Re: Dark matter (was: What's going on this decade?)

From: Jef Allbright (jef@jefallbright.net)
Date: Thu Aug 24 2006 - 08:41:32 MDT


On 8/24/06, Patrick Crenshaw <patrick.crenshaw@gmail.com> wrote:
> Daniel Dennett has said that morality (or ethics or whatever you want
> to call it) is discovered in the same sense that algebra was
> discovered by humans, but it was there all along. This is also what I
> think. It also seems to me that many of the arguments made against an
> objective morality could equally well be applied to mathematics

Daniel Dennett has also contributed extensively to clarifying that
consciousness, self, and free-will exist -- but they are definitely
*not* as popularly conceived. He has also been quite clear that these
characteristics are of evolutionary origin, rather than existing in
some platonic sense.

It may be useful to point out that we can and do increasingly agree on
some actions working better than others,leading to results that we
increasingly agree are "good", but this is not at all the same as
saying that there is an objective "good". In fact, given an objective
viwpoint (possible only within some limited well-defined context) ther
is no room at all for "good", but only "is".

- Jef
http://www.jefallbright.net
Increasing awareness for increasing morality

-Jef



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