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olin posted:I guess it would be moral for you to stop me from jumping in front of Mary, but i'm really not sure. Don't you have an objective standard, though? There should be absolutely no question on what is or is not moral for you.
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# ? May 19, 2016 17:47 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 05:54 |
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olin posted:I guess it would be moral for you to stop me from jumping in front of Mary, but i'm really not sure. The point being that morality is ambiguous. It is not a concept which lends itself to absolutes.
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# ? May 19, 2016 17:50 |
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olin posted:He pretty convincingly argues that If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who is changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful. Those qualities would meet most definitions of divinity. Here is Craig's argument (Call it argument A) that the cause of the universe must be a person: 1.) The universe has a beginning (from the first part of the KCA). 2.) The cause of the universe must be eternal (again, from the first part of the KCA). 3.) Anything that has a beginning is not eternal. 4.) If a cause is sufficient for an effect, and the cause is eternal, then the effect is eternal. _4a.) (Premise for reductio) The universe has a material cause. _4b.) A material cause is sufficient for its effect. _4c.) The universe is eternal (This is a contradiction with 1 and 3) 5.) The universe does not have a material cause (from 4a-4c) 6.) All causes are either material or personal. 7.) The universe has a personal cause. (From disjunctive syllogism of 5 and 6) The problem with this argument is that 'sufficiency' goes both ways. Here's another argument (argument B): 1.) An eternal sufficient cause must have an eternal effect. 2.) God's will to create "a world with a beginning" is sufficient to produce it (Denying this would probably get you into trouble) 3.) God's will to create "a world with a beginning" is eternal (Or else God changed his mind, a bad result). 4.) "A world with a beginning" is eternal (from 1,2,3) 5.) (4) contradicts (3) from Argument A. So one of the premises 1, 2, or 3 from Argument B must be false. Edit: I should say that this reply is not mine; I got it from a Philosophy of Religion professor that I was a TA for some number of years ago. Brainiac Five posted:If you can definitely objectively quantify happiness, you've got more important things to do than engage in this silly argument. Publish, publish, publish, drat it. Presumably, a utilitarian will want to identify 'happiness' by ostension. Either by pointing at a bundle of behaviors or pointing at a neural correlate would be sufficient. "This is the thing I'm interested in, maiximize this!" is what I imagine them saying. Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 17:57 on May 19, 2016 |
# ? May 19, 2016 17:52 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:Presumably, a utilitarian will want to identify 'happiness' by ostension. Either by pointing at a bundle of behaviors or pointing at a neural correlate would be sufficient. "This is the thing I'm interested in, maiximize this!" is what I imagine them saying. Oh, well, see, I was going to avoid any intimations that utilitarianism tends towards a horrific police state, but then you went ahead and made that argument for me. This doesn't actually address the argument I made, in favor of the presumption that obviously the "neural correlate" of someone who is free from prejudice, assuming that this can actually be determined and generalized, will be one that produces greater happiness than that of a prejudiced person. Indeed, someone who lives in a prejudiced society but considers that prejudice to be evil seems intuitively more likely to be unhappy, depressed, or anxious than someone who conforms to societal norms. The issue that utilitarianism is in many ways counter to liberal and leftist values remains.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:02 |
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Brainiac Five posted:Oh, well, see, I was going to avoid any intimations that utilitarianism tends towards a horrific police state, but then you went ahead and made that argument for me. This doesn't follow, or at least not obviously so. If you want me to take an argument seriously, you have to give me more than just the conclusion. Brainiac Five posted:This doesn't actually address the argument I made, in favor of the presumption that obviously the "neural correlate" of someone who is free from prejudice, assuming that this can actually be determined and generalized, will be one that produces greater happiness than that of a prejudiced person. Indeed, someone who lives in a prejudiced society but considers that prejudice to be evil seems intuitively more likely to be unhappy, depressed, or anxious than someone who conforms to societal norms. The issue that utilitarianism is in many ways counter to liberal and leftist values remains. It will not come as a shock to a utilitarian that particular moral problems have empirical solutions that can only be imperfectly predicted from the armchair. This is how the theory is supposed to work. That utilitarianism fails to rule out certain forms of social organization or personal behavior a priori is a fairly weak criticism of it, seeing as that's the whole point.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:10 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:Here is Craig's argument (Call it argument A) that the cause of the universe must be a person: That is not a good representation of his argument. From an Atheist site I got this: 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause. 4. If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful. 5. Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful. I don't agree with the beinglessness part though. 4 is explained in detail. You can download a more extensive map of the argument here. http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/KCA_mapped_11_20_2010_.pdf AARO fucked around with this message at 18:13 on May 19, 2016 |
# ? May 19, 2016 18:10 |
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olin posted:That is not a good representation of his argument. From an Atheist site I got this: Demonstrate that this is true.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:11 |
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olin posted:That is not a good representation of his argument. From an Atheist site I got this: I was trying to be charitable. The argument as you've presented it is obviously invalid; what is (4) supposed to follow from? Edit: I don't want to read from your atheist site. I read Craig's book. I'm happy to look at any argument you care to reproduce here, though.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:12 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:This doesn't follow, or at least not obviously so. If you want me to take an argument seriously, you have to give me more than just the conclusion. How are you measuring "neural correlates", dude? quote:It will not come as a shock to a utilitarian that particular moral problems have empirical solutions that can only be imperfectly predicted from the armchair. This is how the theory is supposed to work. That utilitarianism fails to rule out certain forms of social organization or personal behavior a priori is a fairly weak criticism of it, seeing as that's the whole point. Oh my god, dude, can you respond to the actual argument? Like, how do we get away from the potential conclusion that the increase in happiness from gays being oppressed is greater than that from gay equality if that's an empirical conclusion, without escaping the bounds of utilitarianism?
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:13 |
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You are the one who claimed "maximum happiness" as the goal. Any attempt to define maximum happiness will instead start defining something else that is intended to result in maximum happiness. The goal, whatever it may be, is determined by a society, group, or even an individual. So, I have no interest in trying to define happiness.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:14 |
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olin posted:Rejecting hypotheticals and thought experiments because "they can't happen in real life" is antithetical to doing philosophy.One of the reasons that people today score about 30 points higher on IQ tests then 100 years ago is that people are more able to answer questions with hypothetical premises. You're mischaracterizing my objection. I would expect a Christian to be able to think about how they would live if they didn't believe in God, but I would not expect Christianity, as a system in any of its typical forms, to answer the question "how would morality work without God" because at that point it would no longer be Christianity. olin posted:Also, lets say ISIS captured you and a bunch of other prisoners. The terms of release for all the prisoners were for you to kill the child prisoner. Otherwise they would behead you all in one week. Sure. Assuming I'm brave enough to stick by my principles, I wouldn't kill the child in those circumstances, for a variety of reasons. I don't know if I can trust ISIS to keep their word, and I don't know what they hope to achieve. I'm willing to assume that the interests of an organization who kidnapped me and threatened to kill me are antithetical to my interests, that the taboo against killing and hurting human beings generally serves the interests of minimizing human suffering, and that ISIS shows very little regard for that taboo. I don't want to advance a cause that I suspect has significant disutility, and my estimate of the disutility of killing the child is much greater than the small possibility that a) ISIS would keep its word and b) ISIS's goals in creating this dilemma have positive or neutral utility.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:17 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:I was trying to be charitable. The argument as you've presented it is obviously invalid; what is (4) supposed to follow from? quote:4. If the universe has a cause, then an AARO fucked around with this message at 18:20 on May 19, 2016 |
# ? May 19, 2016 18:17 |
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Brainiac Five posted:How are you measuring "neural correlates", dude? I'm not. I'm not even a utilitarian, I'm just not convinced your particular criticism of the theory ultimately works. Anyway, I think a utilitarian of a reasonable cast might say: the metaphysical ground of normative facts is neural. But our access to neural facts is imperfect, so our epistemic access to neural facts comes through observation of behavior, which is (we assume) correlated with neural facts. Or they might think the behavior is the metaphysical ground, maybe. Either way, pointing out problems with epistemic access to the ground of normative facts is at best a criticism of a moral theory as an operational guide to behavior, and does not address the truth or falsity of that theory's normative claims. I've said this before in other threads, but we should be careful to to conflate epistemic and metaphysical problems. Brainiac Five posted:Oh my god, dude, can you respond to the actual argument? Like, how do we get away from the potential conclusion that the increase in happiness from gays being oppressed is greater than that from gay equality if that's an empirical conclusion, without escaping the bounds of utilitarianism? A priori? You don't, I don't think. A committed utilitarian would have to accept that there is a possible world in which that's how the normative facts shake out. But they can maintain that while simultaneously thinking they have good evidence that that world is not the actual world.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:19 |
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How do you know that the universe was caused, though?
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:20 |
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olin posted:+ This first cause must also be personal because there are only two accepted types of This is the distinction between mechanical and personal cause that my argument was a reply to. Ultimately, the reasons that Craig thinks that a 'scientific'/mechanical cause cannot be the First Cause apply equally to personal causes, on any reasonable theory of what a personal cause actually is.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:21 |
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doverhog posted:You are the one who claimed "maximum happiness" as the goal. So in other words, you're going to deal with this issue, which is hardly hypothetical, by dodging and ignoring it. Juffo-Wup posted:I'm not. I'm not even a utilitarian, I'm just not convinced your particular criticism of the theory ultimately works. Anyway, I think a utilitarian of a reasonable cast might say: the metaphysical ground of normative facts is neural. But our access to neural facts is imperfect, so our epistemic access to neural facts comes through observation of behavior, which is (we assume) correlated with neural facts. Or they might think the behavior is the metaphysical ground, maybe. Either way, pointing out problems with epistemic access to the ground of normative facts is at best a criticism of a moral theory as an operational guide to behavior, and does not address the truth or falsity of that theory's normative claims. I've said this before in other threads, but we should be careful to to conflate epistemic and metaphysical problems. No, dude, I'm saying that in order to measure happiness from neural correlates you're probably going to mandate regular brain scans for representative samples or whatever and that's basically an absurdist police state. Doing it from behaviors is less absurdist as far as policing goes, but still a loving police state.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:23 |
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Brainiac Five posted:No, dude, I'm saying that in order to measure happiness from neural correlates you're probably going to mandate regular brain scans for representative samples or whatever and that's basically an absurdist police state. Doing it from behaviors is less absurdist as far as policing goes, but still a loving police state. Maybe! Or it might turn out that trying to carefully track every individual's personal utility (through brain scans or hidden cameras or commisars or whatever) actually is not the most effective way to maximize that value. I'm inclined to think that, if utilitarianism were true, it would not entail that we should institute a police state. It seems like that'd be a pretty unlikely way to make people happy, anyway. Edit: I mean, it sounds like you're saying that, for any bundle of behaviors and dispositions that we decide to call 'happiness', it follows that they way to get the greatest number of people to express those behaviors would be to criminalize failing to do so. This just seems like a pretty big inferential leap.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:27 |
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Who What Now posted:How do you know that the universe was caused, though? quote:2.11. An actual infinite cannot exist.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:27 |
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I'm admitting that I don't have the answer, but that doesn't make utilitarianism false. It is up to each group to define their own goals, and to answer the question for themselves. It's almost like you are asking for god to tell you what the right answer is, but not only is there no such thing, there cannot be.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:28 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:Maybe! Or it might turn out that trying to carefully track every individual's personal utility (through brain scans or hidden cameras or commisars or whatever) actually is not the most effective way to maximize that value. I'm inclined to think that, if utilitarianism were true, it would not entail that we should institute a police state. It seems like that'd be a pretty unlikely way to make people happy, anyway. Okay, so we reject empirical attempts to measure the phenomena we are trying to maximize, as utilitarians. Am I reading this correctly?
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:28 |
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Brainiac Five posted:Okay, so we reject empirical attempts to measure the phenomena we are trying to maximize, as utilitarians. Am I reading this correctly? No, not necessarily. For example, a utilitarian might think that a good strategy would be to hire a bunch of sociologists and statisticians for the central government and pay them to use accepted social psych methods to determine what would make for effective social policy. I'm just saying that trying to measure the phenomena by brutally authoritarian methods might be contrary to trying to maximize them.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:31 |
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olin posted:2.11. An actual infinite cannot exist. This disproves an infinite God right from the get-go. So if your god isn't infinite, what caused it? Edit: And, again, I'm only interested in speaking to you, not to people you can quote. If you can't phrase something in your own words then say so.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:32 |
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Who What Now posted:This disproves an infinite God right from the get-go. So if your god isn't infinite, what caused it? I think you might be (wrongly) conflating 'infinite' and 'eternal.'
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:33 |
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By the way, utilitarianism is not a political system, so talking about how it would be implemented on a state level and whatever authoritarian methods might be used is a completely different, only tangentially related, discussion.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:34 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:I think you might be (wrongly) conflating 'infinite' and 'eternal.' It's possible, and if so I'll admit it.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:35 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:No, not necessarily. For example, a utilitarian might think that a good strategy would be to hire a bunch of sociologists and statisticians for the central government and pay them to use accepted social psych methods to determine what would make for effective social policy. I'm just saying that trying to measure the phenomena by brutally authoritarian methods might be contrary to trying to maximize them. Okay, but in reality you can't measure behaviors like that without extremely intrusive surveillance. So your conception makes it so that utilitarianism cannot actually know whether it has successfully maximized the phenomena it is measuring, in cases that are similar to real ones rather than idiotic hypotheticals.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:36 |
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Who What Now posted:This disproves an infinite God right from the get-go. So if your god isn't infinite, what caused it? An actual infinite cannot exist here in the universe. The creator is not material or existing inside the physical universe. He can be eternal.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:37 |
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Statistics measure things like that all the time, and are only mildly intrusive.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:38 |
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doverhog posted:Statistics measure things like that all the time, and are only mildly intrusive. Statistics don't measure behaviors, and the actual process of observing behaviors is extremely difficult when it comes to avoiding the sense of intrusion or being surveilled.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:41 |
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Who What Now posted:It's possible, and if so I'll admit it. Well, the sort of infinity that Craig thinks is impossible is one where a thing or a group of things has infinitely many temporal parts, while he thinks that God created time along with the universe, at which point he began to exist within it. I think. I have a hard time following it. Admittedly, he does need to go through quite a bit of mental gymnastics to prevent God from being subject to the same anti-infinity argument as the Universe. You might be right that there's a problem here, but it's at least one that Craig is aware of and takes himself to have responded to sufficiently.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:43 |
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Not directly, but with enough data and correlations you can learn things about behavior. Anyway, you don't have to have perfect information to act in a certain way, in fact almost no one ever has. Why are you placing this burden of needing an oppressive amount of information on an utilitarian and no one else?
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:45 |
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olin posted:An actual infinite cannot exist here in the universe. The creator is not material or existing inside the physical universe. He can be eternal. How do you know that this is true? And please, don't just quote Craig at me again. If you don't know the answer or can't think of how to phrase it, that's fine.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:49 |
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doverhog posted:Not directly, but with enough data and correlations you can learn things about behavior. Anyway, you don't have to have perfect information to act in a certain way, in fact almost no one ever has. Why are you placing this burden of needing an oppressive amount of information on an utilitarian and no one else? I am a devil and here to do the devil's work, for all you know. You seem to not understand what empiricism means, though.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:49 |
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Brainiac Five posted:Okay, but in reality you can't measure behaviors like that without extremely intrusive surveillance. So your conception makes it so that utilitarianism cannot actually know whether it has successfully maximized the phenomena it is measuring, in cases that are similar to real ones rather than idiotic hypotheticals. Well, imagine that we get together as utilitarians and decide that the behaviors we're interested in are the disposition to report "yes that is pleasant" or "no that is unpleasant" to various stimuli. This is something that psych and social psych nerds already spend a lot of time and money studying, and I don't feel like it contributes to a feeling that I'm being constantly surveilled.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:50 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:Well, imagine that we get together as utilitarians and decide that the behaviors we're interested in are the disposition to report "yes that is pleasant" or "no that is unpleasant" to various stimuli. This is something that psych and social psych nerds already spend a lot of time and money studying, and I don't feel like it contributes to a feeling that I'm being constantly surveilled. This is one of those idiotic hypothecticals.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:53 |
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Brainiac Five posted:This is one of those idiotic hypothecticals. How's that?
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:53 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:Well, the sort of infinity that Craig thinks is impossible is one where a thing or a group of things has infinitely many temporal parts, while he thinks that God created time along with the universe, at which point he began to exist within it. The hotel argument points out the absurdity of infinite material things. If the hotel has infinite rooms and they are all occupied and then a new customer comes the manger can still except new guests. He has infinite rooms. Everytime a new customer comes and can give them a room and move tenet in room 1 to room 2 an room 2 to room 3 etc. Even though every room is occupied he can always except new customers. And even though new customers are checking in he always has the same number of customers. Infinite. 1000 more check in, still the same number of customers. Even if an infinite amount of new customers can he could still accommodate all of them. and he would still have the same number of customers. Now everyone in rooms with even numbers checks out. Guess what he still has the same exact number of customers; infinite. The argument goes on and on but you get the point. An actually existing infinite material thing is full of absurdities. It cannot exist. These absurdities with the infinite do not exist with spiritual beings. AARO fucked around with this message at 19:00 on May 19, 2016 |
# ? May 19, 2016 18:56 |
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Juffo-Wup posted:How's that? Not even Epicurus promoted sensuality as the totality of pleasure. So it's like a utilitarianism built on maximizing toothbrushes.
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:57 |
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opps
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:58 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 05:54 |
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olin posted:The hotel argument points out the absurdity of infinite material things. If the hotel has infinite rooms and they are all occupied and then a new customer comes the manger can still except new guests. He has infinite rooms. Everytime a new customer comes and can give them a room and move tenet in room 1 to room 2 an room 2 to room 3 etc. Even though every room is occupied he can always except new customers. And even though new customers are checking in he always has the same number of customers. Infinite. 1000 more check in, still the same number of customers. Even if an infinite amount of new customers can he could still accommodate all of them. and he would still have the same number of customers. Ok, then how to do go from this to the Christian God specifically?
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# ? May 19, 2016 18:58 |