You see the news? Woman pretending to be a man walked into a school and murdered a bunch of kids.
“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that that’s bad.”
You’re a genius. I do say so. It’s about as bad as you can get.
“Well, like, that’s just your opinion, man.”
Oh, funny, funny.
“You can’t say what is bad or what is good. I mean, you can, but it doesn’t mean anything. Evolution made you say it. It made your genes want to not have kids shot by trannies. Something about inclusive fitness. I don’t know. It’s math, and therefore science, which is superior to all other forms of thinking.”
Evolution gave me my opinions?
“Had to. That’s what the science says.”
That must mean evolution gave everybody their opinions.
“It does mean that, yes. Can’t be escaped. We are prisoners of our genes, and our genes were formed over millions of years of evolution.”
That so? How do you know that’s true?
“It is so, yes. And we can’t know anything is true. Evolution made us believe comforting thoughts that have nothing to do with the truth, but which enhance our survival.”
And you think it’s true that you can’t know truth? Truly, science is amazing. Anyway, if what you say is right, it means evolution told that tranny to kill those kids, since genes make us do everything.
“Nah. She was just defective.”
I’d say she was rather effective. Got away with killing the kids. And would have got away with her life, too, had she surrendered.
“Maybe.”
Since genes make everybody do everything, genes made Stalin slaughter all those millions. Right? And they made Mao jealous, so he upped the score. And my revulsion was made by my genes, even though I’m in no way related to all those Chinese corpses?
“That’s the way it works. He who has power rules. There is no right and wrong. There is only survival.”
If survival is that only thing that matters, then even survival doesn’t matter. Because nothing can matter. There has to be objective morality for anything to truly matter. Anyway, the people that kill themselves, or their children, which is a growing number of people, their genes made them do that, too?
“No, they were, and are, defective too. They aren’t surviving.”
What about people who eat crap, sit around and grow fat and indulge in masturbation. Or I should say, take Pride in masturbation. They broken, too?
“Yes. All that matters is survival.”
We’ll skip how all these broken genes got created so fast, and are now so widespread. I’m more interested in the idea that nothing matters, everything is opinion, just feelings caused by genes to maximize survival. But only sometimes. Sometimes the genes maximize death.
“It’s just like free will. Which is an illusion.”
A what now?
“An illusion. We just think we can make choices.”
Who—who exactly—is this “we”? Who—who exactly—is having the illusion? What are the measurable characteristics of this illusion? How can an illusion think, or how can it think it can think, or have what it thinks is free will? How do you know the illusion isn’t the (let us call it) entity directing things, the entity really making choices? The whole idea is incoherent.
“Science says so.”
It does? How?
“Science says that feelings are located in the brain. It’s those feelings that are the illusions. It’s that—.”
Hold up. How does the brain make an illusion of a being or entity that believes it is alive, can form ideas, posit universals, have opinions, and have feelings?
“All that stuff is just the brain working.”
Is it? Prove it.
“It’s obvious. We are nothing more than material beings. Therefore, we have to be illusions on top of meat bags driven by genes to maximize survival.”
Except often we don’t maximize survival. And anyway, it’s your idea that we are only material beings. That sounds like an odd philosophy.
“It isn’t philosophy. It’s science.”
So you’re going to call your belief in materialism, which you cannot prove but merely assert, not a philosophy, but “just science.”
“I am. And I can prove it. Or science can.”
Well, have it your way. Use whichever word you like. It’s still an idle boast. Nor you, nor science, has no proof of materialism. You’re just bluffing. If you had such proof, you’d give it.
“They’ll get it some day.”
I won’t wait up. You are using the Future Promise Fallacy which says something is true now because someday, not today, it will be proved true. Which is another strange philosophy.
“It’s not philosophy. We don’t need philosophy. We outgrew that as a species once we got science.”
And we got trannies, created by science. If we don’t need philosophy, and given science can’t get along without math, what is—what exactly is—math?
“I’m not a mathematician.”
Do we invent math? Or does math describe Reality? And what kind of Reality? Nominalistic? Platonic? Realistic? Do infinities exist, or are they only potential? How can we know mathematical truths? What about axioms? How can logic be true if evolution might be lying to us?
“Like I said, I’m not a mathematician. I don’t know.”
Every question requires a philosophy of mathematics. How about this one: what is life? What differentiates it from non-life?
“I’m not a biologist. But they must know.”
Some might. But you can’t escape having a philosophy of life versus non-life. Just like physicists can’t escape a philosophy of matter. Some, for instance, still cling to the ancient Democritian idea that everything is just small particles (or whatever) bumping into each other (as you’ve heard me say). Even though quantum mechanics kicked the air out of that one long ago.
You have a have a philosophy of what a model is, what a theory is, what is a measurement, what is cause (not so easy!), what is explanation, what is prediction, and on and on. Are there “laws” of nature? If so, why? Why these “laws” and not others? Or are there instead laws of natures? Why these natures and not others?
Then there is the grandest question of all: why is there something rather than nothing? That’s not science. What about Aristotle’s argument about the Prime Mover? That’s not science. What’s the difference between primary and secondary causation? That’s not science.
And what about your mysterious illusions. What causal processes bring them about? More importantly, how do they differ in essence from the idea we are rational animals? You simply can’t escape philosophy.
“You’ll want to if you read what is coming out universities. Feminist ‘philosophy’? Fa—I mean LGBT ‘philosophy’? Endless squabbling about words. They never produce anything of use.”
You may be on to something there.
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