The philosophy thread general discussion

Look What should be done (no agent specified). Doesn't have an answer. But what Bob should do might. Bob as some starting point. Not a starting point carved into the universe, but a starting point.

That starting point is however in the form of vague impressions. Impressions Bob only has a limited ability to introspect on.

It is possible that there is no final answer to be found, but it won't be about paperclips, or correct piles of pebbles.

"Which would only allow it to have utilitarian reasoning which doesn't account for the uniqueness of the individual, venerating the utility in the individual rather than the individual itself. The individual only has value in utilitarian reasoning according to how much utility they produce, so, under utilitarian reasoning, it would be less wrong to kill someone producing, to put numbers on things we probably can't put numbers on, 4 utils than to kill someone producing 8 utils. To me, and to other egoists, people have value for who they are. I love the individual as an individual, irregardless of the happiness of that individual. "

There are so many problems here. While a lot of that would be trivially true for most utility functions. Most don't mention people at all. There are utility functions that account for individuals. In case I wasn't clear most utility functions of course won't be moral.

What 8 utils means is if it was a choice between 6 utils with certainty or a 50 50 chance of 8 or 4 utils, your choices are equal. Without uncertainty, a utility function is just a preference ordering, over states of the world.

Explicitly using utility functions is almost redundant. But one use for them is to try to counter out the fact that a million lives feels like a statistic. It is a precommitment to act a certain way, even if it doesn't feel right, because sometimes your feelings are wrong.

"True, but 50 separate fights between 2 people each will probably kill less than one large fight between two groups of 50 people each."

Actually, I'm pretty sure that isnt true. Otherwise, deaths by violence wouldnt be going down for the last few centuries.

Can I have the modern, philosophically, most accepted definition of "Love" according to tropers. I find myself incapable of slogging through all these pages of discussion, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

You should be aware that there are few, if any, commonly accepted philosophical definitions of anything, let alone something as subjective as love. Philosophy is pretty much all about defining things in a variety of different ways and looking at the implications. This article provides a pretty good overview of the history of philosophical treatments of love.

As the article points out, one of the earliest approaches, from the ancient Greeks, was to divide the overall concept of love into three parts: eros, philia, and agape. "The term eros (Greek erasthai) is used to refer to that part of love constituting a passionate, intense desire for something; it is often referred to as a sexual desire..." (although Plato had different ideas).

"In contrast to the desiring and passionate yearning of eros, philia entails a fondness and appreciation of the other. For the Greeks, the term philia incorporated not just friendship, but also loyalties to family and polis-one’s political community, job, or discipline."

"Agape refers to the paternal love of God for man and of man for God but is extended to include a brotherly love for all humanity."

Some philosophical approaches assume that, as an expression of pure emotion, love itself cannot be reduced to a mere intellectual concept (I myself rather lean toward this idea): "...the concept “love” is irreducible-an axiomatic, or self-evident, state of affairs that warrants no further intellectual intrusion..."

Which is to say- "Accordingly, love may be partially described, or hinted at, in a dialectic or analytical exposition of the concept but never understood in itself. Love may therefore become an epiphenomenal entity, generated by human action in loving, but never grasped by the mind or language."

If you continue to read the article, you will see that there are other points of view as well: "Some may hold that love is physical, i.e., that love is nothing but a physical response to another whom the agent feels physically attracted to. Accordingly, the action of loving encompasses a broad range of behavior including caring, listening, attending to, preferring to others, and so on. (This would be proposed by behaviorists). Others (physicalists, geneticists) reduce all examinations of love to the physical motivation of the sexual impulse-the simple sexual instinct that is shared with all complex living entities, which may, in humans, be directed consciously, sub-consciously or pre-rationally toward a potential mate or object of sexual gratification."

I hope that helps.

I once wrote a thread in Yack Fest asking which philosopher was right but looking back it, I would have to paraphrase the user who said, "all the philosophers are right and they are wrong at the same time." If philosophy isn't about being 'right', then what is is really about?

My opinion is philosophy is more about the "journey" - the methods, the pursuits, the means, striving toward being right/perfect rather than the Ends itself. In developing new thoughts and contradicting old, potentially obsolete, ones, humanity as a whole progresses.

In other words, the act of looking for an answer itself is of atleast equal worth to finding it.

It's about finding the highest possible level of intellectual integrity.

You know I had been watched a few philosopical shows and if a show causes to question your existence, somehting is horribly wrong. Most people don't want to think about it but someone may or may not bring it up and it causes you to think about it as not many want to think about. I sometimes get unnerved by that question (although that is what is supposed to do) but difference reality and fiction should be clear cut right? Or is there mroe to it than that?

I'm not sure what you mean by "the difference between reality and fiction".

I meant what is difference between reality and illusion. (Think the Matrix)

Oh, philosophy.

What to even make of you.

I suspect the boundary is incredibly fuzzy and ill-defined at the best of times...

I suppose you might be right but sometimes it is very difficult to tell what is reality or an illusion. I had some dreams that were so real that I didn't even know that I was dreaming that is until I noticed the signs.

That's happened to a lot of people. That's happened to me. I used to be a lucid dreamer. Once, when I realized that I was dreaming, I deliberately abandoned the action, and set about trying to identify one thing that would distinguish between dreams and reality. I was unable to find anything.

Yet, I still knew I was dreaming.

Here's a materialist answer: reality is that which, to any number of independent outside observers, continues to exist regardless of any one observer's lack of an experience of it. So if Alice, Bob, Charlie, David, and Eve have an experience of x, x is representative of something that is true - even if Frank doesn't have an experience of x. (So if, for instance, Frank, having seen x, would die, x wouldn't cease to exist.)

Actually, I might have to refine that pseudo-definition a bit; but instead of re-writing it and repeating myself I'll just add a little bit of commentary to what I said above. X, according to materialism, would continue to exist even if no-one was observing it. Let's look at another scenario: X exists. Alice sees x. Alice dies. Later, Bob and Charlie see x. According to materialism, x didn't cease to exist between Alice's death and Bob's observation of x. X is independent of observers.

I should point out that even if Alice and Bob have a different experience of x, there still probably is an x; but some circumstances are causing Alice and Bob's experience of x to differ. Fundamentally, everyone's experience of x will by necessity be different, because two people cannot perceive x from the exact same place and and exactly the same time.

If the observers make a number of observations and compare their experience it should be clear that their experiences are mutually consistent. If their experiences are not mutually consistent even if the observations are repeated, there is something wrong. A materialist would suggest that one or more of the observes is making a mistake, or that they are influenced by circumstances (such as a delusion or an illusion) that change their experience.

For the record, I am a materialist. (Well, these days it seems that "physicalist" is considered a more accurate term, for reasons that should be fairly obvious - and I have no objection to that term, though I do notice that in this case I tend to stick to the term I learned first.)

As you can see, my view is that there is a reality that is independent of any given observer (or of observers in general). Thus any experience that I have that is inconsistent with experiences that I can cross-check with others would, to me, indicate that there is some circumstance causing my experience to differ from that which an unaffected observer would experience.

Note that when I speak of experiences that are mutually consistent I am referring to the models that we construct to understand how the universe works; and according to those models, sometimes my observation should be different from Alice's - for instance, if we know that x is moving towards me and away from Alice, according to our model of the universe x should appear to shift towards the blue side of the spectrum, while to Alice it would appear to be shifting towards the red.

Disclaimer pertaining to the above example - feel free to skip if you don't want to get nerdy: this scenario doesn't practically apply in cases that are realistic today, as it would be next to impossible for me to be in a situation where I would be able to measure the change in the colour of an approaching object with sufficient accuracy to compare it with another observer, who in turn would have to have similar measuring equipment - and both of us would also have to have access to a object that would be moving between us, which would also be a challenge if we want the change to be easily measurable. We would, of course, also need to be able to compare notes. In practice we'd have to have very precise equipment and probably a very small object moving between us inside a highly specialised laboratory; or we would have to be on different planets or satellites, if we want to use a larger object as the target of our observation.

All of this raises the question of the status of those experiences that we have that we cannot check against the models or experiences of others. The most obvious examples would be dreams and hallucinations. These phenomena aren't entirely understood, but we do have some understanding of the processes that give rise to them. Essentially, they are functions of our sensory organs, or of other organs related to our senses, that cause us to experience things without a sensory input from outside sources.

For example, in the case of visual hallucinations, either our photoreceptor cells are being activated without a proper signal from outside; or some of the nerves between our eyes and our visual cortex are being turned on (or off) without (or despite) a proper signal; or our visual cortex is being simulated by something else than input from the eyes.

If we are experiencing a visual hallucination, others can observe the place where we claim to see something, and fail to see anything. This should be enough to suggest that what we are experiencing is a hallucination. There are ways that the activation of the relevant nerve cells in your eye or brain (or the connection between them) can be observed, but these observations tend to require fairly advanced equipment that generally isn't readily available in an everyday situation. In any case, while the object we are hallucinating is not objectively real, our experience of the hallucination is; so if we are to react to the situation we should take as our starting point the process(es) that give(s) rise to the hallucination, and the experience, rather than the object of the hallucination itself.

It's the same with dreams: others can't (currently) verify what our dreams were, but sometimes they can verify that we were dreaming; and in either case, the dream is real, but the objects and events in it aren't.

If you're wondering whether what you're experiencing now is an illusion, you should check it with independent observers and see if your observations are mutually consistent, and whether a model can be built that will accurately describe the recorded observations as well as predict future observations. If those models hold, they are correct, at least to some extent. (If a new model can make even more accurate predictions, it is more true than the previous model; and if both models yield equally accurate predictions, you should assume the one that requires fewer axioms.)

You can usually tell that you're in a dream if you check whether there is a stable continuity and consistency between your experiences. For instance, if you go through the same door twice and end up in different places, you're probably dreaming. Looking at a clock, and making note of the time, and then looking again and checking if the time changed in the way that it should have is one way to check. Another popular method is to pick anything with text and read a bit of it, then look away and back again and read that same text again. If it has changed, you are almost certainly dreaming.

If you do notice that you're dreaming and remain in the dream, you are experiencing a lucid dream. It is a rare experience to most people - usually when we dream we can't tell if we're in a dream. We also generally don't remember our dreams when we wake up, and even if we do the memory usually disappears rather quickly.

As for the suggestion that the entire, internally consistent universe is itself a dream (so all observers would also be part of the dream or experiencing the same dream), my view is that if the universe retains its laws there is no practical difference between a universe that actually exists, independent of outside forces, and a universe that is simulated or dreamed.

Let's take a closer look at this problem.

You can propose both models ("the universe is real" and "the universe is a dream or a simulation") and Occam's razor will dictate that we pick the one that makes fewer assumptions.

In this case, one model proposes a universe that exists and retains its set of natural laws; while the other suggests that something outside the universe is creating and maintaining the dream or simulation of the universe. Note that the latter presupposes that there is something that has the capacity to create and maintain our universe in all of its detail, complexity, and consistency - so there is a hidden assumption that is actually greater than the universe itself.

The first hypothesis - that the universe is real - assumes the universe (in all its detail and complexity and consistency) but doesn't assume anything beyond the universe. Therefore the hypothesis that is more likely to be correct is that the universe is real.

While I was writing this post I refreshed the last page of the thread, and I note that something I said near the middle of this post replies to the post by demarquis. I will take that as some justification for this almost-a-short-essay that I've written, as it demonstrates that the part I thought an unnecessary tangent might have become relevant while I was writing it.

EDIT: I've fixed some typos. I bet there are more. ANOTHER EDIT: There were some, indeed. There was also some poor grammar.

edited 9th Jun '14 6:58:03 PM by BestOf

To put it all in a nutshell: the chair is real if everyone sees it. Conversely: no matter how hard you try to disbelieve the chair, if you walk into it it will hurt your shins.

The problem with this definition of reality (reality is that which remains consistent independent of changes in time, place, or observer) is that to be aware of it depends upon possessing an objective state of mind. An objective state of mind is one that is able to perceive (a computer scientist would say "Model") chains of cause and effect in a self-consistent way. The reason that this is a problem is there is no way that I know of to confirm for certain what state of mind you are in. How objective are you being right now? If you were unaware of violations in causal consistency in the world around you, how would you know this? The reason that most people dont know that they are dreaming is that a dreaming mind isnt looking for consistency- our memory of the waking world is absent, our ability to think objectively is crippled. Our perceptions, while dreaming, are determined (as far as we can tell) entirely by subjective emotional states- it never occurs to us to question why Great Grandpa, long dead, should suddenly show up and say enigmatic things about our life choices. While in the dream state, such logically incoherent yet emotionally meaningful events feel right. So we never know we are dreaming, and certainly never consider looking for "objective observers".

Which brings us to the question of lucid dreaming. I was unable to detect any evidence of being in a dream while I was dreaming. Setting aside the question of what I did to test this and how valid the tests were, how did I nevertheless know I was dreaming? I knew it intuitively- which is another way of saying that my subconscious knew it. Which is another way of saying that two parts of my mind disagreed with each other, yet I knew which one was right. When two parts of your mind disagree, you have little other choice except to pick one, and trust it.

Which brings us to delusions and hallucinations. Lets say that you hear disembodied voices telling you things. It occurs to you to wonder if these voices are "real". What you just demonstrated is that two parts of your mind disagree- one part, lets call it the "emotional" side, hears the voices, another part, lets call it the "objective" side", realizes that this is illogical. Which side should you listen to?

IMHO, it's a matter of what the universe around you is doing. If the universe appears to be following dream logic, then you would be fully justified in accepting the voices. Just as, during my lucid dream, I eventually gave up trying to test the dream and went back to just dreaming. If, on the other hand, the rest of the universe, outside of your hearing, appears to be following consistent chains of cause and effect, then it makes more sense to doubt the voices, and trust the more logical side of your mind. At this point, you will want to check what is happening with other observers (some of whom will inform you that this is a common psychological condition and that there may be a way to control it).

Notice that despite all of what I just said, there really is no way to prove the question one way or another. You might only be dreaming that you are awake (I've done that too). But despite the inevitability of imperfect knowledge, we have to decide how to live, and that means making the best decision you can with the limited information you have. Always knowing, that despite your best efforts, you may still have gotten it wrong.

Reality is simple. Lets say I believe that the sky is green and look outside and see that the sky is blue and everyone else says the sky is blue. The things that determine the result and in the process violated my expectations is reality.

We can then match our beliefs to reality and pick out rules on how it works and how our perception of it works. From there we can figure out if what we are seeing at a given moment is reality or an aspect of our perception.

edited 10th Jun '14 10:30:16 AM by higurashimerlin

One time,someone told me that (paraphrased) "fascism is bad because it denies human nature and freedom"

This argument smells of Concepts Are Cheap to me...

What the hell is human nature and freedom, though?

edited 14th Jun '14 1:33:25 PM by PersistentMan

It exists. That's not one of those questions that has a single, simple answer. In fact, that's one of the questions I doubt we'll answer any time soon.

What?

You sound just like the fundamentalist christians. "Give me evidence of God's existence". 'There isn't. He exists. Period"

Human Nature is Freedom. Human Freedom is Nature.

I'm asking for a definition of human nature and of freedom. That's all.

What's with the Circular Reasoning?

I was going for an Ice-Cream Koan actually.

I just find amusing that people who fights "for freedom" cannot describe freedom when asked of them.

Ice cream is cool. Ice cream is love. Before enlightment, eat ice cream. After enlightment, eat ice cream.

edited 14th Jun '14 3:17:52 PM by PersistentMan

Taking a proper attempt at answering, I'd say freedom is where as long as you're not causing harm nobody can tell you what to do.