The philosophy thread general discussion

Is there any form of Western Animation you dont watch?

The vast majority of it, actually. The shows that pique my attention are oddities with large Periphery Demographic, family shows designed to be enjoyable to all, with an exceptional team behind them. Most Western Animation bores me to tears. I couldn't possibly stand to watch a whole children's block.

Also, I think you should totally give Steven Universe a shot. Watch it with the kids. It's a family show.

Back to philosophy, what's up with Postmodernism?

What makes you think I havent? I have an 8 year old daughter, I think I have the entire line-ups of both the Disney Channel and Nick Jr. memorized.

I don't think I've ever seen you on the thread. I'm guessing that to you it's just entertainment and bonding with your children, rather than something you want to passionately discuss with other adults.

That would be true. But what the hell, if I have to watch it I might as well discuss it. Besides, a guy who regularly posts on the "Frozen" thread has no right to be judgmental...

Well, if you're going to jump into the thread, wait until after the episode tomorrow airs. Right now it's rife with spoilers from leaked material, and I'm staying the hell out of it.

Now, back on topic, let's talk about Pragmatic Ethics:

And the most interesting bit:

If all pork chops were perfect, we wouldn't have hot-dogs.

You and I are already engaged in the meta-philosophical debate to end all other over in the religion and mythology thread. I'm not sure I have mind-space for another one just yet.

We're done with that one, aren't we? We reached the limits of our knowledge, didn't we?

As for postmodernism, didn't the humanities thread deal with that one? I wonder where I can get a Reader's Digest on postmodernism?

edited 14th Jul '15 1:41:15 AM by GAP

Not quite yet. I had some more knowledge to share. I promise I'll get to this soon.

OK, so that other debate Handle and I were having seeming to have died down (my reasoning was so... er... advanced that Handle expressed confusion, so I'm letting him mull over it for a bit, until presumably he finds a flaw in my chain of logic and begins the battle all over again) and in the meantime, I promised to address this.

The difference between science and "pragmatic ethics" it seems to me is that while science has a definite and accepted method of progression, by which one theory can be replaced by another, by means of hypothesis testing, ethics doesnt have anything comparable, in terms of a well defined and accepted method of deciding when a new ethical analysis is superior to an old one. How is "progress" defined in ethics?

Science has the advantage of trying to model an objective universe, which is presumably "out there" to be discovered, and there are ways could observe whether or not a given hypothesis is objectively true. In ethics, there is no "rightness" out in the universe to observe, so any "truths" pragmatic philosophy uncovers is subjective in nature.

Yes, here we go again. It's the same argument we had in the other thread, except instead of God, we're debating ethics. Now Dewey, and other pragmatic philosophers, such as William James, tried to use "utility for society" or some-such (different philosophers called it different things) in other words they judged progress in ethics by how well the ethical analysis served the needs of society. This assumes either that there is one and only one best ethical basis for a hypothetical "most successful society" (or at least the most successful possible version of the society we are in)- which can be questioned, or that we have have some particular vision of society in mind and we think that there is one and only one ethical system which would get us there, which can also be questioned.

But before you can answer any of those questions, you would have to propose what type of society you want. If you want one based on egalitarian, humanitarian, enlightenment type values, that's fair, but you have to take it as a premise, unless you can prove that such a society is stronger, healthier or more effective at meeting the needs of it's citizens than any alternative form of society.

A Chinese Communist, for example, or a Muslim Jihadis, or a European Nationalist, among many others, might argue for a different type of society. How do you judge societies?

I am a Values Pluralist in the Isaiah Berlin tradition, which means that I think there is a range of values, ethical standards, and political approaches that are acceptable to the greatest number of human beings, but which may be in conflict with each other. We have a duty of tolerance to one another, however, and it may be possible to knit them all together into a common social structure.

The easy answer would be to propose an axiomatic standard of the ideal goal of society, and then judge everything based on whether it leads towards that goal. If you suggest something most people would presumably accept you may find plenty of agreement.

(You know, "society should minimise avoidable suffering and maximise sustainable enjoyment, measure in a way that treats everyone as fundamentally equal and doesn't consider a happiness factor of 2 on one person preferable to two people with factor 1.") (If you're wondering where I got that it's basically a type of utilitarianism that I pulled out of my ass just now. Of course, I had previously consumed some utilitarian philosophy so I wouldn't claim this idea or even its formulation as my own.)

There are good writers, and then there are people who will put together an entire paragraph that, content-wise, shouldn't stand on its own and then have it also be composed of just two long sentences, each in brackets.

It would, of course, be much harder to provide a solid philosophical foundation for ethics that isn't just an axiomatic assumption followed by a complex ideological structure on top of it. Fundamentally, in my view, you just have to provide at least one axiom as go from there. I don't know of any way that a fundamental ethical principle could be derived from any source.

I do believe that science can be a very useful tool for advancing the work of the field of ethics, but only once a goal is defined from another source. Science doesn't yield a fundamental ethical axiom. For someone looking at this from my perspective, of course, nature itself doesn't have an ethical axiom. If it did there might be a way for science to discover it (although at the moment I can't imagine where you'd even begin) but as it is the only source for an ethical axiom is the philosopher themself.

Incidentally, there have been a couple of mentions now of a grand debate about the fundamental nature of reality taking place between Handle and DeMarquis. Could either of you maybe PM me a link to the post where it begins? I'd quite like to read through it.

It's in the Religion and Mythology thread. Go back a page or so and you cant miss it.

I'll respond to the substance of your post tomorrow sometime. Right now it's too late and I have to go to work in the morning.

I've read the last couple of pages now. It all sounded so very familiar...

(feels some regret in refusing to go back to the Religion thread and participate or even read it, after my messy appearance there)...

Your appearance wasnt that messy. You're over-reacting somewhat.

I don't even remember the incident you speak of.

Maybe, I don't know. I just feel that I failed to make good arguments, due to them being considered ad-hoc. I said 'messy' in the sense of referring to 'arguments which are deemed to be incoherent or inconsistent' and showing 'emotional responses I shouldn't have showed'. Unorganized/incoherent arguments are, to me, a messy thing. And I feel I'll need to improve for quite a few years.

I'm referring to my last posts there (in response to Handle's posts).

edited 21st Jul '15 7:04:11 AM by Quag15

This is TV Tropes. That's par for the course.

Don't hide your emotions, especially the ugly ones.

I think at most good is a complicated otherwise abstract standard that is only written in human brains. From the outside view the question what does good mean is a question about us.

So it's sort of like this {{http://lesswrong.com/lw/sy/sorting_pebbles_into_correct_heaps/}}

TL;DR The Article describes a race of aliens that believe the purpose of life is sorting pebbles into correct heaps. The consider some obvious right and others obviously wrong, but most especially, large heaps have been or are still fought over. Some things this even escalates into war.

Correct seems to mean as a prime number of pebbles. The Aliens probably have some sort of "programs" in their brains that take sense data and imagined sense data, and tries to detect primeness, but slight individual difference in heaps and heapers lead to them not only not always being right, but not always giving the same answer as other of their race.

On some level the programs aren't that different than the ones we use to judge the size of objects. its just harder to tell what exactly it is they're testing for. Without looking at them directly.

Morality is indeed a property of humans, not something that's written in some tablets 'out there' that we need to discover.

I would question the validity of said tablets even if it was.

Would you say those aliens would only be ready to confront the responsibility of their actions when they snatch the pebbles?

The underlying point of that essay appears to be about AI and how a poorly constructed intelligence might pursue goals that seem absurd to us because we assume that certain ethical principles are obviously correct. To the extent that this isnt correct, even a very intelligent AI could be a threat.

Regardless of how one thinks about advanced AI, it's a truism that comparisons between ethical systems are based entirely on subjective factors.