Modern ethics people are snide about 'classic' definitions, and I am equally snide about them, because they only seem to respect thoughts of living people who are actually trying to make a profit by restating the problem in modern terms for the journals and philosophy lectures. Am I wrong about that? — ernestm

Modern times need answers to modern problems. The scope of decisions is different.
Take the trolley problem: The question in modern times is not about making a singular decision.
It is about implementing drive assistants. Which philosophical approaches are (legally and philosophical) sound enough to be implemented to be executed rigidly by a machine?
The question is: may a machine be programmed to always kill the single person?
A slight deviation: If programming a car - do the inmates count? May a drive-assistant evade a sure collision with a truck and kill a cyclist instead? Does it matter if the driver did something (like driving too fast) that arguably made the situation arise in first place? Does it matter how many inmates in both situations? We need answers saying "Yes, 1101".

At least one could argue that such applications shed a new light on those problems and hence positions have to revisited. Starting with the question if implementing or enforcing a certain ethical policy or not doing so is in itself ethically sound.

Reading wikipedia surveys were taken among populations if choosing the track with fewer peoples on it was the way to go. Of what worth is that survey? It seems people were questioned about their own ethical belief, not about the question if machines should execute that belief. This is a fundamental difference. I do not have the impression that "classical" formulations were meant to be put into such a context.

Woth a look: The "Stop Button Problem"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TYT1QfdfsM&t=6s

You mean stop talking to you? Now it seems tempting

I know.

Of course our conceptions of the laws are "derived" from the observed behaviors of phenomena. So, are the laws nothing more than our conceptions of them then? — Janus

They do not not say anything about the things. Reality is negative.

By their nature, of course. You are very correct, the laws are derived from their behaviours. Of course there is Modus Ponens in play and of course this is empirical science a-posteriori.
What you do not seem to grasp is that the mind is all reality only for itself.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/235371

What a letter is depends on context. — Terrapin Station

And nontheless you know it is unique? If we were looking at the same letter the problem is quite obvious.

So, again I ask you what the laws that govern things, or their nature ( which is the same thing according to you) are as understood in physicalist terms. — Janus

The development of their spatio-temporal relations. We are talking about "things"(Kant: "Ding"). Those are always physical.

That is not really my issue. You say a letter is unique but the letter is not a letter, but a brain-state. This makes me headaches...

Every instance of a letter, number, etc. is unique. — Terrapin Station

What is unique? The ink or the brain-state?

Sometimes it's just one or the other. — Terrapin Station

So there goes the identity. Ideally a letter is some kind of sign.

Now I don't quite know what you want to hear. Their nature is expressed by the laws thereof. Tautologies do not always have ideal content.

Answer my question and maybe I'll follow.

An idea as such can hardly be matter as it is an idea. Talking identities. A letter as such is a letter and not some ink. Of course it is hardly anything else then. You could try to answer the question if the letter actually is some ink or a brain-state.

If all things are merely physical then what would be the universal principle that determines that physical laws obtain everywhere, even across regions that cannot be energetically connected due to the immense distance separating them? — Janus

Do you mean their nature?

Hegel can help again:

Reason is the conscious certainty of being all reality. This is how Idealism expresses the principle of Reason.

One of the more critical points:

The individual exists in himself and for himself. He is for himself, or is a free activity; he is, however, also in himself, or has himself an original determinate being of his own — a character which is in principle the same as what psychology sought to find outside him. Opposition thus breaks out in his own self; it has this twofold nature, it is a process or movement of consciousness, and it is the fixed being of a reality with a phenomenal character, a reality which in it is directly its own. This being, the “body” of the determinate individuality, is its original source, that in the making of which it has had nothing to do. But since the individual at the same time merely is what he has done, his body is also an “expression” of himself which he has brought about; a sign and indication as well, which has not remained a bare immediate fact, but through which the individual only makes known what is actually implied by his setting his original nature to work.

A good example of "Consciousness determines Being" vs "Being determines consciousness"

Heidegger indirectly recognized death as the quintessence of reality, since in it the self-referentiality of existing being finds its negation: "When facing imminent death Dasein is entirely directed to its very ability to be." - "Reality is resistance". It can not be captured by the conceptual world: as such, it is pure, absolute negativity. The positive conceptual side of real things can, due to their relation to the subjects be summarized spot on: "In their transformation the essence of things is revealed as always the same, a substrate of domination." (Horkheimer, Adorno)

The completeness of the forms of unreal consciousness will be brought about precisely through the necessity of the advance and the necessity of their connection with one another. To make this comprehensible we may remark, by way of preliminary, that the exposition of untrue consciousness in its untruth is not a merely negative process. Such a one-sided view of it is what the natural consciousness generally adopts; and a knowledge, which makes this one-sidedness its essence, is one of those shapes assumed by incomplete consciousness which falls into the course of the inquiry itself and will come before us there. For this view is scepticism, which always sees in the result only pure nothingness, and abstracts from the fact that this nothing is determinate, is the nothing of that out of which it comes as a result. Nothing, however, is only, in fact, the true result, when taken as the nothing of what it comes from; it is thus itself a determinate nothing, and has a content. The scepticism which ends with the abstraction “nothing” or “emptiness” can advance from this not a step farther, but must wait and see whether there is possibly anything new offered, and what that is — in order to cast it into the same abysmal void. When once, on the other hand, the result is apprehended, as it truly is, as determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen; and in the negation the transition is made by which the progress through the complete succession of forms comes about of itself.
Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind

When dealing with non-physical entities the mind knows itself in it's for-itself.

The spirit of this world is spiritual essence permeated by a self-consciousness which knows itself to be directly present as a self-existent particular, and knows that essence as an objective actuality over against itself. But the existence of this world, as also the actuality of self-consciousness, depends on the process that self-consciousness divests itself of its personality, by so doing creates its world, and treats it as something alien and external, of which it must now take possession. But the renunciation of its self-existence is itself the production of the actuality, and in doing so, therefore, self-consciousness ipso facto makes itself master of this world.

To put the matter otherwise, self-consciousness is only something definite, it only has real existence, so far as it alienates itself from itself.
ibid

It is much better to base actions off of reason than faith, even if it means doing some evil things. — RosettaStoned

This, again, is talking about different things. The deed either is bad or it is not. If it is excusable, justifyable or not is another story. Everyone on the party could make the noble move to kill himself to save the others. They can let a die decide if they agree that they have to do something. Holding down a person and stabbing his vein despite his resistance can be understandable, but not moral.

If the person was going to die, then why would it be bad to kill him if it was inevitable? — RosettaStoned

Oh, if it is inevitable the question is a different one. You cannot know - that's difference. You do know it when he died. But maybe it is you and he will survive.
Murder is defined as the act of killing from base motives. If you do it because the greater good that - just accidentally - seems to correlate to your base motives it isn't murder. Quite simple.

I believe that the deciding factor that swayed the court was the defendants lack of remorse over the act. — Jamesk

This does not, however, have any influence on the moral character of the deed.

Yes it would, but my lack of omniscience prevents me from knowing that. I would feel really regretful if such a situation were to occur, but I wouldn't be "wrong", because it was better than the alternative of potentially limiting the amount of good in the world. — RosettaStoned

I disagree. The court was right in it's decision. The men should have waited for Parker to die if they were so sure he would.
This does not, however, apply to your case as you judge yourself more valuable than the other and hence it is not you who should die.

The action would in fact be wrong if the other person were to help more then me, however, but I don't know that, so I therefore did nothing wrong in that scenario. — RosettaStoned

That's a problem. You not knowing it was wrong would not make it right. Also it's quite possible you would be rescued just some hours after the killing. That would be a pitty, wouldn't it?

The problem with you question is that you are assuming one measure of morality and then applying another. If your question really is, if different ethics can come to different conclusions about the moral character of a deed, then the answer surely is "yes, factical". (Which kinda means they aren't ethics in the first place).

It cannot. Either it is an evil act or it is not.

Fascinating.

A reason can be a cause, a motive (which is basically a teleological cause), or an explanation. What are you addressing by “a reason”? — javra

A reason as such.

If a reason is a reason there is no choice, right?

But one result is that one here is metaphysically responsible for the choice one makes—and that the choice is neither random nor determinate. — javra

Why does your agent want to go to C? Did he choose so? Is this just "given"?

I doubt this. The M.W.I. for example is just one attempt to explain how the cat can be equally alive and dead. First there is math....

Until we open the box to see the cat's state, we're in a state of ignorance - which is epistemological. — Relativist

This is what one might think - if the cat was anything else beside what we observe. But that would mean that it was more than it's worldly being, it's state in the world and how it affects the world. Hence it is said not to be epistemological, and the cat equally alive and dead. You see the ontological problem?

I'm referring to things as the actually ARE (as the exist), not merely what is measured. — Relativist

That's the problem here: Where shall be the difference?

For purposes of the discussion, consider quantum indeterminacy to entail ontological indeterminacy, not just a measurement problem. — Relativist

What do you mean by "ontological" here? "Ontological" in the sense of modern physics seems to explicitely mean to describe the things as they appear. Schroedinger's cat for example "is" alive and dead at the same time as an observer of the box cannot distinguish this. The cat was never asked....

How much energy would we need to apply to a human being to actually determine it's indeterminacy at quantum level throughout?
My guess is "ouch..."

Sorry, English isn't my first language. But the point is to make: The subject appears sovereign to itself.

Transcendental freedom is perceiving yourself as subject, which means - at least to some extend - perceived conscious control over youself. This freedom is reflexive and hence cannot be attributed to plain objects.

No. It has to involve will (which is conscious), or we're just talking about ontological freedom in general. — Terrapin Station

I'm not sure I can follow this distinction. Even a quark jumping around wildly and a-causal cannot be called free without raping the concept. Trancendental freedom is defined in terms of subjectivity. Alledged or not.

But that's just changing what we're referring to in the conversation. No one in the debate was using "free" to refer to whether a choice is a product of the agent's mental processes or not. — Terrapin Station

So you would call an act independent of and maybe even contrary to any conscious decisions an act of free will?

The thing is - the bit that actually interests me - is that we can talk very clearly about the formal aspect of substantial being, but it all goes very shifty as we try to drill down into the material aspect of substantial being. — apokrisis

Just if you look at it very superficially. The form of a cloud is very disputable, not even to speak of fog. And there are many things that look circular - but only if you do not measure too exactly...

Particle physics tells us that the electrons and quarks composing the silicon and oxygen atoms are yet again just informed substance — apokrisis

The word "particle physics" as well as the plurals you use seem to indicate a contradiction here. Afaik there are transitions between energy and matter. One could ask the question if this is really the last word on those things though.

So for the materialist, it is turtles all the way down. Yet materialists don't seem to think they have a problem. — apokrisis

I guess the problem is of another nature. Materialists do not seem to start from the smallest particles there are. The reality of the smallest things is often discussed. Maybe they are just theoretical entities, maybe the theories are incomplete. After all qualities have been destroyed there will be only numbers left in the theories. That doesn't mean that matter is numbers.

You show that "bottle" is an idea that can be imposed on other materials, like plastic or metal. And you can show that "glass" is what you are left with once you melt your bottle to a liquid puddle. — apokrisis

In other words you cannot. Saying a concrete thing was a bottle is just as aspectual as saying it is glass.

How do you point to glass OR the "bottle" in a case of a glass bottle?

I don't think you are really thinking about what you are saying. If it is "just glass" then how is it "a bottle"? — apokrisis

I don't think you are talking about the actual thing. You know to put bottles into a glass-container, no?

But I doubt you have any desire to endorse hylomorphic thinking. So how can a chair BE matter, as you state? — apokrisis

As you pay for it's disposal per kg. A bottle can easily be just glass... :)

An unattractive alternative is still an alternative. — Jamesk

But doing a bad thing is never an act of free will.