Human suffering is bad

I'd like to challenge con's assumption that 'human suffering' is an objective fact but 'badness' is not. First of all, it is not 'clear' at all what is meant by human suffering as many different people have different concepts of human suffering. It may be suffering to one person to experience pain, while a stoic might embrace pain as a necessary part of living. It might be suffering to one person to lose a parent, while another person might be relieved that their parent is no longer in pain. The list goes on. But more importantly, con has done nothing to prove that pain is a real concept. In fact, eliminativism is a branch of philosophy of mind that proposes that pain is not real. Daniel Dennett, professor of philosophy at Tufts University, denies that any qualia exist whatsoever. We can examine this through the inverted spectrum argument: Suppose you wake up one day and all your qualitative experiences have been reversed (you see the grass as red, the sky as orange, and so on). It should be immediately obvious that something has changed. But as Dennett points out, we would have no way of knowing if it were actually our qualia that had been reversed or our MEMORIES of our qualitative experiences. For qualia to make sense as a desecrate concept, we must be able to show that: 1. it is possible to know that a change in qualia has occurred, as opposed to a change in something else; or that 2. there is a difference between having a change in qualia and not having one Therefore we should not just accept a priori con's claim that pain is a clear, real concept. Personally, I think pain is real, but that's only because I experience pain. It would be completely impossible for me to PROVE in any way objectively that I experience pain. If con wants to take such a strict position against the concept of badness, he must be prepared to do so in regards to pain, and then he has a lot of work ahead of him. "The word "universe" does not exist outside the context of human language. The concept is similarly nonexistant without human beings." I agree. "You can't even justly say that mathematics or language don't exist objectively, as they all have objective qualities and effects." Actually there's a huge debate in philosophy and mathematics as to whether or not mathematical concept exist platonically or are just tools we invent to understand the world around us. You give no reason to think mathematics exist objectively. "In order to prove the resolution true, however, the concept would have to be coherent. Perceiving something as bad does not make it so." Con seems to confuse 'coherent' with 'objective.' Badness is obviously a coherent concept since it is the subject of our debate. This does not make it objective, but something does not have to be objective to be coherent or to exist. After all, con himself argues that pain exists objectively even though it cannot be proven to exist as such. "I am merely questioning your basis for thinking that badness is a coherent concept, because I simply cannot prove otherwise." I think it's self-evident that bad is a coherent concept. You seem to be assuming that just because 'badness' cannot be shown to be coherent on a cosmic scale therefore it is not coherent on a human scale. This does not follow. The stars do not know that human suffering is bad. But I do. The stars do not know that p and ~p is a logical contradiction, but I do. This does not make the notion of contradiction incoherent. "My analogy was well done. You suggested that we would not do what we do if it did not matter. I showed that doing things is not evidence of mastering. I have said enough to prove that." Here I pointed out that since a planet is not aware of its rotation, it cannot matter to the planet. But since suffering matters to us, it is not like the planet rotating at all. So anyway, here is my point: we cannot prove that human suffering or badness are real concepts on a cosmic scale. They do not matter or even exist coherently outside the context of human beings. That humans suffer is of no concern to the cosmos, nor can we 'prove' that pain is a bad thing or a well-defined concept. But it is prima facie obvious to everyone that human suffering is bad. Why? Because these concepts are real and meaningful to us. I know what it means for me to suffer. I know that I don't want to suffer. Therefore, insofar as the word 'bad' is used in our language, it is bad. Con attempts to show that 'badness' is not coherent on a cosmic scale. I agree. Neither is pain or suffering. Both are functions of being human. (Where would human pain exist if humans did not exist? Nowhere.) Therefore I have only attempted to show that, prima facie, human suffering is bad to us. All I have to do to show this is show that we understand what it means to suffer (we do) and we understand what we mean by 'bad' (we do). If we understand these words, then it is obvious that human suffering is bad. Thank you.