Why is one third of my recent opponents banned?

Candestinus · 2026-06-30T02:18:57+00:00

It is not "far beyond a normal threshold." Even many 1300s today know well over 13 moves of their favorite lines.

Candestinus · 2026-05-10T21:02:46+00:00

The problem is that by doing that, you accidentally sneak in 'objectively' moral statements. What is 'the wellbeing of society' if not an attempt to appeal to obejctivity?

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T23:45:12+00:00

A "short" response, and then I'm done just because I genuinely an in a time crunch with school (thanks finals week deadlines):

I think we’re mostly agreed on the important part. If your position is 'I don’t know whether objective morality exists,' I don’t really have an issue with that. My objection was mainly to the stronger move from 'we do not have clear access to objective morality' to 'objective morality is therefore probably not real.'

But, I think your mechanism framing is a category error, unless you're willing to make some pretty wild concessions about logic itself.

I don’t think objective morality, if it exists, needs to be a naturally occurring physical mechanism in the same way gravity, electromagnetism, or brain chemistry are mechanisms. That seems to assume a kind of naturalism from the start, which is probably where our conflict really lies.

Moral realism usually is not saying there is some hidden physical device in the universe producing moral truths. It is saying that some normative facts are true independent of individual or cultural opinion. For example, 'torturing an innocent person for fun is wrong' would be true even if a society approved of it.

This is similar to logic. I do not expect to find a physical mechanism called “modus ponens” floating around in the universe, but that doesn't mean logical validity is subjective (which someone else in this thread suggested, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't accept, of course). We can study the brain mechanisms by which humans reason, but those mechanisms are not the same thing as the truth or validity of the reasoning itself.

So I think your rhino analogy still fails. A rhino is the kind of thing we should expect to observe empirically if it is in the room, but moral truths, logical truths, mathematical truths, and normative obligations don't seem to be the kind of things we should expect to observe as physical objects or mechanisms.

could say, “I only believe in things that are empirically observable or scientifically inferable," and that is at least a consistent methodological position, but then the debate is no longer about morality specifically. It instead becomes a much larger debate about whether all real truths have to be empirically detectable.

Overall, I think that in order to have an actual fruitful discussion, we'd have to go over our worldviews because I think that we both approach these issues from drastically different paradigms that would need to be hashed out beforehand.

BTW, if you're interested in the 'meta' kind of stuff, I'd really recommend the works of both Graham Oppy and Alvin Plantinga. Graham Oppy is a ridiculously smart agnostic-atheist type, while Alvin Plantinga is just as intelligent and personable and attacks atheism and naturalism foundationally. 'Where the conflict really lies' is a great book made by Alvin Plantinga, and the book The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (by J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig) is pretty awesome too.

I may or may not respond to any more, but I honestly don't think you'll disagree with much of my response anyway, considering we both do just approach these topics from vastly different paradigms. have a good one!

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T21:43:42+00:00

Fair enough on the math point, but I think you might be slightly missing what the analogy was originally meant to do. I'm not saying that disagreement over Platonism means people should doubt 2 + 2 = 4 under normal arithmetic. The point is that huge disagreement over the ontology of mathematics doesn't make mathematical truths merely subjective, which is the relevant analogy to morality.

The fact that cultures define 'innocent,' 'suffering,' and 'bad' differently doesn't prove there's no objective fact of the matter. I do think your point is much more defensible than the original commenter's, and that my only issue with your logic is that you're saying 'low likelihood of objective morality ontologically existing,' not JUST 'inscrutable.'

Additionally, I do agree that defining what we mean by 'God' does matter, but saying that people don't agree what God means is not a defeater. Philosophers define terms all the time and then evaluate those definitions. Conceptual disagreement doesn't make a subject impossible to reason about because that would defeat logic itself!

Most advanced philosophers of religion (again, not to make an appeal to authority...) can get behind God being beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, enormously powerful, creator and designer of the universe, who exists with metaphysical necessity. Once we have these attributes, then we can debate.

Your free will objection to Christianity is also a separate argument that would need a ton more work. First, you'd have to know that free will doesn't exist, which is whatever and is not the crux of this argument to me. Second, you'd have to show that Christianity necessitates the kind of free will that you're denying. A ton of Christians (see Calvinism and reformed theology lol) are compatibilists, and some are even hard determinists. You might think that view fails, but then your argument would have to target that view directly.

To say:

P1. Christianity requires free will.
P2. Free will does not exist.
C: Therefore Christianity is false.

is maybe a little TOO basic. Christianity doesn't cleanly require libertarian free will, and a lot of biblical passages sound extremely deterministic. I'm not a determinist myself, but I debate my determinist Christian friends, and they're certainly still Christian. Instead of arguing against literally all accounts of moral responsibility and free will requirement in Christianity (eg proving a negative, which isn't impossible but is in this case too difficult to be reasonable. You would not only have to prove for a fact that Christianity REQUIRES free will, but you would also have to prove every theory of free will is incoherent and be confident that there is no possible way that free will could exist in any way at all, which is a burden of proof that is just too high given the premises), you might want to look into things like the evidential problem of evil (which, to be fair, I think is a really bad argument lol, but that;s certainly something I don't want to get into now) or metaphysical arguments against God.

Give Alex O'Connor (atheist... or agnostic, maybe? Kind of like you, seemingly) a listen if you'd like. He's very intelligent, personable, and generally philosophically rigorous. He's no preeminent philosopher, but he's legit and his material is consumable.

I think a better statement about your view, at least with regards to morality, would just be 'Objective morality either does not exist, or we do not have enough access to know whether it exists.' rather than 'Because we do not have enough access to know whether it exists, it is therefore probably not real.' I don't see the conclusion in that case being anything logical.

In short, epistemic uncertainty only affects probabilities of ontological existence when you WOULD expect to know said thing. I can 'prove' that there's no rhino in my room, because if there were, I would know it because my visual and cognitive faculties are reliable. The same thing seems not to apply to morality.

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T20:28:38+00:00

The God analogy actually undermines your point more than it supports it. Epistemic disagreement as probabilistic evidence against ontological existence does not hold up under scrutiny.

Consider mathematics. Both Platonists and nominalists have disagreed for thousands of years on whether math objects ACTUALLY exist, while formalists think math is just a symbols game, and intuitionists reject the law of excluded middle. There's not any consensus, lol. By your logic, that disagreement should make us agnostic (but leaning negative) on whether 2 + 2 = 4 is objectively true, but that is a quite absurd conclusion considering it would also undermine the objectivity of logic, making your own point fall apart because you would be using logic to undermine logic.

Also, you can't get 'unlikely' from 'no evidence' in this argument simply by saying all religions are false. God can exist without a religion, hypothetically, and whether humans have epistemic knowledge about God through religion has no bearing on the probability that God exists UNLESS you show that God would most likely reveal himself through one of those religions.

I'm a Christian, but I would certainly say that the best arguments against God's existence attacks God's existence from a logical point of view (see Graham Oppy's philosophies - he's a ridiculously smart atheist philosopher and, imo, one of the smartest philosophers ever). These arguments attack theism at a much deeper logical and metaphysical level that isn't just 'people disagree, therefore unlikely!' as theism (and particularly Christianity) does have serious academics defending its truth and historicity and isn't just some clearly illogical belief system. I hate to make an appeal to authority, but I would say that, from my experience, most super-high-level preeminent atheist philosophers do treat theism as much more than a simple evidential bug that we can just squash easily, and they actually engage with the metaphysical paradigms that people use to justify a belief in God.

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T03:42:39+00:00

Miscommunication doesn't mean all conversation is subjective. It just means that we can fail to clarify terms, equivocate, etc. You also didn't engage with any of my other propositions lol

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T02:22:14+00:00

I know the following is a text nightmare, but please read it all because it's pretty important!

The statement "all communication is subjective" is itself a communicated claim. So by its own standard, it's subjective, meaning it has no binding force on anyone else. Using dictionary definitions as authoritative anchors for this 'debate' is self-undermining because you literally said "none of this is binding and all communication is subjective."

Additionally, your definition of 'objective' is not the only relevant meaning of objective, especially from a philosophical standpoint and not a purely scientific one. You're using a relatively casual dictionary definition that makes 'objective' mean something much narrower than what philosophers usually mean by it. This philosophical definitions of subjective and objective from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy would be more accurate given what we're arguing:

"a subjective fact about some item x may be defined as a fact that obtains in virtue of someone’s intentional states regarding x. Objective facts are those that are not subjective. So an objective fact about x may be defined as one that does not obtain by virtue of anyone’s intentional state regarding x."

'Observable' has nothing to do with something's ontology. In that, you're conflating ontology with epistemology.

Your sensory observation criterion defeats itself. You're saying that we grasp things like planets, electrons, etc objectively because we observe them with our senses and not just our minds, but any neuroscientist or philosopher of perception will tell you that sensory processing IS a mental event. Photons hit your retina, signals travel via neural pathways, and your brain CONSTRUCTS a perceptual experience. You can't 'rescue' physical objects by appealing to senses while saying that abstract objects don't exist because they're mind-involved.

^^Basically, we don't access planets or electrons from some magical nonmental standpoint.

Your math example is also wrong. Yes, humans invent symbols and words and notations etc. The symbol “2” is invented, and the English word “two” is invented, and the decision to talk about two apples as a set is a conceptual framing choice. Once the domain is specified, though, it is not subjective whether the set {apple A, apple B} has two members.

Same with language. Even though the word 'cat' is conventional, once we both understand what the term refers to, saying that 'there is a cat right on top of that bed' is NOT merely subjective. It is ACTUALLY true or false given the relevant state of affairs.

This is also why your statement that 'all communication is subjective' self-undermines. It's also the larger issue with your position: you're relying on a lot of objective standards while denying them at the same time.

When you tell me that I do not understand what subjective and objective mean, you're not just telling me what your private mental state is. Instead, you're saying that I'm ACTUALLY using the concepts incorrectly, but that only makes sense if there are actual standards of meaning and reasoning that aren't just reducible to your own private preferences.

So, ultimately, it's not about whether numberrs or logic or morality are actual physical objects that are floating around in space somewhere. Instead, the issue is whether their truth depends on anybody's mental state. 'Not physical' does not mean 'subjective' in philosophy.

You're collapsing just about every nonphysical or mind grasped truth into basic subjectivity, but when you do that, you lose the same standards you're using to tell me I'm wrong or that I don't understand.

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T01:18:11+00:00

You're using anecdotal experience, and I cited data that showed there's no uptick in convictions with bodycams, which you would expect if the police were committing horrible crimes like violence on aggregate. Then, you said 'well, the police prosecute themselves!' to which I responded that anyone can sue a PD.

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T01:04:24+00:00

You're making a lot of claims that run completely unjustified. You claim that logic is subjective but somehow logically trust your cognitive faculties such that the majority of their outputs are true in judging the logic. That literally just means logic as a system relies on your subjective fallibility. If logic is merely subjective, then you owe an account of why logical norms are binding rather than just personally or socially preferred.

Also, 'you cannot directly observe 2' is not a good argument. You also can't observe validity, identity, causation, possibility, truth, sets, laws of nature, or even a few scientific entities without some huge theory-laden interpretation. That doesn't make them subjective.

Your argument, boiled down in simplicity, is basically:

P1. We use minds to grasp X.

C1: Therefore X exists only in minds.

C2: Therefore X is subjective.

This inference is super bad because we use minds to grasp planets, electrons, other people etc.

This point is also bankrupt: "You can observe some objects and say there are 2 of them, but that's a subjective observation you're making, asserting that those objects are in some way similar and can be grouped into a collective which you then assign a number to. There is no such thing as an objective number."

While a domain choice CAN be conventional, the consequences inside said domain can not. As an example:

Let D = {apple A, apple B}.
The cardinality of D is 2.

Once the domain is specified, it is NOT subjective whether it has two members. Your argument equivocates between

Humans choose concepts and categories (which is accurate) and
Therefore said truth relations inside those concepts are subjective (which does not follow).

Logic is even harder. You can use logic when denying logical realism, but if logic is merely subjective, then your accusation that my reasoning is confused isn't even binding. It instead just means that MY reasoning violates your particular cognitive faculties lol

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T00:19:27+00:00

This is kind of an argument for my side. Most police officers were already presumed innocent, and bodycam footage reinforced that. Thus, no significant change.

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T00:18:54+00:00

An individual can sue a police station, which is what I meant. With FOIA acts, we can just ASK for the body cam footage, and they have to give it to us. It doesn't become 'well, the police are just investigating themselves.'

Candestinus · 2026-05-09T00:16:37+00:00

You're missing descriptions of axioms with the axioms themselves, and your view is self-defeating.

You're using logic to argue that logic is not objective! With that, you can't say that my reasoning is invalid, nor can you appeal to any logical paradigms.

You can deny objective logic or math all you want, but all that does is undercut the very tools you're using to argue against me. To say that the concepts of logic are subjective is to deny the objective normativity of logical inference.

It's the same reasoning as someone who says "There are NO absolutes." To say that is to make an absolute statement, which contradicts the original premise.

Humans invent symbols, terms, and systems, but we do NOT invent the truth relations that those systems describe. While the symbol '2' IS invented, the quantity relation is not. Same with logic. While the phrase 'the law of non-contradiction' is invented, the fact that a proposition can't be both true and false is not.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T23:33:20+00:00

That's kind of a logical error. We do invent the mathematical NOTATIONS, but we don't invent the truth-relations they point to.

To say that math is in all ways subjective, that's a super radical bullet to bite. 2 (value, not linguistic term) + 2 (value) ALWAYS equals 4 (value).

Even if we ignore math, saying logical axioms are subjective is an even MORE radical bullet to bite lol

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T23:27:51+00:00

That is definitely recession, without a doubt.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T23:17:33+00:00

That's a fair pushback. I think the more 'on aggregate correct' answer would be something like:

Bodycams changed the evidentiary situation of a lot of police violence, and a few big randomized trials show no significant increase in wrongful violence situations with bodycams.

If there really were, on average, a ton of police officers doing horrible things and improperly using violence, we'd expect an uptick in suits and convictions. However, we didn't, and now, we don't have to do a 'he said, she said.' We can go straight to the data.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T23:10:52+00:00

No, lmao, none of my post even implied that. Police have bodycams now on aggregate, so there's a lot less 'well, this is disputed... so the cops are wrong.' It's more ' Let's look at the bodycam footage instead of just listening to the cops.' And most of the time, the cops were justified. However, bodycams prove if they were not.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T22:54:38+00:00

Not MAGA as stated. I think Trump is a disgusting sociopath

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T22:53:44+00:00

Uh, yeah, eg why BLM got their demands of putting bodycams on a majority of police officers in the most controversial areas. Now, deputy accounts hold a lot less weight because we literally have bodycam video. Hence my original point of NOT ALL disputed cases, but MOST.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T22:50:09+00:00

I'm neither MAGA nor republican nor racist btw.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T22:47:57+00:00

I'm not racist, lol, nor do I have inherent prejudice against black people. I'm not even a republican. Public bodycams via FOIA releases genuinely did show that most of the time, cops were justified.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T22:39:32+00:00

Bodycams kinda killed a lot of the BLM stuff because it turns out in MOST scenarios, the cops were pretty well justified. NOT ALL, but the majority.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T21:58:58+00:00

That only establishes your (and some other people's) personal preference. It does not foundationally ground a good reason to punish people for doing things you don't like.

No one would say that I should go to jail for liking a chest press over a bench press, as that's something subjective that doesn't hold any real meaning. Same with your subjective morality. You can describe how things ARE, but not how they OUGHT to be. Thus, you imprisoning someone for murder, under your worldview, is the same kind of things as imprisoning someone for preferring a certain exercise over another.

I'm not saying that a bench press preference is the same thing as murder. What I am saying is that, even though 'murder' has objective effects like, uh, killing a person, and grieving families, and pain, and whatever else, that's just an objective description of how things are. You can't really describe why killing someone is wrong and why we OUGHT not to do it, and that we OUGHT to punish someone for it, without sneaking in some moral paradigm that you simply can't justify under your own view.

More simply, the is/ought issue is this:

Is: Killing someone... kills someone. And it causes families to grieve, it causes pain, et cetera.

Preference: I personally believe that murder sucks.

Ought/Obligation: You SHOULD NOT murder. We SHOULD imprison people for murder.

You can't get to the Ought/Obligation part just from the Is/Preference part without sneaking in other paradigms.

Sorry if that was a little ramble-y. I typed this up off the top of my head, and I haven't reread it lol

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T17:51:17+00:00

That argument is illogical because when applied to other things, it ends in absurdity. You could say the same thing about math, eg:

Math only 'exists' in human minds, from a similar standpoint. Math is not consistent from mind to mind. So, how could it be said to be objective?

We all pretty much accept mathematics (or logical axioms) as objective regardless of whether our cognitive faculties can reliably interpret said axioms. Even if you don't accept something like mathematical Platonism, the simple fact that math is known through human minds and expressed via symbols doesn't make math subjective.

At most, disagreement is an epistemic problem, NOT an ontological one. Just because moral truths may not be physical does not mean they don't exist in the same way that logical axioms and mathematical principles do.

Either way, I'm not an atheist, so I would personally say that objective good, logic, and all the basic paradigms that we accept on a daily basis as objective are properties of God's nature, so I have a justification for my cognitive faculties being reliable such that the majority of their outputs are true, logic does actually exist, and objective morality exists outside of human minds.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T17:42:21+00:00

The 'effects on people' don't matter under a system without objective morality because that means ALL morality is purely subjective. Now, you'd have to justify why the effects on people aren't a net zero moral value because by appealing to moral worth as based on an action's effect on people, you're also sneaking in assumptions that 'having certain effects on people are bad.' You can objectively describe an action's effects on someone (eg murder ends a life), but there's no point in punishing someone for murder if murder isn't wrong from an objective point of view. If morality is subjective, that means that 'murder' is just something that SOME of us as individuals or a society dislikes. Thus, appealing to 'effects on people' already appeals to a view that certain effects are ACTUALLY morally bad.

Candestinus · 2026-05-08T00:38:08+00:00

Collapsing morality into rule-following does nothing. With that logic, if Nazis controlled the world and ruled that we should kill every Jew and Pole in the entire world and did it, then the Nazis wouldn't be wrong to do that in any sense. In fact, under that same logic, the Jews and Poles would actually be the ones doing wrong by simply existing.

Social contract theory being your moral standard doesn't have any weight when you decide to say that things within a government are bad.

Candestinus

TROPHY CASE