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The only similarity applicable to every conscious being, regardless of their shape, form, size, and ingredients, is that they want to extend the existence of consciousness further into the future. It's not restricted to selfish behavior, although self preservation is important up to some limit.
You have hit upon the ultimate philosophical statement. All things can be classed as A, not A, or unclassifiable in terms of parameter A..
Any conscious entities can be classified into 3 types based on their behavior related to the extension of consciousness further into the future. The first type directs their efforts to extend the existence of consciousness further into the future. The second type directs their efforts to prevent the existence of consciousness further into the future. The third type doesn't direct their efforts to either ways.
For centuries, all philosophers seem to have done is question and debate. Why do philosophical problems resist solution?
Philosophy seems to be on a hiding to nothing. It has a 2,500-year history in the West and an extensive back-catalogue – of problems. There are questions about what exists, and what we know about it, such as: Do we have free will? Is there an external world? Does God exist? and so on. There are also questions of analysis and definition such as: What makes a sentence true? What makes an act just? What is causation? What is a person? This is a tiny sample. For almost any abstract notion, some philosopher has wondered what it really is.Yet, despite this wealth of questions and the centuries spent tackling them, philosophers haven’t successfully provided any answers. They’ve tried long and hard but nothing they’ve said towards answering those questions has quite made the grade. Other philosophers haven’t been slow to pick holes in their attempted answers and expose flaws or dubious assumptions in them. The punctures in the attempted answers then get patched up and put up for discussion again. But what happens is that new punctures appear, or the patches fail and the old punctures are revealed again. Philosophy emerges as a series of arguments without end, and its questions settle into seemingly intractable problems.
Our lives are regulated by, among other things, moral codes, codes prescribing what’s off-limits (what’s morally wrong) and what isn’t (what’s morally permissible). Just what is a moral code though? What is the source of morality? Is it our emotions or our reason or something else again? And there are further questions: why should anyone be moral? What’s in it for them? Plato gave these questions close attention. He took the view that a wrongdoer is someone who makes a cognitive mistake by not thinking things through clearly enough. Plato thought that, if only we had a clear idea of what moral goodness is, if only we could know it for what it is, we’d be bound to avoid wrongdoing. To know the good is to love it.Other philosophers disagreed and found no route from reason to morality. David Hume thought that only emotion, not reason, could provide direction to our lives. There’s nothing contrary to reason, Hume provocatively said in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739), to care more about scratching your finger than the fate of humanity. Something we should take from this debate between Plato and Hume is that it’s not at all like a parlour game on which nothing of consequence hangs. In fact, it’s hard to think of a problem that could have more consequence than one about how we’re to live our lives. Dismissing this debate as empty wordplay would be a cop-out, an evasion of an especially difficult intellectual problem. It is, moreover, far from being an isolated example. Debates about the reality of moral responsibility, the rationale for punishment or the moral status of animals raise other intellectually and morally pressing issues.
What is the source of morality?
It's unrealistic to expect a system with no capability to simulate the consequences of its actions to behave morally.
An authoritative figure or entity tells conscious agents what's morally good, hence to follow, and what's morally bad, hence to avoid.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 14/06/2021 13:06:29An authoritative figure or entity tells conscious agents what's morally good, hence to follow, and what's morally bad, hence to avoid."Kill infidels" thus becomes a moral imperative. But it fails my tests: you wouldn't want to kill yourself (if you think the order is legitimate, you aren't an infidel) and your nearest and dearest (by definition of near and dear).
I may regret this but I have ask you to remind me what the acronym UTG is.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 11/06/2021 06:40:32Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 05/06/2021 22:41:27The only similarity applicable to every conscious being, regardless of their shape, form, size, and ingredients, is that they want to extend the existence of consciousness further into the future.I realise that I have expressed the idea of universal terminal goal in some different ways. I feel that this one is the least controversial and easiest to follow. So, I think I have arrived to the final conclusion about universal terminal goal. It came from definitions of each word in the phrase, and take their implications into account. Goal is the noun, while terminal and universal are the adjectives that describes the noun.The word Goal means preferred state or condition in the future. If it's not preferred, it can't be a goal. If it's already happened in the past, it can't be a goal either. Although it's possible that the goal is to make future condition similar to preferred condition in the past as reference. The preference requires the existence of at least one conscious entity. Preference can't exist in a universe without consciousness, so can't a goal. The word Terminal requires that the goal is seen from the persepective of conscious entities that exist in the furthest conceivable future. If the future point of reference is too close to the present, it would expire soon and the goal won't be usable anymore.The word Universal requires that no other constraint should be added to the goal determined by aforementioned words. The only valid constraints have already been set by the words goal and terminal.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 05/06/2021 22:41:27The only similarity applicable to every conscious being, regardless of their shape, form, size, and ingredients, is that they want to extend the existence of consciousness further into the future.I realise that I have expressed the idea of universal terminal goal in some different ways. I feel that this one is the least controversial and easiest to follow.
The only similarity applicable to every conscious being, regardless of their shape, form, size, and ingredients, is that they want to extend the existence of consciousness further into the future.
So far, you seem to have convinced yourself that UMS ↔ UTG without definition or proof of the necessary existence of either. I'm pretty sure this is where your argument began.
The preference requires the existence of at least one conscious entity.
"Kill infidels" thus becomes a moral imperative. But it fails my tests: you wouldn't want to kill yourself (if you think the order is legitimate, you aren't an infidel) and your nearest and dearest (by definition of near and dear).