Do you wish there's a god?

[pocaracas]

If truth is something pertaining to statements, then, in the absence of statements (which would happen in the absence of consciences), truth is non-existent.

Reality, though, would be what it is, regardless.



No truth pertains to facts about reality. Truth statements are language based descriptions of reality. Truth is no more dependent on our descriptions for its existence, than a mountain is dependent on a topographic map for its existence.

FFS, stop making stupid analogies!

A fact is a true statement about reality.... or as true as human consensus makes it.

My question was more in line of what is an addition in the absence of a conscious entity?
Does reality do addition?
Does reality count items?  

Reality need not do addition, for 1+1 =2, no more than reality needs to be conscious of the laws of physics, to be subject to it.

You are, of course, aware that what we call "laws of physics" are just our attempts at quantifying the patterns we observe in the way that reality works, right?


Possibly... if they extrapolate torture to their own kind...
I don't know how wrong will they consider if it's done to the self species.
Also, you're assuming that a non-human would also categorize things as we do, with a pattern seeking brain. That need not be so.

That wasn’t the question. The question assumes the observers understands human subjective and objective perceptions, views and beliefs perceived as objective truths, like 1+1=2 and that which is perceived as subjective taste and opinions, like Fred’s has the best pizza in town. What an objective observer would recognize is that moral statements are not like subjective statements like the best pizza in town, but resemble the way we speak of objective truths like 1+1 = 2.

The question assumes impartial observers... ideally non-human conscious observers. Aliens? Why would aliens have morals equivalent to humanity?

It shouldn't be surprising that our moral perceptions resemble the set of behaviors that lead to a healthy and thriving community. Some of those behaviors have been genetically selected for and are similar to those found in other social species, while other behaviors seem unique to or species and tend to be learned and imposed by society, either by laws and rules, or by peer pressure.

But we’re not talking about human behavior, but about human beliefs and perceptions. Its about the nature of moral beliefs, the ontology of mortality, not about the behaviors that stem from them. A thief can acknowledge that stealing is wrong, while stealing your wallet. A husband can acknowledge it’s wrong to cheat on his wife, while cheating on her.

Yes, but they only become relevant when they inform some action, some behavior.
If a positive disposition towards harming other humans is not passed on to a corresponding behavior, then such a trait tends to be propagated down the genetic line.
I don't know how wrong such a husband and thief would perceive what they're doing as they're doing it... typically, a greater good is somehow perceived.

It is typically described as something more akin to disgust... not a simple negative feeling, but one of the strongest there is.

Yet claiming something is immoral is not synonymous with claiming some thing is strongly disgusting to me. If you’re telling your children it’s wrong to cheat people, what you’re not saying is that it’s wrong because it disgusts me as a father. Im not telling them that they shouldn’t do wrong things, because it disgusts me.



I see different degrees of reaction depending on the gravity of the (potential) action.
Certainly killing someone is more serious than infidelity which is more serious than cheating at some game... The emotional reaction to those should also fall within an equivalent scale.
"It's wrong to cheat and you should be ashamed" might be something that a parent may tell the child.
"It's wrong and disgusting to torture a baby" is another, but I'd prefer not to have to say such a thing to anyone.

Wrong. Psychological phenomena needs such an account.
You easily acknowledge that you have morals, that within you is a sense of a moral reality... but you can't bestow that moral reality upon the rest of the world.



The wrongness of torturing innocent babies, isn’t a psychological phenomena it’s an objective observation, like the  laptop it front of me. Now, the question of why and how our minds perceive the laptop or the wrongness here, may be described psychologicaslly. But acknowledging the existence of things outside our mind, is not dependent on how well we understanding psychology or the origins of the things we’re perceiving. We experience it as self-evident, as self-evident as the existence of other minds outside our own, etc..

Again, you feel it as an objective observation very likely because it's an inherited trait stemming from inwardly acknowledging that such practices lead to a less healthy, less happy, more suffering population.
The same happens for things like incest.

But why do you (and most of us) consider that harming another human being is morally wrong? (see?, it doesn't need to be torture and babies, nor for fun)
I'm certain that such a "rule" is not floating around in the ether and it somehow crystallizes upon most of the human brains…

Because of underlying core moral principles, floating around in the ether, in which all our moral views and perceptions are built and rely on. It’s not because you tell me torturing innocent babies just for fun is immoral, it’s not because I say it, its immoral, and its not because society says its wrong, but reality itself. Now maybe you’ve never actually dealt with immoral people personally. Revealing to someone that something they’re doing is wrong is not like changing their taste in fashion, its akin to revealing truth to someone ignorant or delusional, or taking a blindfold off.

It's immoral because of the awareness that carrying out such practices leads to a worse society. If this is what you mean by "reality itself", then so be it.
I'd say it's an observation of societies... an emergent property. While it seems to me that you imply that it's an inherent property of reality, even in the absence of a social species.

But, if they perceive a lie to be a truth, then what you consider to be an evil, they consider to be a good.

A nazi might acknowledge that killing innocent people is wrong, but justify killing jews by a delusional belief that  they’re not innocent but guilty. In order to scapegoat, murder, and justify their actions they can’t see the jews as innocent. It’s not that they disagree that killing innocent people is wrong, but because they fail to acknowledge that the jews were innocent.

So you acknowledge the possibility of conflicting information. People then tend to act on that to which they attribute more weight.
After spending centuries marginalizing the Jews in Europe, nazis merely went the extra inch and did away with them.
Was it right to do such marginalization? From the overwhelming mideval European christian point of view, it was. From our more globalist point of view, it wasn't.