, "That's not right." The thing to do is look at these obvious examples and derive what it is that we value in order to make these distinctions.


These days psychology and neuroscience have determiend that, in the very least, the general population tends to work on a sort of combo of Kantian and Humean ethics. This doesn't mean that's the way we OUGHT to evaluate things, simply that's what we tend to do. what I mean by that 'combo' so to speak is that we have a combination of adhering to general rules of life in how we interact with each other, while at the same time allowing our emotions to dictate that there are exceptions to rules, or that rules should be amended when something seems unfair.

In that sense we can say that what is just is what conforms with the general population's notions of fair play, essentially. What this means is that we desire for ourselves to be afforded some basic rights, and as such we afford each other the rights we allow ourselves. This includes property, life, liberty, happiness, all those good neat things. When someone comes along and violates one of those rights, we stop them from doing so. It's considered "just" to prevent people from violating other people's rights unnecessarily. It's considered "unjust" if in the application of this preventative process, we violate THEIR rights unnecessarily.

3 and 4 also go together.

What is real and what is truth seem to mesh together fairly easily. The problem is that some things are true...only by definition. Take math for example. 2+2=4. Why is that the case? Because we, as humans, defined 2, and defined 4, in such a manner that it is deductively true that 2+2=4 100% absolutely. Now does that make them REAL? not necessarily. What is real is what truth 'refers' to. So 2 apples and 2 apples make 4 apples, or, without the numbers, a certain number of apples and another certain number of apples will always be another certain number of apples. Taking away the 'truth' aspect, we still have a reality. Truth is our conception and interpretation and understanding OF that reality.

One of the only things we can sufficiently say we 'know' to be the truth is a level of what's known as 'systemic' certainty. Systemic certainty is a form of inductive reasoning that relies on reality's consistency in order for us to obtain the truth of that reality. The sun will most probably rise tomorrow. Do we KNOW 100% that it will? No. It's conceivable that the sun could explode in the next 5 minutes. It's improbable, highly improbable even, but so long as the possibility of being wrong about what reality is remains, absolute certainty about what's being spoken about is impossible.

As far as 5 goes, my position is I don't see a reason to believe the positive assertion that a god exists, and depening on the god that's being described, I can say with a level of certainty that the god more than likely does NOT exist. This is done by employing my earlier stated 'systemic certainty' in reality as it is and matching it to see how consistent it is with whatever 'god' is being discussed. Another way I can do this is through the deductive reasoning of logical formulations. I look at the logical laws of reality and judge to see if this god folows those laws. I can then say that logically, if such a god does not conform to those laws, I know 100% that god does not exist. However that's strictly pertaining to logic. I cannot say that it is impossible for an illogical god to exist, 100% because I cannot posibly reason an illogical god one way or the other. However that's a double edged sword, because if a god is not constrained by logic in any way, then it is impossible to substantially discuss the possible reality of this god in the first place, hence it's still perfectly acceptable to me to outright reject such a god.

There we go. My return to Fakku is complete.

But just how set are these rights? they are arbitrary, defined by enviroment and history. As an example of this Marx made a very convincing look on property as a whole, now I don't fully agree with everything Marx but still it is a really valuable idea wich should not be overlooked.

They are arbitrary and defined by humans as a result of our experiences and enviornment and history.

How does that not make them rights?

Something arbitrary can never be right in essence. Justice should always be regarded as a product constantly questioned. The knowledge that something isnt right in nature gives you the power to question and ultimatly change it. If you live by something that is set in stone then you are a slave to it.

Going back to Marx again and the example of property. Marx explained how property was actualy a tool that determined power. SO instead of it being a natural right to humans it is just a right set in place by the people that utilize this tool for it gives them power. And the biggest succes is that they were able to make people believe that it was a divine right while it was actually nothing more then a cage. (I dont agree with Marx 100% but still the essence of what he tried to tell an be applied to any right we have to shed new light on it).

I do not understand why this is the case. Rights are granted by people and governments to the people. Why can't they be 'arbitrary'?



Which is why I think rights being arbitrary is a strength that prevents it from being set in stone. *shrug*



Ok, I think I know where the disconect between us is now.

When I say "rights are arbitrary" I mean the origination of rights. I don't refer to the perpetuation of rights.

Here is all I meant by saying that 'rights are arbitrary'.

1. Rights don't come from nature, they come from us granting each other rights.
2. We determine(or rather determined) rights primarily through some sort of psychological process that cause us to prefer to have these rights.
3. This psychological process that cause us to prefer these rights work in conjunction with Social Contract theory to then perpetuate throughout a population, and from there rights become protected by government and law.

I enjoy Locke's interpretation of property rights more than Marx's. Performing work an an object creates a level of obligation and responsibility on the object(object can be land or items of some sort) which in turn allows you to assert ownership over the thing in which you exert work over. Different levels of work determine different levels of ownership(I.E. a lowly warehouse worker in a company doesn't own the whole company because he works in it, there's an owner who exerts work over the eentirety of the company that distributes property rights to said company through things like stocks in accordance to whoever does sufficient work through the perspective of the owner).

Does that help at all in understanding what I'm saying?

That is what I meant and so I think that due to this fact justice can never be looked at objectivly and only from context.



I see 2 problems:

1) The relationship between property and work is not really relevant in modern society. Production is just split in to much really tiny parts for it to apply. This is where currency comes in but this brings along the problem of production power and mainly the destribution of it

2) Kinda ties in with the production power. The natural resources that no man has put work into. Who should have property over that. his problem suddenly shows that justice only exist in a context. A good example of this is the colonization of Africa to get it's natural resources.