Severian

Such as? Personally I think it is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one since it isn't testable. I don't really have an opinion other than that.

Sorry, for some reason I thought you were still in highschool. Silly me.

Basic training? Like in the army? Aren't you American? I thought they had a professional army....

It seems to be working now - I am not sure what the problem was.

That really is a bit rich - you were the one who claimed that evolution has nothing to do with morality. I happen to agree with that - I was pointing out that your statement that pain is 'bad' is ridiculous because it serves a very useful function (and has evolved for that very reason). You seem to be really missing the point. In fact you little diagrams reinforce the point I was making - that pain is only a signal of bad things happening to an organism. Pain is there to give a fast unignorable warning of danger, so in your second diagram the chef gets a nasty injury because he does not realise quickly enough that his hand is burning. Let me put this another way. Have you ever read the novel 'Pandora's Star' by Peter Hamilton? In that book mankind encounter an alien being who is a sort of hive being: there is an immobile central being which thinks and rationalises, and this being communicates telepathically with 'motiles' which are basically extentions of itself which can move around an perform simple tasks. The motiles have no sense of individuality because they are only an appendage of the central being. There are new motiles being 'grown' constantly and since they are expendable and the telepathic ability is rather slow there is no evolutionary advantage in sending 'pain' back to the central mind. The alien captures two humans and assumes that they are motiles of an alien being. It is curious, so it starts to dissect them and doesn't understand why they open their mouths and make a lot of noise. It has no concept of pain and doesn't understand that they are beings in their own right and not motiles. The idea of pain, suffering or even happiness being the only things that matter to a being is an assumption that you are making, and I don't think it is a correct one. I would be more pissed if the damage was permanent than if it was temporary. Pain can of course cause phychological damage. But that is not the point - the point is that it is the damage which is the problem rather than the pain. You have elevated pain and suffering to a level where it is everything - all I am saying is that there are other concerns, such as damage to an organism which are more significant. You are completely neglecting these because you see pain as primary. The only difference that I can see between electrical impulses sending signals to the brain and chemical messangers in a plant are the method of communication. The pain is designed to be unignorable as a safety mechanism to prevent damage, but the idea that this is the only form of communication possible in organisms which is important is clearly ridiculous and clearly anthropcentric. So your morality must be correct because you have put so much effort into it? That sounds like an appeal to authority. Does your 'giving to charity' include your support of terrorist organisations like PETA? I was not intending to present a superior ethic - I was simply pointing out why your reasoning for yours is completely wrong. The morality itself is not wrong as such, because you can believe whatever you like is 'right'. Any statement of that sort is underivable and unprovable, and hence arbitrary. The point is that you claim to derive your morality from the notion of 'interests', while I have been pointing out that your definition of 'interests' is anthropocentric and completely flawed. The problem is that it is you who is deciding what constitutes a characteristic worthy of moral relevance, and if anyone disagrees with your choice of these characteristics or even just asks why you picked these characteristics over others you just call them 'silly'. That doesn't seem very mature and it doesn't seem a very well reasoned argument.

Oh well then. Case closed. Sorry to have been a nuisance. The simplicity of your stunning argument just blows me out of the water. For something which could not be simpler you have than amazingly ass-backwards. Pain is not 'worth avoiding for the sake of avoiding the pain experiences themselves' - it is (arguably) worth avoiding for the individaul because it is a signal of a debilitating experience. If you were given the choice of switching off all the pain receptors in your body, would you do it? Of course not, because pain is actually a useful mechanism. So you should not and cannot argue that feedback mechanisms themselves are immoral - you must argue about whether the things that the feedback mechanisms are trying to warn about are immoral. You have argued (wrongly) why happiness and suffering are things that one should consider when deciding if an action is immoral or not. You now admit (above) that they may not be the only things which are relevant to a decision on morality. But now you are saying that it does not matter about the other factors? How can you possibily justify this? If one of the other factors is more important than pain and suffering then you will make completely the wrong decision. Now who is being silly?

You any of you mind if I quoted you in my 'portfolio'?

The problem with this is that you have made that statement from the point of view of a human. You have decided what you find traumatic and asked if the plant experienced that. Let me give you another analogy. Imagine you had a robort of the form of Data in the Star Trek series. I am sure you would agree that it is not morally justifiable to torture him to death. But would it be morally justifiable to switch him off? Just flick a switch in a painless way? Probably also not - after all, he can presumably control his feedback circuits so could switch off his pain sensors anyway, so there is really no difference to the first scenario. (And what is pain to a robot anyway - a useful feedback mechanism?) Now imagine less and less sophistocated versions of Data, until they are really nothing more than the computer you have on your desk. I presume you don't think it is immoral to switch off your computer. So somewhere in between it became OK to switch 'Data' off. But what is the difference? They both have circuits, they both can recieve and process data (no pun intended). Why is the complexity of the processing sometimes refered to as pleasure or suffering? I think the real point were people change their minds about it being moral to switch him off is when they can no longer justify their anthropomorphism of the machine.

Not at all. But why is it morally relevant?

That was meant seriously. What is the intrinsic worth of a life, without external validation of that life? For eample, one could take the view that once a mother has a grown child, she should 'make way' for her offspring.

I have been having trouble with the IRC chat lately. I get the error message 'Applet IRCApplet notinited' (whatever that means) followed by 'Loading Java Applet failed'. Anyone else? I haven't changed anything that I am aware of.

I am currently doing a postgraduate degree in teaching. I am finding myself almost constantly disagreeing with our 'teaching experts' (mainly because they don't seem to understand what science is) so I am interested in other people's opinions. So, what makes a good teacher? In particular, how should one go about teaching undergraduate physics? (inc. lectures, tutorials, labs, online learning, or just any great innovative ideas.) For example, in last year's lectures I tried usual a 'public response system'. I gave all the students electronic handsets at the start of the lecture and occasionally I would ask them a multiple choice question (usually a fairly easy but slightly wierd physics problem). They would use the handets to answer (an bit like 'Who wants to be a millionaire') and I would show a graph of what people answered. I am not sure how helpful it was but it did seem to wake tham up now and again.

As long as they are over 18 I see no problem. There are plenty of really really crap old politicians out there, so I don't think age is any measure of competance.

Only because you define 'suffering' as what 'feeling beings' feel. No. Empathizing would be understanding what something else experiences. This is a transferance of what you feel onto another creature when you have no idea how it feels.

I have no objection to that, but it is a pretty empty statement - just a matter of defiition Prove it. Why does suffering have moral disvalue. Can you even define what 'suffering' means? Am I suffering by having to read this drivel? No it doesn't because you have not made any link between suffering and morality. You have not even defined your terms. I would accept that as a true statement, except for the parenthesis. That is a pretty big 'If' though. No - there are plenty of (im-)moral acts which affect no-one. There is no such thing. Everything has reference to 'other entities'. Are you suggesting that charity has no "reference to other entities"? And there you go with that 'suffering' word again..... Even if you were somehow proving that suffering or happiness were moral characteristics (and you have not, other than by choosing a definition) this would still only be a proof that these are members of the set. It does not prove that the set is complete. Absolutely not. That is downright faulty logic. And you use that faulty logic to exclude characteristics that you do not deem worthy. In other words, you assume at the start the very thing you now claim to deduce. It is anthropocentric because the only reason you have accepted some characteristics and not others is because you have these characteristics. Why would this be a bad thing?

IMM, please provide a definition of a 'moral characteristic' and then present a proof of what constitutes a moral characteristic. Why should we accept your definition?

The speed of light doesn't depend on alpha anyway. In fact, we already know that alpha is not constant - it changes with energy scale.

I think Italy deserved to win. Everyone keeps saying how France was better on the night, but I disagree. They are only saying that because they were being more attacking, but there is more to football than just attacking. The Italians had an awesome defense - they only let in two goals in the entire tournament, and both were dodgy (one last night's penalty). France may have looked good, but they couldn't finish anything.

That sounds much better! I think diversity is much more desirable than homogeneity. I also like places which feel alive and changing. Where people are busy living life, squeezing every gram of fullfilment out of every day experiences.

It sounds unbearable.

lol - but then you have to remember the 'proper' pronunciation, which is harder than remembering the spelling! It is the way I pronounce it. (Although I may mumble 'head' at the end.)

On these grounds, you opposed the American War of Independence I presume?

This thread is grossly mistitled.

Italy will win I think.