zurew

There are multiple different things not just solipsism that seem to be close to impossible to prove or to disprove (if those terms like 'prove' and 'disprove' are defined in an inferential sense) . If you only care about inferential justification, then you should probably stay agnostic about a big set of metaphysical claims (including whether solipsism is true or false) But if you are okay with non-inferential justification or if you don't care about inferential justification, then there might be ways to get around it . Direct experience could be potentially categorized under "non-inferential justification" , but I personally still have issues with how the term 'direct experience' is used, because it seem to be used in a vague way and sometimes people seem to be using the term in different ways (because one person can claim that direct experience "proves" that solipsism is true and another can say that direct experience proves/tells you that a completely different metaphysics is true).

No not necessarily, because under my semantics, explanations doesn't have to have an explanation. There is a difference between saying X explains choice Y vs choice Y doesn't have any explanation at all. But to be more precise, I can put it this way - running back the exact same scenario multiple times (same circumstance, same environment, same preferences etc), where you are presented with the exact same options, do you have the ability to choose a different option ? if yes, then I would categorize that as free will.

If the meaning of free will isn't cashed out as - random choice, then I don't know what is meant by it. If you are presented with 2 options (A and B) and you choose A over B and there is no explanation in principle why you chose A over B, then thats gonna be free will, but I take that to be a random choice. If it can be explained by something, then thats gonna be determinism or in some cases compatibilism.

Sure nouns are not statements and they cant have a truth value (they are neither true nor false), but earlier you didn't just give a noun, you gave a declarative statement that has a truth value. Under my view a hypothesis is just a proposition (declarative statement that can be true or false) that is used to explain something. So yes, under this semantics what you provided earlier was a hypothesis or more like a series of statements where each statement can have a truth value.

So when a given data can be accounted for by multiple different hypothesis , how do you disambiguate between them and how do you check which one is the case? Yes really, there are multiple people who claim to see spirits and some of them are absolutely miserable. If the reply is that those are not real psychics then thats not gonna be interesting because thats just gonna beg the question. Also I dont know why "naturality" is brought up, whats the relevance of what is natural and what is not? Its a loaded and vague term and it is often times used either in a meaningless way or it is used in a loaded way where it is assumed that everything that is natural is automatically good.

Thats one hypothesis, but there can be a lot of other hypothesis that can explain the data of "seeing spirits" without concluding that it was natural incliniation. But all of this seem to be completely tangential to op's problem/question. Because seeing spirits is compatible with being miserable and with suffering. But its not even about how you grow up, the question is in the context of - given that one grew up in a society and lives in a society, can one live and be completely alone all the time and have good mental health? But regardless what the actual answer to that question is, other than relying on our intuitions (that are informed by our biases and by limited data that we are aware of) and providing just so stories, it would be more fruitful if people here would argue providing studies to back up their claims.

Yeah I understand that, but I was questioning this premise: What do you base that claim on? It seems to me that a person growing up totally by themselves would be just as likely (if not more) to get obsessed with survival and to not care about spirituality at all.

Can you explain why would that be the case and what you are basing this on? Whats the issue with saying that the child wouldn't develop spiritually on its own and that the child wouldn't care about spiritual development?

I dont take objective morality or objective evil to be intelligible and its not even relevant in most cases. Whats interesting is that for motivation (to make an agent to do or not to do a particular thing) both subjectivists and objectivists always appeal to the given agent's subjective values and they try to demonstrate to them, that given the agent's values and standards - it would be in their best interest to do or not to do that thing. The question whether morals are objectively true or subjectively true, doesn't have much bearing on how a given agent behaves. Lets suppose its an objective moral obligation that you ought to rape as many people as many you can. Why would anyone care about this principle, if there is no punishment not abiding by this principle? No one would a give a fuck about it, unless there is a guaranteed punishment for not abiding by it. Or lets suppose that there is an objectively true moral principle that you shouldn't kill people for fun. Most people would abide by that principle , but again, not because its objectively true, but because its already aligned with most people's subjective preferences and values. Even when it comes to views, where God punishes you - the reason why you abide by those moral rules is because you don't want to get punished and not because they are objective (most people couldn't care less, whether those principles are grounded in God's subjective desires or whether those standards are somehow objective , what they care about is the punishment). But punishment can be given by subjectivists too.

The truthmaker for me (what makes it true or false) isn't indexed to my preferences , it is indexed to what I take justification to be. Its more like - yes, if you drop all the necessary conditions of a definition, that definition won't apply anymore.

Its not about what I like. The person who has a sound justification can be an immoral and incredibly annoying person , but that wouldnt change him/her being a genius. You could stack all the things I hate and put all those negative traits on the genius, but again , that still wouldnt change my view.

I have heard vegan arguments for killing predators or making them extinct (because their survival is necessarily dependent on killing). Obviously some set of things are assumed, before they would apply their argument ,for example that they would only do it if that wouldn't destroy the larger ecosystem that non-predators rely on (in other words - the ecosystem maintaining functions of those predators can be replaced).

In a lot of cases, they dont preach about the same truth. Some suggest reincarnation , others dont. Some suggest heaven and hell, others dont. Some suggest multiple Gods, others just one God. And even that one God can be cashed out in so many different ways. The number of ways these things can be conceptualized and contextualized , is endless.

Im not exactly sure what the challenge is. Im not sure, if you have an epistemic question or a sociology question. If the challenge is about questioning your premise that "usually people distinguish between genius and madman based on how much they like them" ,then, I won't challenge that, because I agree. But if the claim is that there isn't any good way or there isn't any good set of heruistics to differentiate between the two ,then I disagree. Making wild/outrageous claims is true for both, but only the genius is capable to provide either a sound justification for his/her claim and or can demonstrate that his/her claim is true. And "sound justification" entails (on my view) that the genius can either walk you through step by step for why people should adopt a new norm to judge things by (this can include changing our idea about what should be considered as a sound justification and this can include what kind of explanatory virtues we should care about and can include how those should be weighed) or simply using already existing norms in a given field, he/she can show you - why his/her theory/paradigm/model is better than the current one. Another difference is lack of clarity. A madman usually cant even spell out a clear norm to judge things by, just incoherently rambles about something and claims that his theory/model is better, but its usually unclear what is meant by "better" and or its unclear simply what his insight/breakthrough is about. Another one is that a madman usually won't have a basic understanding of the field he claims he has a unique insight about. He usually won't be able to name the competing theories and won't be able to specifically point out and explain the issue(s) with them.

@Elliott JP was completely lost in that debate and was just throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. He utterly failed to make a case for objective morality.