"Guilt" becomes a category I can assign to others, and by that classification justify my cruelty towards others -- in the name of the good. — Moliere

When you or @Joshs talk about guilt in this way it is much the same as claiming that a tool such as a knife is inherently evil, and imputing bad motives to everyone who uses knives. The problem is that predications of guilt and use of knives are not inherently evil acts. For example, if you get rid of knives then you also get rid of a great deal of nutritious cooking, and if you get rid of guilt and blame then you also get rid of innocence, praise, and merit. Like a knife, the idea of guilt can be used for good or evil. There is no reason to believe that it is inherently evil. Someone may have had bad experiences with knives and those bad experiences may lead them to conclude that knives are inherently evil, but this is a problem of bias rather than a rationally sound conclusion.

(The accuser's level of certitude will not affect what I have said here)

- Okay, I am going to start moving away from this thread now. We can try to tie up some of the loose ends as best as possible...

• Le1: To indirectly intend is not merely to intend (cf. principle of the non-divisiveness of intention)

Even under your characterization of the two, they are both intended effects. If you accept either Brock’s or Aquinas’ characterizations that you gave (above this comment), then it necessarily follows that a foreseen effect is intentional (albeit it of a meaningfully different “type” thereof). — Bob Ross

Again, all intended killings that are illegal are murder: that includes indirectly intended ones. — Bob Ross

How??? It is simple: one does something which results in the foreseen effect. — Bob Ross

In these sorts of claims you continue the strange move whereby you reduce indirect intention to mere intention, contrary to Le1. The reason I have spilled so much ink on indirect intention is because it is morally different from mere intention, so this reduction of yours is obviously counterproductive.

There was nothing dubious with my statement (other than a syntax/grammar mistake): if one aims at an end by using a means, that means has two effects, one effect …. — Bob Ross

Again, I have already addressed your equivocation between a cause and a means in detail in <this post> and <the following post>. You never responded to those posts, and I'm not sure if you even read them.

Wouldn’t you agree, that all effects relevant to an analysis of intention stem from a means utilized to aim at the direct intention. — Bob Ross

I would agree that all foreseeable effects of our intentional acts are morally relevant. One problem with your statement is that some effects relevant to an analysis of intention may stem from a non-means, such as an end.

I already answered this. I do not view doing something that results in emissions necessarily immoral; so this is a bad example. — Bob Ross

You are avoiding the question and engaging in what I described here:

If I were teaching philosophy I would not allow my students to examine the trolley problem until we had studied causality, intention, and responsibility in depth. A very bad way to do philosophy is to take extremely controversial cases and begin there. If someone begins with controversy then the foundations that inevitably get laid to account for the controversy are biased in favor of the emotional-controversial cases. This is a poor approach because controversial cases are by definition difficult to understand, and one should begin with what is easy to understand before slowly moving to what is more difficult. If the mind does not have the principles and the easier cases "under its belt" then it will have no chance of confronting the difficult and controversial cases. This is perhaps one of the most basic problems with modern philosophy, but I digress.

But note that this is what is occurring in the thread. You have your conclusion, "Pulling the lever in the trolley case is impermissible," and you are trying to sort out all the foundations of causality, intention, and responsibility in order to account for that conclusion. This is placing all sorts of strange pressures on colloquial usage and the more obvious, uncontroversial cases. As far as I'm concerned, this approach is backwards, and that's why I don't really like the trolley problem. That's why I've been trying to get you to think about what intention is in itself, or how causal necessity differs from logical necessity, or how responsibility applies in simpler cases of car emissions. — Leontiskos

If you cannot bring yourself to analyze the way that something evil becomes acceptable when it is merely a foreseen effect, then you will not be able to assess cases like the trolley case, for you will have no principled way to distinguish an effect that can become acceptable from an effect that cannot become acceptable.

Then your car example makes no sense, and cannot be answered. — Bob Ross

Right, hence my point.

If you stipulate that there is a 10% chance of killing someone if one pulls the lever and one knows for certain that pulling the lever saves the five; then I would say it is morally obligatory to pull the lever. — Bob Ross

Okay, interesting. What if there is an 80% chance, say?

I looked up the term, and that is fair. I was thinking of “idea” and not “ideal”. A intention is “an act of volition which aims at some idea (end)”. — Bob Ross

Okay, good, although above I gave similar critiques regarding 'idea'.

That is not my claim at all: I can accept that there is a morally relevant difference between a direct and indirect intention and between an end and a foreseen effect while also accepting that it not relevant to the moral fact that one should never intend to kill an innocent human being [against their will]. You find these distinctions to provide some morally relevant reason for making this kind of killing sometimes morally permissible (or omissible), but I don’t see it—but that’s not the same thing as me not seeing or agreeing about the fact that such distinctions are distinctions. — Bob Ross

As I've said, you don't seem to acknowledge any morally relevant difference. To acknowledge this you would need to identify it and explain why and how it is potentially morally relevant. That is what you have taken pains to avoid doing. If someone cannot demonstrate that they understand the moral relevance of a distinction, then their claim that the distinction is not relevant in a certain case is not principled.

This is incorrect because your "per accidens means" has nothing to do with the direct/indirect intention of Brock's. What you apparently mean by "per accidens intention" is any intention that is not identical with the "primary intention." Else you should clarify what you mean by a per accidens intention. — Leontiskos

The other issue I just realized, is that the direct vs. indirect distinction is not the same as the per se vs. per accidens intention I made. A direct intention points out the flow of the aim, from start to finish, in the particular practical application (and so, for example, a means utilized for the end is directly intended, but a side effect from that means is indirectly intended); whereas a per se intention points out the “final cause”, or “original intention” stripped of all accidental aims enveloped into it by the practical circumstances, which is being set out as the “original end”.

...

These two distinctions are not the same at all; and our dispute really hinged on a conflation between the two. — Bob Ross

I'm glad you finally agreed with me on this point. Note though that I am not the one who was conflating the two.

I was trying to say something stronger than that. "Formal systems of morality," what I called social control, are not really morality at all. — T Clark

The modern mind seems to always be saying, "Well, yeah, but that's not morality, that's [insert inclination-based term here]." This is a Kantian move, and the problem is that the person who makes this argument seldom has any idea of what they mean by morality.

Classically individual morality and social morality are two sides of the same coin, not entirely separate and opposable. This is presumably as true for the Chinese philosophers you are citing as it is for Aristotle. I would submit that those Chinese philosophers did not make the strong distinction that you are making between individual morality and social custom or law. For someone like Confucius this opposition would be a non-starter.

Pragmatism Without Goodness... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good points. :up:

The Denial of Truth...

But reason itself collapses with practical reason removed. For we might ask: "why prefer truth to falsity?" This is a question of which is better, "more good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep.

"Democracy" as a Solution... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. :up:

There are, of course, good epistemic grounds for preferring some of the positions rejected above. But the claim that "it is difficult to know the good, this we must hew to x, y, and z," is quite different from the claim that there is nothing to know. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right: many seem to confuse themselves with Moore's Open Question.

As I put it elsewhere:

Following in the footsteps of Philippa Foot, many are accustomed to claim that morality is merely a matter of hypothetical judgments, or that non-hypothetical judgments are rare. To give an indication of how gravely mistaken this opinion is, consider the fact that acts and regrets are all non-hypothetical. Each time we concretely choose and act we are making a non-hypothetical, all-things-considered judgment. As soon as I decide whether to fix my car all of the previously-hypothetical considerations become non-hypothetical, and this is a large part of what it means “to make a decision” or “to decide.” To make a decision is to gather up all the hypothetical considerations and render an all-things-considered judgment.

Similarly, when we regret some act we are also making a non-hypothetical judgment. To say that one regrets an act is to judge that they should not have carried out that act, and this sort of judgment is never hypothetical; it never means, “I should not have done that if…” Such a hypo-thesis would undermine the regret itself, placing it in limbo. Therefore the idea that one can get along in life with only hypothetical judgments is absurd. — Leontiskos

As I understand it, Jordan Peterson is making a very similar argument in his new book, We Who Wrestle with God.

We have eaten of the apple of self-awareness, and fallen into internal conflict between what we are and what we feel ourselves to be.

To say that man is a social animal expresses this conflict - between the individual animal and the community. — unenlightened

Yet one does not really have to go all the way to China; in our own Christian tradition, the individual conscience also reigns supreme. If you follow that internal voice, you cannot go wrong. — unenlightened

Fair would be that once you have fallen there is no redemption. Without guilt, there can be no virtue. — unenlightened

If you don't know good from evil, there is no virtue in doing good and no vice in doing evil, you just do what you do. — unenlightened

Perhaps this is all true according to one or another Protestant development of Augustine, but I would want to distinguish that tradition from the "Christian tradition" per se.

- Yep, good points. I find ' allusion to Burnyeat's article apropos.

Thanks Paine. It always takes me awhile to get to these because they require more effort than the average TPF posts.

I object to Rorty's claim of what comprises philosophy because it fails as a Logos, not because it fails a litmus test from applying a set of definitions. — Paine

Okay.

My objection is more of a question; What is the benefit of all this taxonomy? — Paine

Isn't philosophy important? If philosophy is important, then on Gerson's thesis, Ur-Platonism is important.

For example your claim was highly Gersonian when you said, "That is a predominantly psychological observation. Where does the philosophy start? Or not?" (). If philosophy is important then it is important to understand what philosophy is, and it is particularly important to be able to ferret out false claims to philosophy. This all seems true to me.

Say, for the purposes of argument, I accepted Gerson's taxonomy. What does his classification have to do with changing future work as he exhorts us to do? He would correctly identify that Rorty is outside the boundary as Gerson has drawn it. Why attach the possibility for philosophy upon one who has just been expelled from it? — Paine

I think this methodology is incredibly sound, and that we utilize it in all sorts of ways, namely elucidating what something is by reference to clear examples of what it is not. We elucidate justice by way of injustices; we elucidate truth by way of falsehood; we elucidate beauty by way of ugliness; we elucidate health by way of sickness. This isn't to say that we should stop there. Of course there should also be positive accounts of the essence of things like justice, truth, etc. Still, I don't really see the critique you are giving.

Further, even if we reject Gerson's account of philosophy I believe we will still need to engage in the same project he is engaged in, and that it is an important project. The alternative seems to be either committing ourselves to the view that philosophy isn't important or else to the view that there is no such thing as philosophy (and therefore nothing which is necessarily not philosophy).

To treat the modern battle as simply a continuance of the first overlooks critical cultural differences. There are champions of the modern and there are detractors. How history is conceived plays a big part in their differences. Take Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, for example. They both refused to shake the pom-poms with team Hegel. But the differences between them obviously extend far beyond what Hegel wrote. All three reference Plato as points of departure. But it is of limited utility to compare them upon that basis alone. All three do think they are doing philosophy. Can the differences be delineated through compliance or divergence from a set of categories? — Paine

The modern and post-modern landscape complicates things, but I don't think it invalidates Gerson's thesis. Gerson is drawing up the boundaries of the playing field of philosophy, and you keep pointing to philosophical bouts. Gerson has no problem with philosophical bouts. The question is whether they are within the boundaries.

I am wondering if a cultural anti-authoritarianism is impeding Gerson's thesis. This anti-authoritarianism says, "Who are you to say what counts as philosophy!?" I don't see this as a substantial critique. Again, the deeper matter for me is the alternative between either committing ourselves to the view that philosophy isn't important or else to the view that there is no such thing as philosophy. It's not hard to read Gerson's thesis as a proposal rather than an imposition, or as an invitation to think through a necessary problem rather than an overbearing authoritarianism.

Dissatisfaction with the modern is expressed by some as the loss of a previously preserved virtue, others by a loss of a means of production, others by a loss of the means to experience life available to ancestors. That is not an exhaustive list of all possibilities, just some pieces that show how various are the attempts to connect those perspectives with our present and future lives. — Paine

Gerson sees all sorts of modern thinkers as Platonists, and I think that's right. I don't know that what is at stake is a confrontation between the pre-modern and the modern.

With that said, where does accepting Gerson's criteria play a part? How does it figure in the struggle for future pedagogy in our lives comparable to the struggle in Plato's time? — Paine

I think we struggle against sophistry in much the same way that Plato struggled against sophistry. For example, the disputes surrounding the DEI programs in the schools and colleges is one way that our pedagogical battles continue on, and Gerson's thesis would surely have a stake in those sorts of questions.

Can you cite any evidence to support that speculation, or any cases that remotely resmeble the US treatment of Julian Assange? — Janus

I think @Wayfarer has been making good points. The Watergate scandal and the related film that Wayfarer has mentioned is one example ("The Post"). If you look at the prominent court cases relating to laws like the Espionage Act or the Sedition Act other examples can be found (e.g. the Schenck or Abrams cases). As even your article notes, Obama was quite aggressive on this front.

But the point here is that the speculation is yours, not mine. It is extremely counterintuitive to claim that leaking classified documents results in no consequences, or that the government has no interest in addressing or punishing such leaks. I don't know where such a theory would even come from. Everyone who engages in these leaks takes extreme caution to try to counteract the dangers they are inviting.

- The whole premise that leaking classified documents never results in government action just seems prima facie naive. If your article is to be believed then probably what is happening in many of these cases are private settlements or non-legal consequences. I would prefer an analysis from a source without a vested interest.

- I've been told that Biden would rather go down fighting than walk away. Clearly the better choice from the standpoint of legacy, common good, and personal happiness would be to walk away. But someone who has been in politics for over 50 years may not recognize this. It's like the epitome of getting grandpa to give up his driver's license.

- I don't know that I would say that the Democrats have gambled. I think it has been out of their hands. As you say, there have been efforts to get him out of the 2024 race for some time, but in truth that is a tall task.

Democrats seem to be in the midst of a post-debate meltdown. It will be interesting to see if they can actually convince Biden to walk away from the nomination.

I did comment that the NY Times, Guardian, etc, would probably not have published classified documents stolen from military organisations... — Wayfarer

The difference for me is that when a large media corporation decides to publish in a way that is strongly contrary to government interests, they are prepared to fight the legal battles required to back that decision (e.g. Watergate). Assange was obviously playing a dangerous game, and it has cost him. I actually don't see how you can publish this sort of thing without incurring a backlash. Perhaps it is only a question of whether and in what form you are able to handle that backlash.

No worries at all! As you know, I change my mind all the time :smile: . I commend your efforts to genuinely strive after the truth—which is a rare quality these days. — Bob Ross

Okay, thanks.

How can you deploy the principle of double effect, even possibly, in the airplane, trolley, and car examples if your definition of double effect precludes the permissibility of indirectly intentional acts, effects, etc. ?

Viz., your elaboration of the principle of double effect whereof the side effect is unintended: wouldn’t it need to be unintended or indirectly intended for your view to be consistent? — Bob Ross

Sure, so in that quote I used "unintended" because Brock's terminology of indirect intention had not yet been brought into the thread.

Aquinas will say that the foreseen effect falls under the agent's intention, or else is "beside" his intention. Brock will say that the foreseen effect is an indirect object of intention, but he also uses things like "indirectly intended" as a shorthand. I think Aquinas' statements are more careful and helpful on this score, but the point is that there is a large difference between an intended effect and a foreseen effect.

Unfortunately, I am unfamiliar with “cartesian intention”; so I cannot comment on this part. — Bob Ross

For Anscombe the Cartesian approach to intention is more or less the idea that one can simply and straightforwardly choose which effects of their act to intend and which effects to not-intend.

We are closer to agreeing now, but we have slightly different views here: you seem to be saying that it is always wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being when it is of a high enough degree of intention (deliberation), whereas I am saying period. — Bob Ross

Somewhat, but I am saying that it is different to directly intend the death of an innocent and to indirectly intend the death of an innocent. All directly intended killings of this sort are impermissible, and this is what we call murder or killing simpliciter. As to indirectly intended killings, some are permissible and some are not.

When one aims at an end uses a means with two effects, one of which is to the benefit of the end and other merely accidental, then their act of using the means is an act simultaneously towards both effects — Bob Ross

So you are engaged in the use of that word "means" in precisely the dubious and misleading way I explained above. I have explained this many times, so I don't feel the need to do so again.

and those effects are both intentional (either indirectly or directly) when one deliberately does it with knowledge of both effects; and if that act is producing something bad, like killing an innocent person, even if it simultaneously produces something good, then they should never intentionally do it (i.e., it is morally impermissible) because a moral agent, not in the sense of just being capable of being moral but actually being moral, does not do bad things. — Bob Ross

The question that is being begged is whether a foreseen effect is a "doing."

Here is what you need to address if you want to deny double effect:

Stay with what I already wrote. Is it or is it not morally prohibited to directly intend these emissions? That is the first question you need to consider. — Leontiskos

-

That’s fair; but it doesn’t change anything because you stipulated that they can only either run over the two (and save the other two) or run over all four. In real life, we can both agree one should swerve but with the intention of missing all four. That’s the key: you’ve setup the hypothetical where the person would have sufficient time to deliberate on whether to run over just the two or the entire four. What you are noting about the difference in deliberation time is a practical critique that doesn’t apply to your hypothetical. — Bob Ross

The hypothetical is physically impossible. In that situation you simply do not have sufficient time to deliberate. If one wants a case where there is sufficient time to deliberate, then they will need to cook up a new hypothetical.

In practicality I agree, because the pilot would not be intending to kill people in area A as opposed to B to limit the deaths: they would be intending to land somewhere with no people. — Bob Ross

As a remote intention they may be trying to land somewhere with no people, but practically speaking they may foresee the effect that at least some people will die. In that case they are trying to minimize death and injury.

In terms of the way I define “intention” as “a power of the will whereof it aims at some ideal”, I am using “ideal” in the sense of “what should be” not what “ultimately should be”: you are confusing these two. If you intend not to get your feet wet and thereby decide to jump over the puddle in the street, then you had set forth an “ideal” to not have wet feet but, to your point, it is not an “ideal” in the sense that ultimately jumping over the puddle was exactly how reality should be — Bob Ross

That's not what "ideal" means, and that's why your definition fails. You are trying to make a word mean something it does not. "Acceptable" and "ideal" are not the same thing, and your view would make "ideal" sometimes mean nothing more than "acceptable." It is simply a fact that no one would ever go home to their family and tell them a story about how it was "ideal" to walk through the mud. Words cannot be stretched so far.


Edit: The contentious claim you are making is something like <There is no morally relevant difference between direct intention and indirect intention; between an end and a foreseen effect>.

Kimhi’s Thinking and Being — J

Relatedly, Gyula Klima is someone who has done a lot of work in bringing Medieval Scholasticism to bear on modern and contemporary logic and metaphysics (faculty page; academia page).

- Your posts in this thread have been highly disappointing. Once upon a time you were capable of valid arguments.

- Yes, something like that.

- Sounds good. I will have to look into Kimhi.

What's interesting is that this thread is almost certainly an offspring of your thread on quantifier variance. This is because in that thread a "univocity of being" position developed very quickly with Banno's posts and especially with the paper he offered straightaway (Srap took up a position in the same ballpark later in the thread). That univocalist position opposed both quantifier variance as well as Sider’s position (which seemed to me the much better and more nuanced opposition to QV). The idea for the univocalist there was something like <Being is univocal; therefore that which captures being, namely quantifiers, are univocal; therefore quantifier variance is not even prima facie possible>.

If you search my posts or Timothy’s posts in that thread for the word “analogy” or “analogical” you will get a number of hits, and Timothy picked this up towards the end of the thread. What is the position which is classically opposed to the univocity of being? It is the analogy of being, ergo: analogia entis. The idea is in no way limited to Przywara, but his work is the most direct and full treatment of the subject to date. Also, it should go without saying that Przywara is not offering a polemic against the univocalists. Instead he is trying to illumine the analogical position.

If the univocalist has a flat ontology with everything being captured by the exact same univocal concept of being, the analogical thinker has an ontology with a depth dimension, where there is a kind of “depth of field” qua being. To carry the metaphor, that “depth relation” is the analogical relation of being between different beings. This is similar to Plato’s idea that all the variegated beings have a unification within the Form of the Good (i.e. a participatory notion rather than a notion of formal logic). For Przywara the meta-ontic and the meta-noetic are not ruled by some third measure which imparts commensurability to them both, and this dyad is but one form in which the analogia entis is found.

Przywara and von Balthasar are fond of musical comparisons, and perhaps you could think about the way that harmony and melody relate, without either one being more primary or reducible to the other. There is no third thing which imposes a rule upon them both. It is a dance of two. A reductionist approach to that dance is an affront to being itself, as the reduction is not capable of encompassing the full reality at stake. The idea of analogy relates them without reducing them.

Eh, I think I’ve changed my mind again. :lol: As I said earlier, "I accept a relatively uncontroversial form of double effect whereby the unintended effect must only be possible and not certain" (). After reading a book by Kevin Flannery a few years ago I became convinced that it is not permissible to pull the lever in the trolley case.* I think that is still correct. Flannery shows that Anscombe’s critique of “Cartesian intention” is correct, and that circumstances are always relevant to moral questions.

The problem I encountered in this thread (and the reason I changed my mind in <this post>) is that it seems that double effect would allow—but not require—that the lever be pulled. First, I don’t think the principle of double effect is altogether mistaken, for there are obvious cases where it applies and it is known to be a very unwieldy principle. The problem with the trolley case is that the foreseen effect is simply too problematic given both its certainty and the form of strong deliberation that the case involves. That is, it is too intentional, even if it is, strictly speaking, indirectly intended. This is basically what you yourself have been saying.

The case where the car is about to hit four people is artificial in the sense that it conflates a case where there is almost zero deliberation with a case where we have ample time to deliberate. It is like asking, “What would you do if four people suddenly appeared in front of your speeding car, and you had infinite time to deliberate?” This case is confused given the way it equivocates on the ability to deliberate, and it was a poor example on my part. Nevertheless, it is still a very difficult example to handle, and I think it is probably permissible to swerve in order to minimize damage. It seems a relevant difference that you are actually driving the vehicle in this case.

But in the airplane example I think the pilot does need to aim at the area with least people. This isn’t a matter of double effect but rather of minimizing damage, and the fact of the matter is that in this scenario no one is tied down to trolley tracks. Both the certitude and the deliberation of the trolley case are absent. The plane is reacting to people and people are reacting to the plane, and by aiming at the area with the fewest people the pilot minimizes damage and provides the optimal opportunity for people to get out of the way of the plane as it lands.

* Cooperation with Evil: Thomistic Tools of Analysis

(I think it would be too simple, though tempting, to say: Neither one, it’s about methodology. At this extremely abstract meta-level, I don’t think we can introduce a third category called “methodology.”) — J

See for example:

The epistemological instability highlighted here "manifests itself in the ineluctable back-and-forth between a meta-ontics and a meta-noetics," which is "ultimately a reflection, at the level of method, of the inherent instability of creaturely being as such." — Count Timothy von Icarus

On my lights, ultimately for Przywara neither one will end up being primary. He will basically propose a kind of suspension of the intention to commit ourselves to either one or the other. This form of abeyance is not merely methodological, but in fact reflects our creaturely state of being, which finds itself in a similar instability. For Przywara it is not permissible to embrace one at the exclusion of the other, even as a starting point. What this means, I think, is that we can ask real questions that belong to neither realm.

But your question is kind of getting ahead of Przywara, as is my answer. His book is the answer to your question. It can't be sorted out beforehand.

All of the reasons for or against suicide (including "moral" reasons) come up short against the opacity of death. That is, we don't know what happens when we die. Those who have a strong stance on suicide almost necessarily have a strong stance on what happens when we die. The only caveat is that someone who is suffering may believe that anything is better than their current suffering, and hence they may wish to commit suicide regardless of what happens when we die.

Yet in the trolley and driver scenarios, you take the view that human lives are less important than the supposed principle... — Herg

I don't think it is ever right to isolate a principle in this manner, as if you yourself are not using a different principle to oppose their principle. There is no alternative to principles.

Now you are not a consequentialist, but the objection usually comes from consequentialists. They will say, "You care about your principle, but I care about human life!" Well, no. The deontologist cares about human life via deontological principles, and the consequentialist cares about human life via consequentialist principles. There is no one who bypasses principles altogether and just cares about human life in a way that overrides all principles and all rational analysis.

What I find particularly interesting is the notion that not getting involved is equated to commiting the act. — Tzeentch

Yes, it's an ever-present assumption in these problems. Consequentialism is the air we breathe, and for the consequentialist there is no clear difference between an act and an omission. Put differently, Foot's understanding of morality as a set of hypothetical imperatives is widely accepted, and on her model there can be no impermissible means. Granted, this does not exactly square with her own analysis of the trolley-adjacent cases, but I do think an impermissible means implicates a non-hypothetical imperative.

- There seems to be a lot of residue sticking around from the first phase of our conversation, and that's understandable. Let's look at the argument that you were ultimately attempting to make in that first phase:

1. If Q is a means to P then Q is (directly) intended
2. If (P → Q) then Q is a means to P
3. (P → Q)
4. ∴ Q is a means to P {from 2 & 3}
5. ∴ Q is (directly) intended {from 1 & 4}
6. It is impermissible to (directly) intend an evil
7. Q is evil
8. ∴ (5) is impermissible {from 5, 6, & 7}

Now I refuted (2) earlier, and you seemed to accept that refutation. But one could support (1) independently of (2), and you seem to be half-trying to do this now. The problem with such an approach is that the "means" in (1) is clearly an actual/chosen means, not a merely potential means. We can infer intention from a means only when that means is actualized or chosen. It does not follow, for example, from, "The tornado is a means to destruction," that the tornado is intended.

In the trolley case the death of the one falls under (indirect) intention not because pulling the lever is a means to their death. I repeat, it is not indirectly intentional because pulling the lever is a means. The reason their death is indirectly intentional is because it is an effect of the cause of pulling the lever, and that cause is intended. You keep sneaking in this word "means" in very dubious ways, and this has the effect of bringing (1) to bear in a false and misleading way. There is no reason at all that we should be talking about the word "means" when it comes to the relation between the lever and the death. Again, a cause is not the same thing as a means.

The deeper issue here is one of pedagogy:

I would say that the trolley problem is limited but not pointless. In particular I think it is pedagogically limited. — Leontiskos

If I were teaching philosophy I would not allow my students to examine the trolley problem until we had studied causality, intention, and responsibility in depth. A very bad way to do philosophy is to take extremely controversial cases and begin there. If someone begins with controversy then the foundations that inevitably get laid to account for the controversy are biased in favor of the emotional-controversial cases. This is a poor approach because controversial cases are by definition difficult to understand, and one should begin with what is easy to understand before slowly moving to what is more difficult. If the mind does not have the principles and the easier cases "under its belt" then it will have no chance of confronting the difficult and controversial cases. This is perhaps one of the most basic problems with modern philosophy, but I digress.

But note that this is what is occurring in the thread. You have your conclusion, "Pulling the lever in the trolley case is impermissible," and you are trying to sort out all the foundations of causality, intention, and responsibility in order to account for that conclusion. This is placing all sorts of strange pressures on colloquial usage and the more obvious, uncontroversial cases. As far as I'm concerned, this approach is backwards, and that's why I don't really like the trolley problem. That's why I've been trying to get you to think about what intention is in itself, or how causal necessity differs from logical necessity, or how responsibility applies in simpler cases of car emissions.

I listened to it briefly, and it sounds promising. I will listen to the whole video sometime, but I don’t have the time right now. — Bob Ross

It may or may not intersect with your interests, but the few minutes I pointed out are relevant.

I would say, to clarify, that an intention is an activity of the will + reason such that one aims at an ideal. You can’t strip out the ideality of it: that makes no sense. — Bob Ross

Okay, that's better. But why 'ideal'? I would say that what one is aiming at is an end, not an ideal. Not everything that is aimed at is ideal. I might intend to walk through mud in order to get home. Walking through mud is an end or goal that I intend, but it is not an ideal. Or I might eat Ramen noodles for dinner if I am almost out of food, but eating Ramen noodles is not an ideal. Our ends are self-consciously better than the alternatives, but that something is better than the alternatives does not make it ideal.

I think that is a bad definition, because it converts an actual means into a believed means and conflates the two. E.g., I could intend to quench my thirst and go to the store to get water bottles and someone else points out that I could have just went into the kitchen to get water (viz., the fact that I am unaware of the means does not make it less of an means [potential or actual] towards my intention). — Bob Ross

I have no idea what you think the difference between an actual means and a potential means is supposed to be. That distinction seems incoherent given the way you speak here.

Remember, we defined means in such a way where what you call a “potential means” fits the definition of a “means” simpliciter. — Bob Ross

No, you are just asserting your own definition. I have not agreed to your ambiguous definition of a means.

I was just commenting that the semantics seems a bit confusing and in need of refurbishment; but I understand the distinction you are making (although it doesn’t make any relevant difference to me with respect to our discussion). The racquets you don’t choose to use are actually a means to your end (of playing tennis): to say they are potentially a means is to imply that they are not currently a means; which is clearly false.

They are still a means because they can facilitate your end. Remember, we defined means in such a way where what you call a “potential means” fits the definition of a “means” simpliciter. Saying it is potentially a means is to say it isn’t a means right now, which is clearly false given the definition I outlined before. — Bob Ross

So if the racquets in my bag that are not being used are an actual means, then what is a potential means? Again, the distinction is nowhere near coherent the way you are wielding it.

I am pretty confident I have already clarified this; but let me do so again. A means is something which can facilitate an end (i.e., intention). A foreseen effect is an effect that one knows with sufficient probability is going to occur before it happens. — Bob Ross

And, as I said, on your definition here a foreseen effect is a means pure and simple, lol. You have provided yourself with no way to talk about a foreseen effect that is not a means, and therefore you have no way to distinguish the intentionality of an actual means from a foreseen effect.

Part of the problem here is the way that you are not respecting colloquial usage, and this will end up leading you astray. Every cause of an effect can be used as a means to achieve that effect, but people would look at you like you are crazy if you always refer to causes as means. "The tornado destroyed the town, therefore the tornado is a means." What??! A means is something that we use in order to achieve some end. It is not incorrect to speak about potential means (i.e. things that we could use to achieve an end), but a means must always be connected to intention, either proximately or remotely. "Means" does not mean "cause."

Both a means and a foreseen effect can be intended (per accidens or per se); it just depends. I’ve already outlined what I mean by all the concepts involved here.

A means is intended, if one is aiming at using that something (which is question) to facilitate their intention (i.e., end).

A means is intended per accidens, if it is intended only for the sake of another intention which they currently set out to achieve.

A means is intended per se, if it is intended for the sake of the primary intention which they are currently setting out to achieve.

In the trolley problem:

1. A means to saving the five is the lever.
2. Saving the five is an effect (of pulling the lever).
3. Saving the five is an intention (that one is aiming at achieving).
4. Killing the one is an effect (of pulling the lever).
5. The effect of saving the five is per se intentional, because it is directly related to the initial, primary intention at play.
6. The effect of killing the one is per accidens intentional, because it is indirectly related to the initial, primary intention at play.
7. The means (of pulling the lever) is per se intention, because it is directly … — Bob Ross

The crux is this question, "Is killing the one an intended means?" Presumably you want to say that it is intended (per accidens), but it is not intended as a means, because "One is not aiming at using it to facilitate their end"? In common English what we say is that killing the one is not a means (to anything) in this scenario. To talk about a means apart from intention makes no sense. Thus killing the one is an effect that falls under our intention (or an indirectly intended effect), but it is not a means because it has no relation to our intention qua means. An unintended means is an oxymoron, and therefore an intended means is a redundancy.

You are just getting confused in colloquial speech. I’ve already clarified that the unessentiality is to the ideal which one is aiming at; and which it can be readily seen that the car is unessential in this sense because if there was no car one would still have the exact same intention. — Bob Ross

If you had read what I wrote you would perhaps see that if there was no car then one would not have the intention at all: "... and in the absence of [an essential] car the end will not even be able arise as a possible end." For example, we didn't entertain the end of going to the moon before we knew how to fly. That end is not separable from the means of flying.

Saying it is potentially a means is to say it isn’t a means right now. — Bob Ross

And what could this sentence of yours possibly mean? Give one example of a potential means, if you think your distinction is coherent.

I agree; and you just aren’t seeing that yet. By “actual means”, all you mean is “a means that was used”; and I completely agree that only the means that are used for one’s aims are per se, directly, intentional. There’s no problems with that. — Bob Ross

This is incorrect because your "per accidens means" has nothing to do with the direct/indirect intention of Brock's. What you apparently mean by "per accidens intention" is any intention that is not identical with the "primary intention." Else you should clarify what you mean by a per accidens intention.

Looked at in another way, you are omitting an important caveat. You should say, "I completely agree that only the means that are used for one’s aims are per se, directly, intentional, [except for a means intended per accidens, which is also used for one's aims]." ...unless you want to persist and say that intermediate ends do not count as one's aims, such as walking to the faucet. I think you need to understand that walking to the faucet is simultaneously an end and a means to a further end, just as quenching your thirst is simultaneously an end, but also a means (to, say, health). Walking to the faucet is surely one of our aims.

Can we at least agree that indirectly intending to kill someone is murder? — Bob Ross

Hmm? This is precisely what we disagree on. The death of the one in the trolley scenario is indirectly intended.

You can’t possibly think that the legal definition of “manslaughter” would encompass indirectly intentionally killing someone. That was my point. — Bob Ross

I think you are the one mixing up colloquial understandings, now. You have very obviously forgotten what it even means to indirectly intend something. You keep reducing <indirectly intending to kill someone> with <intending to kill someone>.

Regarding this third wall, suppose there is an evil and it is morally impermissible to directly intend this evil. — Leontiskos

I think this is a bad example, then, because I don’t see bad car emissions as necessarily evil (i.e., intrinsically bad). — Bob Ross

Stay with what I already wrote. Is it or is it not morally prohibited to directly intend these emissions? That is the first question you need to consider.

For example, imagine that the only way you could get to the grocery store was use a car that you knew would (somehow) result (as a side effect) in raping someone: is that permissible under your view? — Bob Ross

This goes back to the problem about the distinction between natural necessity and logical necessity. If a tyrant says, "I will rape this woman if you drive to the grocery store," then is it permissible for me to drive to the grocery store? Of course it is. And if you cannot substitute some other scenario that better accomplishes the aim of your hypothetical, then I would say that you have again fallen into a strange reliance on merely logical necessity (where I am not allowed to do P when (P → Q)).

I'm not suggesting there isn't a correct answer for how one is to get from point A to point B. I'm only saying there isn't a single correct destination to desire. — Hanover

But I preempted this at the outset, "This is a problem beyond the instrumentalization of reason..." (). Again, "Now you might say that it is not necessarily irrational to prefer death to inequality (in the military), but is it irrational to deny mathematical facts?" ().

The primary question here is whether it is irrational to deny mathematical-statistical facts in favor of a progressive agenda, and this is not a question of "a single correct destination to desire." You keep wandering down a road that was preemptively addressed.

-

The related problem here is your construal of these disputes as a matter of values or arbitrary moralities. You are saying, "Well if they value gender equality more than military deaths, then who am I to tell them that military deaths should be given more weight?" But sexism is not ultimately a matter of values. It is a matter of reason and rationality. If two people are equally capable of doing something, then it is irrational to claim that they are not equally capable of doing that thing. It is this kind of argument that undergirds sexism, racism, etc. It is not some arbitrary value. Anti-sexism is originally a rational argument, not an arbitrary imposition of a value. It is something like, "Women are equally capable typists, therefore it is irrational to discriminate between women and men when it comes to typing."

If there were but one right preference, then every nation would have the same buildings, roads, military, houses, healthcare, etc. Not every prohibition is a malum in se, but plenty are instead malum prohibitum. That is, we can create objectives for our society that have no moral value but are just expressions of our preferences caused by our particular histories, happenstance situations we find ourselves in, mythologies and whatever else. We then arrive at ways to achieve those objectives, and that decision can either be right or wrong. — Hanover

The key point you are missing is that instrumental reason is also not determined to one effect. For example, when a nation decides that cars should drive on the right or left side of the road it is a way to achieve an objective, and neither way is right or wrong. The objective of safety is objectively good, but the indeterminacy in this case comes from a legitimate plurality of means, not from a plurality of ends. Binding that indeterminacy up with value relativism (i.e. an indeterminacy of ends) is incorrect.

It's not strikingly obvious to me that a society that wishes to promote gender as a matter of personal choice is an immoral one. I also don't think it's immoral to wish to promote the opposite. Others do, which I think is the cause of polarization, arising from moralizing everything.

If someone believes the proper objective for society is to free its citizens of male/female assignment based upon biological sex, that's neither a moral or immoral objective. If that is achieved through a weakened military, then that's a rational way to achieve that goal. This has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with personal choices and the effective way to achieve them. — Hanover

I don't think it has anything to do with morality either, so I don't know why you brought up morality. I would not even feel comfortable venturing the question of what you mean by "morality."

The point is that if we promote gender equality at the expense of mathematical facts, then we are being irrational. I have not made any points about so-called morality.

Except all democracies I am aware of offer protections for minority rights. — Hanover

You are doubtless limiting your sample to modern democratic forms.

There are moral choices and immoral ones. That holds true for single individuals and legislative bodies. When you walk down the street, there are thousands of immoral, moral, and morally neutral things you can do. Democracies can select their objectives from the buckets marked "moral" or "morally neutral," but not "immoral."
That would be wrong. — Hanover

But if you are talking about something that democracy might get right or wrong, then you are obviously not talking about morally or rationally indifferent things.

The right and left both hold rights near and dear to their hearts. They just argue over what they are, but not whether they exist. The left says abortion is a right, the right says guns are. Neither denies ights exist though. — Hanover

Actually plenty of democratic political philosophers hold that natural rights do not exist, and it is logically impossible for a democratic vote or consensus to generate a natural right. I think you are conflating democracy with liberalism. Not all democracies protect minority rights, and that all liberal democracies protect minority rights has everything to do with liberalism and nothing to do with democracy. I would say that democracies invariably reject minority rights in large and small ways.

Though I haven't focused specifically on the idea that in the absence of individual data that group data is better than nothing. Just as you haven't that when using group data on individuals, one should continue to collect new individual performance data as the chance of an initial miscalculation is moderate. — LuckyR

Sure, but given that we are discussing the legitimacy of individual inferences from group data, your omission here is the problematic one. I claimed the inference was valid, you objected and gave a few different arguments, but eventually settled into this idea that:

LP1: <If we have an individual statistic and a group statistic for some individual, then the individual statistic will be more predictive>

The problem is that this idea of yours fails to connect to the larger issue of inferences from group data to individuals. In that sense it is a red herring and also invalid. This form of sophistry brings back memories of OnlinePhilosophyClub. In order to avoid these problems you would need to address how things like LP1 relate to the larger discussion we are having.

Phrased differently:

• Leontiskos: An inference from group data to individuals within that group is not necessarily invalid or irrational. {Not all X is Y}
• Lucky: Sometimes such an inference would be otiose given LP1. {Some X is Y}

Even if we ignore the equivocation between what is invalid and what is otiose, your response that <some X is Y> fails to contradict the claim in question that <not all X is Y>. You are attempting to disagree with my claim, but anyone who is paying attention knows that your arguments haven't managed to do so. The conclusion you need is not <some X is Y>, but rather, <all X is Y>.

- Your 19 posts have been of very low quality, and I do not plan on responding to you further in this thread or in any other. I am letting you know for your own sake, and I would suggest putting a bit more effort into your posts rather than shooting them off in a few seconds.

The discussion is about ethics, not legality. — Ourora Aureis

The distinction between commissions and omissions is a distinction on the causality of human acts, which pertains to both ethics and law (indeed, law is a subset of ethics).

I think it's a crucial distinction, and also a more accurate representation of cause and effect. — Tzeentch

Right. :up:
There is no legal system in the world that does not recognize a difference between a commission and an omission.

What about child laborers in the supply chain of our favorite products (and other workers who work in awful and dangerous conditions)? We are obviously treating them as means, but what is the solution? — RogueAI

One simple solution would be to refuse to buy products from companies who use children in that way.

You have to be careful with what one is analyzing. Filling your glass is a means and an intention in your example here; and not in the sense you would like it to be (viz., that a means is itself an intention): the ‘entity’ is separately attributed both.

The intention is to quench one’s thirst.
The means towards that intention is filling up your glass.
The intention to quench one’s thirst requires another intention to fill up your glass.
Filling up your glass is a means, and it is intended (with an intention separate from the other intention, but closely connected).

This is not a gradient of intention: they are separate intentions (but closely related). — Bob Ross

I was traveling today and so I listened to a recent talk by a good philosopher, Kevin Flannery (who is not the best public speaker). He talks about the way that Aquinas views the relation of the means and the end at 18:08-22:19, which is what you are speaking about. (For the whole section on Aquinas' view of intention, see 17:41.)

The idea is that the intention of the means and the intention of the end are both separable and inseparable. We can view them under different aspects, but to say they are entirely separate is not correct.

Flannery speaks of the means as, "The things [the agent] believes or hopes will lead to [his] end."

I would be wary to call it potential vs. actual; because some means towards one’s intentions aren’t necessary “used”. — Bob Ross

You have missed the distinction between a potential means and an actual means. Go back to my tennis racquet example. Before I begin playing the three racquets are each a potential means to playing tennis. Once I choose the Wilson racquet and begin playing, the Wilson racquet is an actual means to playing tennis. A potential means is that which can be used to realize some end. An actual means is that which is used in order to realize some end.

Potential means for this do not relate to potential means for that; and potential means for this are means for this, but not necessary utilized (actualized) means towards this. — Bob Ross

A scissors is a potential means to cutting my hair, and a saw is a potential means for cutting down a tree. Obviously this does not mean that a scissors is a potential means for cutting down a tree and a saw is a potential means for cutting my hair. As I said in my last, a means involves a relation to an end. There are no free-standing means. If I have a hand saw and a chainsaw, and I use the chainsaw to cut down the tree, then the chainsaw is an actual means to cutting down the tree whereas the saw is only a potential means to cutting down the tree.

What you tend to keep doing is dallying in ambiguities, and this prevents the conversation from moving forward. Simple distinctions and clarifications would solve most of our problems. For example:

The foreseen effect(s) are always intentional, because they, even if they are not means towards one’s intended end, are enveloped into the original intention as per accidens intentions. E.g., if I pull the the lever, which is a means towards my intention to save the five, knowing that it will also result in the effect of killing another person; then I am intending to kill that other person, per accidens, to achieve my, per se, intention of saving the five. — Bob Ross

Our whole proximate goal is to distinguish a means from a foreseen effect. I think I have demonstrated that this distinction is necessary, for example by pointing to the fact that the car's polluting emissions are not a means to getting groceries, but they are a foreseen effect. So then you tried to make a distinction on intention to clear this up, with "essential intention" and "accidental intention." But now you say that both a means and a foreseen effect are intended per accidens, thus failing to distinguish a means from a foreseen effect in the way that the essential/accidental distinction was meant to do in the first place. You have sabotaged your own project, or else provided us with analytic tools that are inadequate for the job at hand. I have been trying to get you to distinguish a means from a foreseen effect, but you are reluctant to do this on a number of levels. If you can't make that distinction or find the tools to make that distinction, then obviously the conversation cannot move forward. You will then just keep asserting that they are the same without being able to account in any way for their obvious differences.

The reason I distinguish potential means from actual means is because we have been talking past each other by using different definitions of what a means is.

E.g., if my intention is to get groceries and the only means of doing so is using my car, then my car is essential to actualizing the intention but unessential to the intention which I have (viz., if the car wasn’t essential towards my intentions,... — Bob Ross

But note your very next clause, "if the car wasn't essential." If your car is essential to actualizing the intention (i.e. it is an essential means) then it is not right to say that the car is "unessential to the intention which I have." If a car is the only way to achieve some end, then the car will be necessarily connected to the end, and in the absence of a car the end will not even be able arise as a possible end.

I am not entirely understanding your critique for this part. Here’s a basic google definition: “have (a course of action) as one's purpose or objective; plan.”.

As far as I can tell, all I have to do to avoid this critique is refurbish my definition to “to have an ideal of which one is planning or trying to actualize”—now it is a verb, and is still closely connected to ideality.

If you are just noting that I was using ideal somewhat interchangeably with intention; then you are correct: that was a mistake on my end. — Bob Ross

Well this may be too subtle, but the "mistake on your end" flows from the questionable definition. You are building your definition around a noun, 'ideal.' Even on your redaction, the Google definition is still built around something that directly refers to the verb of acting, "a course of action." The genus of intention is acts, whereas the genus of ideals is ideas. An intention is some kind of act, not some kind of idea or ideal. This may seem like a quibble, but it's really not, as many people make this mistake about intention. They think that when we intend something we are basically positing some kind of idea. But to intend is not to posit an idea or a plan, it is an act in which we apply our will to an end. It is a bit like committing ourselves to some goal. It is a dynamic reality, not a static reality. It centrally involves setting ourselves in motion towards some end.

Although I see your point, it could be an actual means towards Q; but the intention here (stipulated) is towards P; so A is not a means towards Q when working towards P. — Bob Ross

To say that "it could be an actual means towards Q [but in this case it is not]" is just to say that it is a potential means towards Q. That's what a potential means is.

This “indirect intention” is what I mean by “per accidens intention”. — Bob Ross

No it's not, because for Brock an actual means is directly intended. An indirect intention is what distinguishes a foreseen effect from an actual means, and you are insistent that your "per accidens intention" is not capable of this act of distinguishing. You are insistent that both a foreseen effect and an actual means are intended per accidens. This is why I was trying to get you to think about the nuance of the way that Aristotle employs the concept of per accidens.

This is just because “he means to” is being used vaguely: we have circled back to using “intention” vaguely. I would say, more precisely, that he per accidens intends Q (viz., he indirectly intends Q), and this is a form of intention—i.e., it is intentional. All we are disagreeing about is what kind or type of intention is at play. — Bob Ross

Hopefully what I've already said clears up some of the confusion here.

I think that any intentional killing of an innocent human being is immoral; whereas you seem to disagree with that in the case that it is “indirectly intended”. — Bob Ross

Right, and you don't yet have the tools to even see the difference between a means and a foreseen effect. At this point it is invisible to you, and as long as it stays invisible you will necessarily be able to maintain your assumption that any form of killing which involves any kind of intention is immoral.

If a person intends to do P by way of A and they know A also results in Q; then they thereby intend Q. — Bob Ross

This is the sort of ambiguity that your whole position depends on. We did all this work to distinguish different kinds of intention, and then you forget all of it immediately and talk about "intending Q" in an entirely unnuanced way. Your sentence here simply ignores the last two or three exchanges we have had in this thread.

if a person intends to drive while texting and they know that there is a chance that they might be too distracted by it and kill someone, then they have not thereby intended to kill someone in the event that they do become too distracted and kill someone — Bob Ross

No, this is a case of negligence, and is quite different from what we are considering. As I said earlier:

Is it always wrong to accidentally-intentionally kill innocent people? More precisely, is it always wrong to indirectly intend to kill innocent people? Is voluntary "manslaughter" always negligent? Those are the questions that need to be answered. — Leontiskos

Here is an edit from my last which you may have missed:

Regarding this third wall, suppose there is an evil and it is morally impermissible to directly intend this evil. Does it follow that it is impermissible to indirectly intend this evil?

I think not. Take the matter of the especially bad car emissions due to a faulty exhaust system. Is it impermissible to directly intend those emissions? For example, to allow your car to idle for the sake of the emissions? I think so. Does it follow that it is impermissible to get groceries in the car, even when you know it will produce those emissions? No, I don't think so. — Leontiskos

Interaction is not a necessary condition for treating someone as an end. — Herg

I would class the counterexamples you are presenting as examples of interaction. You are consciously interacting with someone. It makes no difference that they are not consciously interacting with you. In the cases you present you interact with someone in a conscious way who is interacting with you in a non-conscious way (by their demeanor, or their need of a charitable donation, etc.).

The point here is that we can easily broaden the concept of "interaction" that you are presupposing, and even then the problem that I posed to you does not go away. You are still not interacting with the 235 million people in Pakistan even on this broader notion of interaction, and therefore you are failing to treat them as an end. I think interaction is the right word, but we could rephrase it as follows: "If you are not engaging in an activity (in the philosophical sense) towards someone, then you are not treating them as an end. Therefore in order to treat each person as an end we must be engaged in an activity towards each person."

I’m all for free will. My claims about determinism weren’t an attempt to privilege them over freedom-based positions, but to show that they share a limitation with many such approaches. — Joshs

Okay.

What most free will based perspectives have in common with deterministic ones is making fault and blame a necessary consequence of choice and freedom — Joshs

If you are saying that all incompatibilists agree that <If fault and blame exists, then free will exists>, then I agree. The hard determinist denies the consequent and the incompatibilist proponent of free will ("libertarian" if you like) affirms the antecedent.

I believe we are free, within the looose constraints set by our contingent schemes of understanding, to reconstrue the meaning of events. Determinations of culpability, fault and blame tend to prematurely end that process of re-interpretation and questioning. — Joshs

It seems to me that you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. For me the simpler point is that the consequence that incompatibilists agree on is true and important, as is its antecedent.

Edit: I was recently reading Stephen Brock on intention, so as I was traveling today I began to listen to an informal talk he gave on free will ("Is Free Will an Illusion?"). At the very beginning, starting at 1:48, he gives the exact argument that I had in mind regarding your own position.

It's 50 years since I read Kant, so I am horribly rusty. — Herg

Okay, fair enough.

I take (1) to be complete as it stands, and (2) to be entailed by (1). Because (1) is complete and is not dependent on (2) — Herg

I have never seen a translation imply this, including the quick Google translation that you provided. You could interpret the Google English that way, but it does not require that interpretation. For example, the Cambridge Groundwork gives, "For, all rational beings stand under the law that each of them is to treat himself and all others never merely as means but always at the same time as ends in themselves" (4:433). See also SEP, "This formulation states that we should never act in such a way that we treat humanity, whether in ourselves or in others, as a means only but always as an end in itself."

I question your statement that "the separate principle that we must always treat everyone as an end... is not a commonly accepted moral principle," because that is in fact (1). — Herg

I don't think it makes sense to say that we must always treat everyone as an end. Are you currently treating everyone in the world as an end? How about the 235 million people in Pakistan? Surely not. But even if you walk down the street and there are, say, 15 people within your eyeshot, are you positively treating each of the 15 people as an end? I don't think so. To divorce, "Treat everyone as an end. . ." from the rest, ". . . , never as a mere means," does not seem to be a reasonable principle. The second formulation is a limiting principle, primarily specifying how we cannot treat others. It is not a requirement about how we must positively treat each person at each moment of their existence.

You could also think about Kant's formulation this way: "When you are interacting with someone, [insert second formulation here]." If we are not interacting with someone then we are not bound to treat them as an end. Treating someone as an end requires an interaction, and obviously we cannot interact with everyone.

Whatever Kant meant by what he wrote, the emboldened rendering above is what I was aiming for — Herg

Then to expand, all of the following are examples of failing to treat others as ends (the first two are your own examples):

• If you kill someone, then you are not treating them as an end.
• If you let someone die when you could save them, the same is true.
• If you sit down next to someone on the train without interacting with them, the same is true.
• If you see a street performer and you do not pay attention to them, the same is true.

The problem here is that anyone who you do not positively interact with or engage is necessarily not being treated as an end. In fact they are not being treated in any particular way at all.

I'm sorry, I don't know what you are getting at in your second sentence here. Can you put it another way? — Herg

I am morally perplexed when I find myself in a situation in which I cannot fulfill all of my duties, and I must therefore choose between them. The received understanding of Kant's second formulation does not result in moral perplexity because it is a negative duty, not a positive duty. Your dilemma with Hitler and the janitor relies on perplexity and this positive construal of EP.

I don't see the EP as a subordinate end, and I apologise if I gave the impression that I did. It's rather the other way round: I see the EP (in my two-part formulation) as primary, and the hedonic calculus, if we need it all, as secondary. — Herg

Ah, okay. I had it backwards, then.

In fact I am no longer sure whether we need the hedonic calculus. I am a hedonist, and so I think that treating people as ends must in the end be a matter of trying to give them more net pleasure: but I don't think this necessarily commits us to the traditional utilitarian hedonic calculus. But I must confess that I only recently stopped being a utilitarian, and my ideas in this area are still somewhat in flux. — Herg

Yes, well, to give EP priority over the hedonic calculus is a departure from classical utilitarianism, especially in its non-rule-based varieties. It makes sense that you are in a transitional phase away from utilitarianism, and are trying out some new approaches.

I think the best way to approach this is through Aristotle discussing the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake — Paine

Okay, I have always liked that passage.

This argument that it is okay to pursue first causes extends to all who attempt it. When Aristotle makes arguments against others employing what Gerson calls Ur-Platonism principles, that doesn't make his interlocutors unqualified to speak upon it. — Paine

I don't think Gerson would focus on the idea that Aristotle's interlocutors are unqualified to speak upon it, though he might eventually say that. I think he would focus on the idea that they are wrong. If Aristotle can here be said to be espousing a form of anti-skepticism, then the claim would be that Aristotle's opponents are wrong. Thus I would want to say that "this argument. . . extends to" all, not only those who attempt it. It extends, for example, especially to those who reject the legitimacy of pursuing first causes. The ones who were already pursuing first causes don't really have any need of the argument.

The reference to Simonides invokes a struggle with tradition that is ever present in Plato's dialogues. An excellent essay on this topic is written by Christopher Utter. — Paine

Okay thanks, it looks like an interesting paper. I will have a look.

The zero-sum game presented here seems pretty objective for someone who eschews absolutes and representations of the real. I recognize that there are different ways of looking at our shared experience. To link them as categorical antagonists, however, has history revealing a psychological truth. But revealing truth is one of the activities Rorty militates against. If the claim is a serious one, he has to abandon his aversion to verification. Sometimes, it seems like he demands admission to a club he denies exists.

If one frees the two perspectives from Rorty's fight to the death, they become more like Nagel's objection to "the view from nowhere", a narrative Wayfinder regards highly. Rorty shares the critical view of science in some places but has complained that Nagel is too mystical in others. So, 'materialist' by comparison but not on the basis of claiming what nature is. He resists saying what that is. As I review different examples of his work, it is confusing to sort out what he objects to from an alternative to such. It is not my cup of tea.

As an American I hear his anti-war view that ideas should not force one to fight. I don't know if he talks about Thoreau but that is the register I hear the objection. A democracy of no. But that is its own discussion, or if is not, that becomes a new thesis. I fear the infinite regress. — Paine

Okay, these are good points and I agree.

For the purposes of this discussion, I have learned enough to say that Rorty is not one of those who are 'materialist' according to the criteria in Ur-Platonism. Rorty's demand that humans are the measure makes that impossible. I take your point that Gerson is not joining Rorty and Rosenberg at the hip. That allows me to ask what they have to do with each other.

[...]

They require the logic Rorty would expel. It is whatever else that is said that I cannot imagine.

[...]

In my defense, it is not like Gerson explains the sameness. His enemies never change. — Paine

I suppose I am trying to flush out exactly what it is you don't like about Gerson's thesis. I am focusing primarily on his five points of Ur-Platonism. Now someone could surely define nominalism and then divide all of philosophy into nominalist and non-nominalist philosophies. Or they could define nominalism and skepticism and then divide all of philosophy into the four logical categories. It seems that Gerson has defined anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. He calls the conjunction of those five positions pureblood Ur-Platonism (or anti-naturalism). If a philosophy contains only 4/5 then it would be a slightly watered down version of Ur-Platonism, etc. If it contains 0/5 then it is pureblood Naturalism. Ur-Platonism and Naturalism are therefore conceived as two poles sitting opposite one another.

What is objectionable about this? Is the objection that Ur-Platonism doesn't correctly map to Platonism, or to traditional philosophy? Is it that any theory which places Plotinus and Aristotle into the same group must be a false theory, because they are so different? Is it that because Rorty and Rosenberg have both similarities and differences, the theory must somehow fail?

Regarding Rorty:

Anti-materialism is the view that it is false that the only things that exist are bodies and
their properties.

Anti-relativism is the denial of the claim that Plato attributes to Protagoras that ‘man is
the measure of all things, of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not’.

Anti-scepticism is the view that knowledge is possible. Knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) refers to
a mode of cognition wherein the real is in some way ‘present’ to the cognizer. — Gerson, Platonism versus Naturalism

You say:

For the purposes of this discussion, I have learned enough to say that Rorty is not one of those who are 'materialist' according to the criteria in Ur-Platonism. Rorty's demand that humans are the measure makes that impossible.

[...]

But revealing truth is one of the activities Rorty militates against. If the claim is a serious one, he has to abandon his aversion to verification. — Paine

This leads me to believe that, for Gerson, Rorty is not a materialist but he is at least a relativist and a skeptic. He is a relativist on account of his demand that "humans are the measure," and he is a skeptic on account of his aversion to verification and revealing truth.

Regarding the relation between Rorty and Rosenberg, and Platonism and Naturalism, Gerson has this to say:

Rosenberg is in broad agreement with Rorty about what anti-Platonism is, although it may be the case that Rosenberg would disagree with Rorty about the pre-eminence of the natural sciences. But the disagreements among naturalists or anti-Platonists are not my main topic; nor, for that matter, are the disagreements among Platonists. What I aim to show is that Rorty (and probably Rosenberg) are right in identifying Platonism with philosophy and that, therefore, the rejection of the one necessarily means the rejection of the other. But I also propose to argue for an even bolder thesis that this one. . . — Gerson, Platonism versus Naturalism, p. 3

It seems like Gerson is not falling into the traps you suppose. He is not saying, for example, that Rorty and Rosenberg are entirely alike. Perhaps you are opposed to his "bolder thesis," and in particular the claim that, "I would like to show that what I am calling the elements of Platonism—to which I shall turn in a moment—are interconnected such that it is not possible to embrace one or another of these without embracing them all"?

No, the point I was making is that believers in reductive determinism like Sapolski are not some strange anomaly within the history of philosophy, — Joshs

No, but they are a significant minority.

That was the point I was making. The other’s ‘stuckness’ only provokes our anger when it involves their deliberate, intentional choice... — Joshs

Sure, but I am not sure that you are appreciating the relation of choice to free will. To deny the ability to do otherwise is to deny choice and fault, and the onus is on you to show how a deterministic paradigm could provide for the ability to do otherwise.

I disagree; blame is attendant upon the idea that the person really could have done otherwise; it is based on a libertarian notion of free will which is entrenched in the western psyche — Janus

We get angry and blame when we believe we can get that person ‘unstuck’ — Joshs

I'd say Janus is clearly correct here, and the key is not some vague notion of libertarian free will, but rather his condition "that the person really could have done otherwise." Joshs needs to put "blame" in scare-quotes, for by 'blame' he seems to mean nothing more than negative conditioning. ...It is interesting that without free will the distinction between rebuking and gaslighting seems to collapse. Oh, and anger has a great deal to do with blame, but it is simply false to claim that we get angry when we think we can get a person unstuck. We get angry with someone when they have done something wrong, and our anger is supposed to motivate them to set it right. If someone is "stuck" but is not to blame for anything then we do not get angry with them.

- I was just making a joke. Amadeus often seems to be under the impression that, "His saying so makes it so."

But I will ask you a quick question:

Say a nuclear weapon wipes out all the registries, then there is no evidence of my marriage anymore, but I am still married. I still have the legal obligation to care for my partner. There is just no evidence for the marriage and if I walk away from my obligation it cannot be enforced by a court. That though does not make the obligation somehow disappear, or the marriage somehow annulled. — Tobias

What if the nuclear weapon wipes out the entire nation and the legal order. Would you still be legally married? Or would the legality of the marriage fall away and it become a purely natural marriage?