romansh

I agree; sort of. Morality need not be a duality, but if it is not then it becomes a nonsense, As Joseph suggested, and I think you would agree, a prudent action might be considered a moral action. I have no problem with tis viewpoint. But prudence implies an intention, and again I have no problem. But if my intentions are in opposition to society's or perhaps yours and I act on my intentions in a way I consider prudent, am I being moral? I too like Genesis 3 ... especially 3:22, arguably the second most useful verse in the Bible. To get back into the Garden of Eden we could stop thinking in terms of good and evil.

Myths for some are stories that can give deep insights into the human condition. Personally I think they are fine, So long as we don't concretize them and convert them to some literal truth. Similarly for morality and morals. I can't help thinking morality in an absolute sense is an illusion. So when we label something as moral then we can describe it carefully something akin to wise. But this boils down to our "wants". But a morality play in one situation can be a disaster in another. I must admit I am uncomfortable divvying up our world into moral and immoral. This kind of dualism I think is unwise.

So the idea of this thread is to discuss something that might not exist? OK it is your thread ... I will leave you be.

I wonder what caused Scar to be the way he was?

Does morality exist ... that is outside of our belief in the concept?

Here we use the word good in a different sense ,,,, it is more like "accurate". In the previous uses good was used more in a sense of opposition to bad (as in evil or some diluted form of evil). I am questioning the existence of good, evil and the shades in between. To have morality whether in the movies or elsewhere I think we need have a belief in good and evil.

A good life? Do you mean a life you enjoy? A life that absorbs you? Or something else? The point I am trying to make is I can live a reasonably happy life without morals or even the concept of morality. So while we can discuss morality in the movies, I would like to cut the Gordian knot. For me a far more interesting subject. But if somebody wants to weigh in on morality in the movies, I will try and hold my tongue. :-)

Before going down the road of movies and morals ... personally I would question the concept of morals. Do we mean there is some absolute right and wrong? Do we refer to the twinge of guilt that we may have when doing something we think perhaps we should not do? Or do you mean breaking some socially accepted covenant? Just asking.

Welcome from one of the resident agnostics. That is an atheistically inclined agnostic.

I'm not sure you know what my condolences feel like at least to me, and they vary in time and space. But my condolences anyway.

Me personally ... action occurs as a result of my brain chemistry etc,. So I suppose after the fact with respect to my brain chemistry etc.

You are still missing my point (a little) but you are definitely on the right track. I think you have it backwards though. Science can never find evidence to disprove your theory, but one of the predictions of your process is that in these immaterial processes, the physical energy balance won't balance ... there will be too much or too little. going to be away for a while ... correspondence will be erratic.

Sure some people can cope with a headache/pain better than others. So is it a subjective or objective observation that concussions leads to headaches.

We had over 200 y of proven Newtonian mechanics, that was until the falsifying observations started to become apparent. It urns out Newtonian mechanic is a fit for purpose set of laws. Regarding, calorimeters you missed my point. If my calorimeter measurements of the physical world balance, ie the energy that goes in comes out, then the immaterial had no impact my actions or brain chemistry.

Illusion, not what it seems. Regarding Susan Blackmore's essay ... you seemed to miss her point completely. I have some people get it but most don't. I can't help wondering if some of us are wired differently. If something responds to cause and effect, for me it is part of the physical world. This immaterial action would be picked up in our various types of calorimeters. Regarding the proof word, sciency types don't bring proof to the table (despite what some of them may say) they bring evidence. And speaking of evidence what evidence do we have for the immaterial?

Let's do this thought experiment. Take about thirty people to make it statistically valid, including a proponent who claims we can't make subjective claims. We get them to sit nicely and come up behind them and swing a baseball bat at their heads with sufficient force to cause a moderate concussion. We calibrate the force of the blow so that the amount of drama received is similar on a per volume basis. Lets say all thirty odd participants got a headache. Now I suspect all thirty odd participants will have a good sense of the headache the others have; no matter how subjective the proponent says it is.

Can subjective truths be observed? Can the be deduced? And if what you say is subjective itself ... so what? Joseph could be right and you will never know.

In the sense that colour of an object is an illusion so is consciousness. Assuming consciousness gets its information through the senses, then consciousness is a reflection of historical events stretching back as far as 3 seconds. Our perceived consciousness is always not in the now. Regarding consciousness, this short essay, I think, is best explains its illusory nature Any non physical entity might exist, true. But if it does not interact with the physical, it may as well not exist. If it does interact with the physical, then it is subsumed into the physical.

You will have to expand on this some more

So Rodge You seem to be saying some systems are simple enough to be sufficiently predictable, but are not sufficiently predictable know exactly when through wear and tear, our keyboard will start behaving erratically. The double pendulum is classical example of chaotic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_pendulum So it is not just some casual observer ... our models are incomplete and the data insufficient to populate the models appropriately. You are pointing to Laplace's argument which has known to be false for at least a hundred years. Laws of physics do not dictate anything, at least in my opinion; what they do is describe the cause and effect in this universe. The central point remains ... a belief in free will denies cause and effect. Unless one is a compatibilist; then one just semantically ignores cause and effect.

Here is a very simple mechanical system behaving chaotically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U39RMUzCjiU

Rodge Yes I agree we make conscious and unconscious choices. (sort of) Now are you arguing your conscious choices are somehow independent of cause or that being simply unaware of the causes is free will? Chaos theory ... a fully deterministic concept shows we cannot fully predict the future and that is in relatively simple systems. So how on Earth would you expect to make fully accurate predictions about the future? Predictability is not a requirement for the absence of free will. So no, you did not really answer my question.

I think as we get to more "sophisticated" theisms (not my word) like deism, panentheism and perhaps ietsism (the latter being more of a feeling, I think) then closer I think we are to removing those training wheels. Who removes them? That is more like they corrode, wear out and fall off through disuse. I must admit, I like the concept of pantheism ... it is where a theism touches atheism.