Is There a Point To Living a Moral Life?

[FallentoReason]

@MFM

Naturalists don't believe anything: how do brain states represent the proposition "naturalism is true"? You would be assuming that said brain states are *about* the proposition "naturalism is true", but that would be assigning meaning to something physical. Thus, a naturalist having *any* belief begs the question.

Firstly, your point essentially brings up Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Hence, I can easily falsify your objection there by adopting the coherence theory of truth. Since your objection rests upon the assumption that truth is 'out there' (i.e a correspondence between an assertion and a given state of affairs), it becomes inapplicable once I adopt the coherence theory, which does not see truth as such.

As for how I would resolve that *apparent* problem if the correspondence theory was in fact 'true', I don't think such is too hard. Firstly, I don't see the problem in a brain state being about the proposition 'naturalism is true' voids it. Is the correspondence theory of truth's assertion that 'truth is that which corresponds to a given state of affairs of reality' true, or is it circular? That's what your question seems equivalent to, to me, and just as misguided. On naturalism and acceptance of the correspondence theory of truth, all such a proposition would mean that it is in fact the case that the proposition 'Naturalism is true' contains neither a contradiction and accurately represents the brain's perceived reality and experience that naturalism is true.

Strawman. I wasn't talking about the nature of truth, let alone truth itself. I was simply talking about the event where an agent confesses that they believe something e.g. the proposition that "Rowan Atkinson is funny". As it stands, naturalism can't account for such a thing to be possible purely from a physical p.o.v.

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Anyway, to say that assigning and interpreting meaning is a form of data processing is not to say that all forms of data processing amount to assigning or interpreting meaning.

I'd agree.

When you say "conscious entity" - which level of consciousness are you talking about? Any entity can be conscious without being self-aware or sentient.

It's a tricky thing to define for sure. I'd say the entity needs to show emotions/feelings/instincts.

In college, we used to work with two or three different softwares where one would automatically pass on its output data onto the other for processing and so on, and all we had to do was see the final results. As far as the intermediate outputs were concerned, we never became aware of them. The only entities conscious of them were the next programs in line. Those programs - according to predefined categories - handles the job of interpreting results and assigning meanings. Clearly, the conscious entity at the level of engineer is not necessarily required.

"The only entities conscious of them were the next program".

I love the word choice here. It's clear as day that you're begging the question.

Anyways, to the above I shrug my shoulders. Where one program ends and the other starts is an arbitrary boundary. What if we had a Mega Program that contained the algorhythm of all three? Your non-issue would dissolve and we would be at square one. Bottom line here is that it doesn't matter how many programs or how long the algorhythms are, you still have a whole bunch of physical causal relations that take something in and spit something out without ever having to give it meaning.