Peterkin

So, what more information do you need to extract by torture? Never mind, since you speak for all of modern western civilization, whatever you say will be right. For the subscriber, no proof is required; for the skeptic, no proof will be offered? OK

There is no "we" making the decision; the scenario does not allow time for a referendum. One person has to give the order; one of a few person(s) carry out the prescribed torture; somebody has to decide when to stop; somebody has to assess the information elicited. There is no "we" judging it, either. Even assuming the operation went to plan, and even assuming every member of the entire society learned accurately the particulars, this could only happen after the fact. And they would not all react in the same way. Some would vote for the medal; some would vote for impeachment; some would shrug; some would tut-tut. Those examples do not relate to a situation in which you require information; they relate to a situation in which you already have the information.

That's even more interesting. You mean, it exists, physically, in the world, where it's accessible to anyone? Written down in a body of philosophical works, indexed and footnoted? Or metaphorically, as a cultural meme or shared idea?

That clarifies the matter in general. I imagine you have a detailed chart in your head regarding which kinds of torture, used on whom, how long, in which situations. I wonder whether everyone who lists torture in both columns has such a chart. It would be interesting to survey - interesting, but exhausting.

A fixed, movable concept. OK Where did you get that idea? When and as it affects me, I face it on my own, make my own decision according to my own judgment and live with the consequences. I don't conceal my personal responsibility in some anonymous "rest of us WE" collective.

There is no "we". Each individual faces such decisions alone and lives with the consequences of his decision alone. No two people have the same line of demarcation for "extreme" or the exact point in time when the extreme must be faced. There is no established or precisely articulated protocol for "should": it's a personal judgment. There are two camps here: theoretical ethicists and applied ethicists. For the first, Right and Wrong are fixed constants, non-negotiable; for whatever reason we may resort to a Wrong action, even if it's less wrong than the available options, it's still Wrong. For the second group, Right and Wrong are approximate classifications, situational, subject to interpretation; if you resort to a Wrong action for what you consider a worthy reason, it moves into the Right column.

I think the stalemate is more the result of answering different questions. I'm not as concerned with the efficacy of torture as the ethics of it. The question I answered was: not "Does torture ever work?" (Yes, I'm pretty sure it's effective on run-of-the-mill criminals and their victims: it gets results - of some kind.) but "Is torture ever right?" (No. It is wrong; it is unethical; no expedient makes it right and moral.)

Who says there is a finite number of souls in the world, one to a customer? You might cohabit; some creatures may not yet have evolved to the point of having a soul. Or maybe at the bottom of the ladder, billions of new tiny bacterial souls are created every second; meanwhile, species are going extinct and their souls need new homes. Some of the pigs and chickens, zebras and rhinos have moved up; some of the humans have moved down, depending on how they lived their lives. At the top, a few, a very few exceptionally accomplished human souls are released from karmic bondage and depart the life-cycle. There is plenty of room for growth and proliferation. The math works itself out and needs no help from us. All gods move in mysterious ways, but the Hindu ones left a lot of clues for their people. It's okay to ignore an idea you don't find interesting. It's okay to reject an idea in which you see no merit. Both can be done with a minimum of effort.

They are. (You must have a reason - which I do not wish to know - for thinking that your mother did so much wrong in the life she shared with you.)

That's kind of how the Hindu sages must have viewed the evolution of a soul - on a longer time-scale than we're accustomed to considering. You don't need the memory of being someone or something else: as long as the experience has cleansed your spirit of an earlier transgression, you're a little ahead, a little more evolved than the last time you started a new cycle. So you should be able to do better, be better, die better, become something better and then move up. What difference does that make at what stage in life he made the bad decisions, performed the wrong acts? He's probably still slogging through his third of fourth try at being a decent sea-cucumber. No, it's pretty much predicated on that concept. Looks like you'll make a mediocre mussel.

As I understand it (imperfectly), it's not a matter of working out problems. The problems you have to deal with in one lifetime end with that life - from a karma perspective, they're as trivial as they are ephemeral. What matters is how you relate to the world, how you treat other humans, other life-forms; how you bear up under hardship; whether you grow or shrink spiritually. If you put off making up for wrongs you did to others, your soul is smaller at the end than it was at birth, so you return as a humbler, less powerful being and have to work your back up again to autonomous human. You should gain in enlightenment with each successful life, be less and less concerned with worldly possessions and status, until you attain a pure spiritual state. It's not all of a piece, though, the doctrine of transmigration; there are different versions in several cultures. https://www.britannica.com/topic/reincarnation

That's what the people hoping to seed other planets with Earth life believe. I don't see how else humans can evaluate anything than from a human perspective. But there are many different perspectives available to humans, which makes it interesting.

So, Islam is winning the 21st century. Although it's losing some adherents, it's also converting some Christians and unaffiliated in the west. Even if the Chinese Empire makes Buddhism more popular, the Chinese secular government already recognizes the major religions and will presumably allow . That doesn't look very promising for reincarnation, but heaven will get a population boost in all the coming climate wars.

momma nature???

in your country, which ones are spreading right now? (In mine, they all seem to be shrinking.)

How many children? If not enough parents have been converted, not enough children can be indoctrinated --- worse, if the believers, adults and children alike, are a small minority in a larger population, they're more likely to be oppressed, suppressed and persecuted than to spread their religion. Rather more important is the power of the political and economic and military forces supporting a religion.

We don't know what they are or who they are. They're one-dimensional stereotypes constructed for the sole purpose of formulating a question with only one permissible answer. The scenario as given leaves no room for variances or considerations that any realistic [human] situation would include. I realize that other such philosophical questions have been posed, with Y/N buttons, but i don't find them useful as thought-experiments.

That is an interesting aspect. Sometimes a diet is just a diet. If you cut out sugar because of your family history predisposes you to diabetes, you're not labelled a antisweetist; avoidance of pork products is not necessarily religious or political but simply to keep your weight down; you may stop drinking alcohol for reasons other alcoholism or puritanism. A choice of meat-free or animal-free diet doesn't automatically mean it's a comprehensive ideology. A person may follow a vegan regime during a course of treatment, or as an experiment, or as a change, or as a preference - it doesn't need to be an ism. Even when it's mandated by a religion, the diet isn't the central tenet of the religion; it's just part of a bigger ism. So, as a concerted movement, I don't see vegans having an effect on the future. As individuals making choices for our personal reasons, we each have some effect, however undetectable. When many people take up an idea or habit, it becomes a fad, then a trend .... and then it begins to change something in the world. (Like the stock on supermarket shelves - truckers permitting - the assigned challenges in cooking contests and the food articles in popular magazines. What that means to the future isn't clear yet, but so far I can't see any harm.

I would go to the appointment - and nowhere else - and ask to be tested. Of course, you must take all recommended precautions against touching or approaching other people or breathing into their air-space. If nothing else, a professional negative test might reassure you; OTOH, if you're contagious, you need to know!

I think this is to the point: an ethical guidepost toward the future might well be a help. I actually think it is some help, though not one with any great force behind it. Vegans may elicit a great deal of hostility, but even in that very hostility, the kernel of an intellectual reflection persists; a tiny spark of doubt - a question begins to form. I can never see something that engenders thought as a hindrance. Mankind has already disrupted every ecological balance that ever existed. We control the world and have the power of life and death over everything else. Nature no longer has a decisive role to play: the future, if there is to be a future, is in our hands.

In order to influence people to be polite, couldn't one just try being polite to them? I have found in face-to-face conversation that most humans respond in kind - even if they're wary at first, it's hard to be aggressive toward someone who shows them sympathy: those mirror neurons are powerful. In print, the effect is very much diluted: we are all participating from a place of isolation - and some feel more isolated than others, for various reasons. People with unpopular ideas, for example, have already grown accustomed to a defensive or adversarial posture, and their vocabulary will reflect that. People, especially very young ones, who have some highly original theory (they all think so, just as we all did) may not have had enough opportunity to test it in live discussion with their peers; they're starting cold, as it were, and have to be shown how that works. Some, of course, have difficulty articulating their thoughts on a keyboard, in English, without hand gestures or facial expression; they may require some patient decoding. There were so many philosophy forums a few years ago and there are so few now that the escape-pods will probably keep floating in. The survivors are coming from environments with very different atmospheres, and will need a period of adjustment. The next generation is also coming from a different background than older generations, and adjustment may have be made both ways. I don't think a rite of passage is necessary. Some people will go away on their own (If the researcher I was supposed to report to ignored me standing in the doorway, I wouldn't interrupt, and wouldn't wait ten minutes - I'd just go quietly home, whichever words I'd been asked to unscramble) some always have to be ejected (If they're on a mission or naturally combative, doing a puzzle or getting minus red marks won't change their behaviour). Most will be fine. As for the experiments, I'd imagine most people are kindly disposed and generous when they feel comfortable. On a very hot summer day, the same students would probably buy one another a beer if they were holding a cold beer, while having to hold a hot coffee would predispose them to impatience. Of course we're more likely to feel friendly when our belly is full of good soup - not because it fills the the void of social warmth, but because we're animals with physical bodies that keep yammering at our minds with their demands. Any physical stimuli in a psychological experiment will skew the results.

And that ^^^, too! You have a problem with religion - OK. It seems to be particularly with Christianity - OK. You also have a problem with politics and and race and how the world is organized, but I can't work out what that is. Could you maybe sort out your problems and present them coherently, one at a time, for discussion?

It appeals to a lot of people for a lot of reasons. No, they didn't have "this backdrop". The Hindus developed their religion the same way all other peoples developed their religions: from a local mythology that incorporated local experiences and history and folklore, taboo and tradition, imagery and metaphor, fears and hopes, nostalgia and yearning. There was no question to answer. The Hindus, like everyone else, live their lives as well as they can - given that most of their lives a lot more difficult than yours - without judging or condemning anyone else. They hope, at the end of a difficult life, whether it's long or short, to have a rest and then give life another try and do better. That is not a death-cult; that is the ultimate perseverance.

Your first assertion is correct. Humans do assign value to their own lives, to the lives of other humans and to the lives of other species. That scale of values can vary by culture, over time within a single culture; by individual and over time for that same individual. We usually value family members higher than acquaintances and friends higher than strangers - and yet people very often kill family members or friends when something in the relationship changes drastically enough. Other people are valued according to familiarity, or alliances, or shared beliefs.... and that can change suddenly when war is declared, or a former classmate commits a crime. The question contradicts the assumption. Obviously, humans as a species don't grant any rights at all to other species. They assign value to other species according to the use another species has for humans: horses and dogs are valuable as workers and companions, until the horse gets old and is killed for dog-food. Cattle are important as food for humans: kept alive for milk, killed for meat. Wild animals are valuable for hunting or staring at in zoos; some are classified 'vermin' and marked for extermination. But, of course, humans as individuals have many different attitudes. No other species, and certainly no alien or divine entity has the power to grant rights to any species or any person or any class of life-forms.

I bet you were a big hit on all of them!