The philosophy thread general discussion

I'm not sure if your agreeing with me or disagreeing with me. I'm not used to this thread...

Yeah, I like the idea of emotions being naturally evolved functions and the result of purely physical, objective processes in the body and brain, and influenced by genetics.

To me it suggests through scientific and technological advancement, we might become a sort of Cyborg Buddha by gaining control over those processes for our benefit (Cyborg Buddha is also the title of James Hughes' future book which he's taken forever to write and seems doubtful to ever be released :/).

Thing is, logic and science cant tell us what our goals and priorities ought to be, and without a clear idea of what those are, neither game theory nor total emotional control can help us know what to do with our lives, or how to resolve conflicts of values between people.

I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies

Science deals with hard facts. It has nothing to say about a question to which there is no right answer.

My problem with scientism is that science isn't dealing with determining truths, but creating structures through which our phenomena are understandable.

That is, when Newton came up with the Laws of Gravity, he wasn't discovering how the world works, but he was creating rules through which we could look at what we experience and say "Yeah, that makes sense. All of those things falling down are following these laws." Then those laws were starting to fail to get things making sense in the late 1800s, early 1900s, so, when Einstein came up with new laws which made things make more sense, we dropped Newton's laws for Einsteins relativity. But neither is more or less true than the other. One is just more useful than the other.

Now, scientism posits that science can answer all questions, but, for that to be true, science must be able to produce more than simply usefulness. It needs to produce something that can be true or false. But I don't think it actually does that.

I mean, science is awesome, but it doesn't need truth to be awesome.

I think you're drawing a distinction without a difference, here. Newtonian physics is "true" in the sense that it accurately describes the way reality works in certain circumstances. (When relativity gets involved, Newtonian physics breaks down, because it doesn't apply in those circumstances, but that's why we have the theory of relativity.)

Point is, what's the difference between saying "Newtonian physics is true" and "Newtonian physics is an accurate structure for understanding physical phenomena"? There doesn't seem to be one unless you want to reserve the word "true" for big important philosophical capital-T Truths, which just strikes me as pretentious.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Science can't necessarily tell us all the answers, but I would argue that it can tell us all the answers we're ever going to get. I know some would argue otherwise. I do not think these people are correct.

Because I'm not saying "Newtonian physics is an accurate structure for understanding phenomena". I'm saying "Newtonian physics is a useful structure for understanding phenomena". I don't honestly think that structures to our phenomena really can be accurate or inaccurate. Structure to phenomena isn't a feature of the world, but a feature of ourselves, so the best we can say is that structures are more or less useful, not more or less accurate.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Seems pretty logical to me.

Morality is the question of what we should do? In other words it is a utility function and science very much can determine what will output a greater utility in morality if you know what the function is.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

That's demonstrably not the case, though. We can apply scientific knowledge to real-world problems, and either the scientific theory accurately models the physical reality, or it does not. Newtonian physics is accurate in everyday circumstances, because a properly-applied Newtonian model will correctly mirror reality. Newtonian physics is inaccurate in circumstances where relativity is involved because a properly-applied Newtonian model will not correctly mirror reality in those circumstances.

If a "structure" (to use your terms) doesn't fit reality, then it is inaccurate — false, in other words. The structure says "the world works this way". That's a falsifiable claim that can be evaluated for accuracy. How can you claim otherwise?

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Are you saying that you think it's possible to calculate answers to moral issues using science and mathematics?

Keep Rolling On

Yes. If you understand the problem of morality well enough you can describe it with math and figure it out.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

That's a hell of an "if", though. Until you can describe morality in an objective, consistent manner — which means physically measuring it, somehow — you're not going to pull it off. So until the moralometer is invented, math and science isn't going to have much to say on the subject.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Maslow's hierarchy does not account for individual variation in higher order needs: How people define what Self-Actualization is for them, what it would take to fulfill themselves, is not only different, but in many cases incompatible. An individualist would likely find it difficult to express themselves fully within a community dominated by collectivists.

A utility function can only be defined if you know what the most desired outcome is. Where does that information come from? Should people just make this up arbitrarily? Also, requiring that every individual define this for themselves without reference for the outcomes desired by their neighbors is not practical, and in some cases theoretical nonsensical (Many people define their goals in ways that inherently require the cooperation of other people: "I wish to live in a prosperous, peaceful community"). The problem is, people disagree on those outcomes that require some degree of collaboration to achieve.

edited 3rd Jan '15 3:07:47 PM by demarquis

I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies

Science can't find an answer to morality because we don't know what the question is.

edited 3rd Jan '15 3:42:55 PM by Elfive

Like many things that Douglas Adams wrote, it's a funny joke that turns out to be more accurate than appeared at first...

edited 3rd Jan '15 6:37:42 PM by demarquis

I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies

@Dem: An individualist can go live alone in the woods. Problem solved.

edited 3rd Jan '15 10:00:47 PM by CassidyTheDevil

If you're some kind of utilitarian, but not everyone agrees that it's a utility function. Alasdair Mac Intyre, for example, argues that morality is such that adding up a bunch of good situations can lead to something bad, like adding two good foods together, but they taste disgusting when combined. You can't model something which adding two positives yields a negative with a utility function.

I mean, if you've figured out what morality is, science can help you figure out how to apply it, but science cannot tell you what it is.

Which is usefulness, not accuracy.

Well, first, scientific theories do not apply to physical reality. They apply to the world of appearance, aka phenomena. Indeed, they, in part, define the world of appearances. We don't observe with blank slates, but we observe with the scientific theories we accept informing how we see things. Second, none of them accurately models physical reality. Structure to things is a feature of our minds, not of physical reality. Nothing accurately models physical reality. Things impose structure upon our observations of it so that the phenomena we see make sense, but nothing is modeling physical reality itself.

We don't even use Newtonian physics, anymore. It had concepts we have since abandoned. I mean, we still have gravity, energy, force, and whatnot, but each of those are different concepts under relativity and under quantum mechanics than under Newtonian physics, so, while the math is consistent in some circumstances, Newtonian physics is incompatible with relativity and quantum mechanics. It's abandoned.

But, still, the difference isn't accuracy, but in how much things make sense when viewed through the current paradigms rather than through the old paradigm.

No structure "fits" reality. They are applied to phenomena so that they make sense. But there is no structure to reality, only to our phenomena. Structure is a feature of our minds, not of reality.

But individualism isn't fun without other people around to engage in intercourse with. It's less unique to be the only individual. Being an individual among a bunch of individuals is a state in which your own individual uniqueness and everyone's individual awesomeness in their own way shines through the best. It's most fun. Telling us to live alone in the woods is missing the point of individualism.

edited 3rd Jan '15 11:47:07 PM by deathpigeon

Unfortunately, society exists and will always exist as long as there's people. You can pretend it doesn't exist and only isolated atoms of individuals exist, but that's just delusional. Yes, society is made of individuals, but that's not the same thing as only individuals existing. That's like saying people don't exist, only individual single-celled organisms.

Society is imposed upon intercourse. But the alternative isn't atomized individuals. Individuals can never be separated from other individuals. But each individual is unique and special in their own way, and society creates structure and sameness that only serves to constrain and control the uniqueness experienced by the individual, every individual. It's through the fluidity of intercourse through which individuals deal with other individuals as individuals rather than as even pieces of a greater whole as happens through interactions in the mode of societal sociality, that individuals can bond and create something together that embraces the whole individual as the unique thing they are without isolating the individual.

So I do think you don't really understand what individualism is about, really. It's not about atomized individualism. It's about the recognition and prioritization of the unique individual and making things directed in that manner rather than towards the reified whole, which is never achieved through atomization of the individual, but through conscious insurrection against structures that would deny the individual their place among other individuals as different, special, and with no greater. But this unique individual isn't something that can survive without others, except in special cases, so bringing those bonds out of it isn't individualism, simply idiocy.

@Cassidy: If that's the case, then they cant just go live in the woods. Individualism is a set of beliefs regarding how society should treat people, not a lack of society at all.

DP's point is that we cant see actual reality, we cant know what it is, because we depend on our senses and our minds to perceive it for us. What the true reality may be is unknowable.

But science can tell us what it probably is, based on the number of independent observers who agree on some aspect of it.

edited 4th Jan '15 5:33:41 AM by demarquis

I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies

Well, not exactly. I mean, I agree generally with

But not

Since I don't think actual reality is knowable even to the extent of probablies. We only have access to the world of appearances, never of the world of noumena. We can barely even guess what it looks like since our world of appearances is so filtered by the theory ladeness of observation that any attempt at trying to figure out probablies will just lead to confirmation bias a plenty. The structures of science are structures of the world of appearances which have no real relationship with the world of noumena, so they are features of our mind, not of the world.

The assumption is that noumena influence our perception of reality, and therefore we see true reality filtered through our mental biases. Since mental filters should be different for different people, and reality remains the same, anything that everyone can agree on is more likely to reflect true reality. But we cant know for certain.

I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies

Yeah, but I'm not sure about that assumption. I try to be critical of everything, and that assumption might or might not be true. I'm not actually all that sure either way and I regularly switch my view on that. Heck, sometimes I question if the world of the noumena is actually there behind the world of appearances.