By which standard would we be measuring our internal ethical rules and external judgments that allow us to change our internal moral compass or decide not to? — Benkei

Your core values. These don't change that much, certainly not once you pass a certain age, but possibly never since they seem to be biologically determined for a good part.

That is what a philosopher would do anyway. Most people don't get that far, and stick to following authority, pretty much.

"Thoughts are the shadows of our emotions; always darker, emptier and simpler."
Friedrich Nietzsche — Blue Lux

It is precisely the intelligibility of language that makes thought prior to language, and which makes thought determine what language one will use. — Blue Lux

Depends on what you would call thoughts it seems to me.

Are emotions thoughts? Nietzsche doesn't seem to think so, otherwise he wouldn't set them apart like that in that quote...

Is an emotion that we just become aware of allready a thought, or is it only a thought when we reflect on it and categorise it in language, so we can understand what it is?

Maybe thought isn't only determined by language, but it still is an essential component of what a thought is?

Yeah well, I think i said my part on that topic in the other thread. Not going to repeat the same thing again...

Hi Jake, as i allready suggested in the other thread, philosophy is not politics nor activism... and it better not be.

I don't think there are a lot of philosophers who think having nukes arround is a good idea, but it's another thing to actively campaign for it. As soon as philosophers would start going down that road, they would become suspect as philosophers. Activist and politicans care about achieving some goals, and truth typically becomes subordinate to these goals...

Everybody has a role to play. The role of philosophy is to think clearly and (re)evaluate values... best without some preconcieved ideology or dogma's. Politicians and activist can then use the work philosophers do to inform the goals they want to pursue.

And philosophy has played its role. Nukes are bad, there i said it! It's just not a topic that is of philosophical interest anymore. It's solved... philosophically :-).

could he mean that truth is false? — K

He did believe that even truth is allways a falsification to some extend. I'd recomment to read "on truth and lies in an extra-moral sense" to understand where he's coming from, it's not that long... A crude summary of it would be that truth is an agreement on names for things and relations, and that we then forget that they are only conventions.

But then he clearly also believes in some sense of truth, as is evident in numerous passages. So how do we reconcile these two? I think we need to take serious his statements that 'truth originates from it's opposite'. We begin with the most crude falsifications of the world, which then can eventially be refined into something that is progressively more accurate or less wrong. This is actually analoguous to how science works, e.g. we come up with an initial hypothesis and crude models, disproof and falsify them, and then come up with better models, rinse repeat...

Also note that truth and untruth, is not to be confounded with 'the will to truth' and 'the will to decieve' which is what he is talking about in the quote in the opening post.

Athenian society imploded, and gave rise to doubt which undermined greek tragedy... but was that a feature of Greek tragedy itself, or was it rather a consequence of geo-political circumstance?

You say it's not attainable to go beyond pessimistic philosophy, or at least not sustainable... but isn't the existence of Greek tragedy evidence that it can be done?

Or why do you think Greek tragedy isn't sufficient as an answer?

Conflicting desires absolutely, but that doesn't necessarily imply a natural hierarchy or a seperate desire to resolve conflicts. Love can conquer addiction, and addiction can conquer love...

I mean, i'm not necessary opposed to the idea, but i don't think it's prima facie evident either. Maybe there are desires that are more controling, like a kind of will to power or Freuds reality principle.

Yeah, i don't think i agree that it's that intuitively clear. I think you need to replace the desire for getting a fix with some other desire. 'Just abstaining' to get better, is not a great strategy i don't think.

Also my point was that every desire seems to 'philosophise' as Nietzsche puts it, and as such is trying to conqueror other desires. It works both ways it seems to me, and as such there doesn't seem to be a difference in the mechanics of it.

Higher order desire, or just another desire would seem to be the question.

Doesn't every desire want to rule the other desires, and so is also a desire about other desires?

For instance, the drug addict can go to extremes to get his fix, and is able to set aside other desires and use reason to do so... what would disqualify it from being a higher order desire according to the wiki description? And if there's nothing to disqualify that, what's the point of speaking of higher order desires?

You are rational to keep the gun in your mounth, if the gun is superglued to your face, and to only way to remove it, is to cut off your head.

Science isn't really concerned with cats on mats, but scientific claims are couched in terminology that is provisional, because we can always be wrong about facts and theories. Therefore, science isn't really about truth, but rather empirical justification. So there's an important distinction to be made between the two, given that we can be wrong, and therefore our claims can be false.

In order for that to be the case, there has to be a difference between truth and empirical justification. Otherwise, how can we be potentially wrong? Fundamentally, the problem with deflation is that assertions can be false, so what makes the distinction between being true and being false? That's what any theory of truth has to grapple with. — Marchesk

To this part i'd say my first response is still relevant. Science is doing a lot more than making mere provisional theories about simple particulars like there is a cat on the mat. In fact it would seem somewhat weird to say that 'there is a cat on the mat' is only a theory, even in science. There's the more universalising predictive element in science.

Or put in another way, there not a whole lot of different ways to empirically verify if there's a cat on the mat. To empirically verify Newton's theory of gravity however, you can play with a host of different variables... and find out that the theory doesn't hold in black holes for instance.

To distingish between true and false in ordinary language you just (empirically) verify if it's the case or not. And again if you're not entirely sure yet or there is a dispute... I mean, this is not perfect, but it seems to work most of the time anyway.

Ah ok thanks for the clarification.

My guess would be that ordinary language is only making claims about empirical verifiability. Ultimately it's about utility it seems to me, i.e. communicating meanings to eachother. I don't think ordinary people have a metaphysical theory of truth, eventhough they probably do believe, as most eveybody does, that there is an external world cat on the mat.

Maybe it doesn't entail the entire correspondence theory of truth, as a metaphysical understanding of truth.

I mean, does mere correspondence (in the sense of empirical justification) necessarily entail a metaphysical view on truth?

Isn't that what you said in your OP near the end?

And the fact that they have a correspondence relation is a problem why?

The difference between a scientific statement and a statement in ordinary language is that the latter is only making a claim about a particular. Science is trying to come up with lawlike statements that also has predictive value for future particulars.

As such, it would seem fitting that the 'burden of truth' is heavier for a scientific statement. And so I don't see why it follows that empirical justification wouldn't be enough for ordinary language statement, just because it is not enough for a scientific statement.

It's also perfectly possible that i've failed to understand your point :-).

I don't think a lot of people, me included, think having nukes arround is a good idea in itself. Problem is that there are soevereign competing nations, and that nukes happen to be the most powerfull weapon available in that competition. Again, it's a prisonners dilemma, where one nation thinks they can't afford to disarm unilateraly, because they'll loose their position.

Only way out of the prisonner's dilemma would seem to be a supranational legal framework where all parties are obliged to disarm simultaniously. Some efforts have been made to create such a thing, the league of nations, and the after WOII the United Nations... but I think that this have been failed attempts, or at least flawed. A lot of the time it has been used by nations only to serve their interests.

There were some design flaws, veto-rights, not enough resources and real power behind it to enforce decisions etc... Maybe one could do something about that, and then that could be a way forward, but in the end it's allways still people who have to do it. Still that has to be the way to deal with some of these problems.

Not sure what decartes meant, but Nietzsche took issue with the idea that the 'rational I' (or the conscious I), was the cause of our thoughts. Maybe that's not what Decartes meant, but it was a common view among philosophers i guess, given the emphasis they put on reason.

He wouldn't have a problem with thoughts necessarily being embodied, with a view that includes the whole body in the 'I'. In fact, that was part of his thesis, that the body influenced thoughts... in contrast with mind-body dualism where reason and thoughts sprang from this pure place untainted by the body.

It's insane from some kind of moral point of view, from a view that has an idea about how the world should be.

It's not something we would say about something like the weather... isn't it insane or amazing that it's raining!

Why do we treat things differently when humans are involved. Because we attribute agency to them, the ability to freely make rational and moral decisions.

I think that view is at best partly true. In fact, that view is often part of the hubris.

When you look at the history of the two countries, and begin to understand the mechanics a bit more, it's isn't quite as insane.

A 'strong man' like putin was needed to hold Russia together after the fall of the USSR. And Trump, well, he's the result of large parts of the population being ignored and not represented politically.

I'll rephrase then...

1) Should it be a goal of society to look for ways to limit the powers available to human beings?

2) Or, should we accept the group consensus which assumes we should learn as much as possible, thus giving ourselves as much power as possible?

I agree with your "thinking well" goal and am trying to facilitate that by focusing the question. In the end we are going to try to limit the knowledge and powers available to us, or we're not. Which do you prefer? — Jake

No see, it's not black or white.

We are limiting the powers available to human beings. The president of the US is the only one who can push the button for a nuclear strike. They did that precisely because after WO II they knew the A-Bomb was not something to used lightly (and didn't trust the military with it (if the president is a better guarantee is another question)).

The question is not whether powers should be limited, but rather whether the current limitations to powers are sufficient. And if not, in what ways? I think they are insufficient in a number of ways, but that would move us way beyond this thread.

No, i'm not a politician or activist, I'm a philosopher. I'm interested in good arguments and thinking well, not in changing the world.

My goal in this thread is improving upon the argument, and maybe helping you to be more effective along the way.

There are allready a lot way peoples powers are restricted btw. I don't think it would be a good idea to start thinking about ways to restrict the power of human with a kind of top down approach, right here. I think, if that's what you want to do, you need to engage in a particular existing tradition, and identify particular ways in which the restrictions are not sufficient.

Yeah sure.... but again, it's to vague to be informative. What limits is the question.

No.

The "knowledge explosion keeps rolling on" is just a metaphore, not an actual thing happening, but a vague abstraction of different processes.

The set of all knowledge is a higher abstraction containing different subsets of specific knowledge.

Contrairy to popular belief, going higher in abstraction doesn't necessarily inform you more, you lose information about the world in the proces of 'abstraction'.

That's why ideology and politics spoils philosophical sophistication, because they give very general answers to complex questions... removing the motivation to ask further.

You are basicly doing the same thing.

You restrict children from using machine guns, but not from using water pistols... point being that you need to look at individual cases about what exactly is dangerous and what is not.

Here's another perspective on the whole thing: Innovation, and therefor the quest for more knowledge is likely to decrease anyway.

Innovation is the goal, because it increases productivity and sales... because it is necessary for growth. The primary reason government are investing in innovation and research is because they believe it benifits the economy.

But there are indications that innovations are harder and harder to achieve... because, as the low hanging fruit is being plucked, more specialised knowledge is necessary and infrastructure gets more expensive. To maintain the same level of innovation, exponentially more investments are needed. Once goverments figure out their return on investment is decreasing, they very well might cut back on investing in it automatically.

So here's a strategy that might help achieving your goal. Find evidence that the rate of innovation is decreasing, and convince the public and goverment that it's not worth the money anymore. That'll get their attention a lot faster than vague predictions of doom.

You got to work with the world a little to achieve something...

Jake, the problem with the theory is, as has been said a number of times, that its to general or on a too high level of abstraction, making it only partly true, and even if true, useless.

You just keep ignoring these points. It's only partly true because, a) like i said our 'relation to knowledge' is at best only marginally driving 'the knowledge explosion' (it's more a story of economics and goverments...), and b) it's not generally the case for all knowledge.

And from a policy-point of view the idea that we should 'change our relation to knowledge', is useless, because what is one supposed to do with such a general claim? Most people who are somewhat knowledgable about the subject don't simply believe more knowledge is allways better anyway...

If you really want influence the world in some way here, you need identify individual research that is potentially dangerous, explain why etc etc... and then make concrete and realistic proposals of how to deal with that. And if you'd start that excercise, you'd probably find that a number of people are allready doing that.

Jake, I'm basicly suggesting that there is a third possibility, namely that you thesis might be right AND that there still will not be done a whole lot about it in the short term.

Maybe that's defeatist, but I do think there are good reasons for believing this. Look at what has happened with the climate change issue. We know for how long now that there is a serious problem of man-made climate change, a large majority of scientist agree with this. And still we don't manage to reach agreements for policies that sufficiently adres the issue.

Now the thesis in your opening post, while it may have it's merits, it deals only with possibities not certainties. How should one expect goverments to react to this, considering their reaction to climate change?

On a more positive note, i do think there is there's a good chance that this will get more attention and will be adressed eventually. I just don't think the time is now, given the urgency of some of the other issues that need to be dealt with.

Here a link to a philosopher that deals exclusively with existential risk, might be of interest to you and inform the discussion some more :

https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html

Ok, but if the knowledge exists and offers some ability to manipulate our environment, isn't somebody going to turn that knowledge in to a technological application? Is there really a dividing line between knowledge and technology in the real world? — Jake

I do think there is a gap, certainly at the moment of acquisition of the theoretical knowledge. Governments are constantly trying to find ways to close that gap (to justify the money spend on research), because theoretical knowledge doesn't directly translate into economic value. For that you need some technology that can be marketed.

It costs lots of money to devellop technologies, and that cost generally only increases the more advanced the technology is. The initial devellopment of the A-bomb for example has cost billions of dollars.

Of course, once that initial devellopment is done, the cost of reproducing the allready develloped technology can be reduced, but i'd think it would still be quite the barrier for the average Joe. To build an A-bomb for instance, i'd guess you need infrastructure that almost nobody can finance on his own.

Would atomic research have been worth it if A-bombs destroy the world? Obviously no, but that is hindsight, with perfect information. At the moment of the atomic research we didn't have that information.

Will not preventing some research work? Don't we have to ask this too?

Let's recall the Peter Principle, which suggests that people will tend to be promoted up the chain until they finally reach a job they can't do. Isn't civilization in about that position? If we can't or won't limit knowledge, doesn't that mean that we will keep receiving more and more power until we finally get a power that we can't manage?

Hasn't that already happened?

If I walked around with a loaded gun in my mouth all day everyday would you say that I am successfully managing my firearm just because it hasn't gone off yet? Aren't nuclear weapons a loaded gun in the mouth of modern civilization?

I propose that my concerns are not futuristic speculation, but a pretty accurate description of the current reality. — Jake

These are certainly reasonable questions, and I agree that there are some serious issues, but I don't think we have all that much controle over the direction we are heading. The only way is forward it seems to me. Technologies will possibly bring new risks, but possibly also new solutions and ways to manage those risks.

And I mean, I certainly don't pretend to have all the answers here, so I agree that more attention for this would be a good thing.

I also enjoyed the discussion, thank you sir :-).

If you want to prevent certain research... — ChatteringMonkey
Do you want to prevent certain research? A question to one and all... — Jake

Generally no, I don't think so, mostly for practical reasons. But I would accept exceptions if there are really good arguments to do so.

The principal reason is that I don't think the knowledge itself is inherently dangerous, it's the technological applications that can be. And in practice there is usually a serious gap between knowledge being acquired and technology being develloped. It's difficult to say that a certain knowledge will eventually be used to devellop (dangerous) technologies. Given that level of uncertainty, it seems difficult to justify the wide restrictions to knowledge that would be needed. Note that i'm only talking about theoretical knowledge here, I have less problems with restictions to devellop technologies with obvious enormous risks.

But maybe the biggest problem I have with trying to prevent research is that I don't think it will work. There is no world government. Even if only one country acquires the knowledge, the cat is allready out of the bag, and the likelyhood of all countries reaching an agreements to prevent certain research seems very very small. It's a kind of prisoners dillema, the best thing maybe would be to all refrain from a certain research (nobody loses), but since you can't count on that it's better to also do the research (otherwise you loose twice, by not having the benefit of the research, and the dangers of the research are there anyway).

Ok, but in democracies at least, we are the state, it's our money and our votes which drive the system. Each of us individually has little impact personally, but as a group we decide these questions. If any major changes were to be deployed by governments they would require buy in from the public. Even in dictatorships, the government's room for maneuver is still limited to some degree by what they can get the population to accept. — Jake

I don't really agree with this, at least in part. In theory democracy is supposed to work this way, but in practice that doesn't seem to be the way it plays out. Generally, i would say, people don't really have well-thought out ideas about most issues, including what our policies about research should be. I mean, it's a bit of a complex topic to do justice to here in this thread, but I think it's more the other way arround, politicians and policymakers who decide and then convince the public to adopt their views.

Yes, agreed, but... Can you cite cases where the science community as a whole has agreed to not learn something? There may be some, we could talk about that. — Jake

In my country there is a policy that prevents funding research with direct military applications. When a more right wing government wanted to abolish this policy, the science community collectively (or at least a large part) opposed that proposal. But I don't think it's very likely they will ever agree to voluntarily not learn something (unless maybe if it's something obviously evil). There is allways a struggle to get funds in the science community, and they will take what they can get pretty much.

If you want to prevent certain research, I think you got to implement restrictions at the level of funding. And one of the more general restrictions typically is that applications to fund a certain research project also has to pass an ethical board.

I'll list my objections to the argument in a more organised manner :

1. I don't think the analogy with food works. With food our relationship to it is relevant, because when we eat to much it affects our health. With knowledge however, our relationship to it doesn't really matter, because we, as personal actors, don't produce the knowledge that gives rise to the kind of risks we are talking about. It's only state funded research that does that. So what matters is the way in which research policies are determined, and i would argue that our relationship to knowledge only marginally influences that at best.

2. I don't think you have justified the generalisation from one or a few examples, to all of knowledge. I don't disagree with the examples you gave, but as of yet I don't see reasons to conclude that this is necessary the case for all knowledge or even most knowledge. This argument needs to be made, unless you are settling for the less general claim that only some knowledge holds dangers that we should take into account.

3. If you are settling for the less general claim, then I don't think this is that controversial. Most funding agencies and research organisations allready have advisory and ethical boards that are supposed to look into these issues. So the idea that science also entails risks is allready incorporated into the current proces of funding and doing research. What still might be a problem though, is that ultimately these considerations maybe are not given enough weight by those deciding the research policies, because they deem other things more important, i.e. power and economics. But then the problem is not one of an oudated view on knowledge, but rather a problem of valuation (i.e.. they value power and the economy so much that they are willing to ignore the risks).

It is the vast scale of the powers emerging from the knowledge explosion that makes the historic [progress => mistakes => more progress] process that we are used to obsolete. — Jake

I agree with the objections raised by other posters. The quoted part is a generalisation that you don't really provide an argument for. That some knowledge enables powerfull technologies which hold risks that we may not be able to manage, doesn't mean that all or even most do. Therefor I also don't see how it follows that we would need to change our overall attitude to knowledge.

It would seem to be enough that we try to identify which knowledge has the possibilities for this kind of 'powers', and change our attitude to those. Of course you could then argue that it might not be possible to identify them in advance etc... but still this case has to be made i think for your overal argument to work. Or maybe you'd just say that changing our attitude to some knowlegde is allready changing our overall simplistic attitude... ok fine, i think i would agree with that.

I do think however, that there is an even more fundamental problem here than the mere realisation that more knowlegde is not allways better. Research is funded by countries, and countries are vying for controle and economic gain. I think at least some of the people involved know there are risks, but choose to ignore them because they can't count on other countries not going ahead with it.

Take for instance AI. China, the USA, and also the EU, although lagging behind, all invest enormous amounts of money in AI-research. They know there are potential risks, but they also know that the ones leading the race will have an enormous economic advantage over the rest. The point being here, that it's not their attitude towards knowledge that is driving their research policies.

↪ArguingWAristotleTiff

Well, more of less yes... this is an important point in regards to reasoning about ethics. Just because someone does something terrible, it doesn't mean other people should be let of the hook for terrible behaviour.

If someone is behaving poorly, pointing out the behaviour other shouldn't be used to excuse it. Someone else's wrong doesn't make another's right. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Thrasymachus smiles.

What I find amazing is the divide in America - for so many it seems so apparent that we have an incredible narcissist, with only a mild acquaintance with the truth, and a complete absence of character as President of the US. And to so many others he is so much the opposite. How can so many of us look at the same reality and have such radically different views of it. — Rank Amateur

My guess is that a lot of people hate politicians, because they all lie to the people. And Trump is a poor politician, so that maybe makes him better then the rest in their eyes?

Or put in another way, Trump is a whimsical, petty liar, to save his ass, to conquer the room, to boost his ego etc... while other more cunning politicans are in it for the long haul, they'll make sure they are not caught on little lies.

I remember a while back some press were counting all the factual lies Trump had made during a particular speech, as a kind of proof to show how evil he really was. But do these really matter all that much. Isn't the apparent stand-up politican who gets all the facts right and says all the right things, but then makes shady deals with whomever is pulling the strings behind the scenes, a lot worse?

Trump may very well be a narcissist only out for himself, but at least it is only himself. He isn't looking to preserve a whole ruling class, he's very much the odd man out.

That's what I was wondering. I do think longterm it tends to backfire. There's only so many apocalyptic scenarios one can hear before most people just end up shrugging and going on with their lives. Or they react to feeling mislead by supporting the other side, even if there is reason to care about the issue. — Marchesk

Yeah, i agree.

I will not go into the enviromental problems themselves, i do think there are serious problems, but say something about the strategy to do something about it, as that's what your title of the OP 'enviromental alarmism' is pointing to i think.

To get goverments to act, you got to convince politicians in power. To convince politicians in democraties you got to convince the people, because in the end politicans care about staying in power, and therefor want to be seen supporting issues that will get them votes.

Alarmism, or scare-politics, is a common way to influence people to care about an issue. That is a strategy that politicans use themselves, as do activitists. The problem is that it can also backfire, the boy cried wolf et al... And to some extend that is what has happened with enviromental issues.

Prophesies of doom have been to apocalyptical and to frequent. And to much scientist have become activists, which compromises their objectivity, at least in perception, and discredits their work as a scientist. As a result people have become divided on the issue, into camps of believers and non-believers. The more polarised a debate becomes, the more heated it becomes and the more it tends to entrenchment of the camps.

This has probably to some extend prevented pragmatic policies from being implemented. For the believers it was probably never enough, and the non-believers don't want to give in to the lies and all-or-nothing rethoric of the believers...

Anyway, i think what is needed to make some real progress arround this issue, is some serentity.

Fundamentally, what is wrong in my opinion is that there is identification with static things, when it should be clear that the world and human beings aren't static, but changing. So it seems better not to evaluate ourselves based on outcomes, and instead focus on the proces.

To put it in sports or poker terms, it's an example of results-oriented thinking. That is the kind of thinking that evaluates actions based on the results only. Because our actions alone don't fully determine the result, it is fallacious reasoning to take the result as the only criterium in the evaluation. You could've done everyting right, and still lose, or win even if you made mistakes. The correct method of evaluation would only take into account the information you had at the moment of the desicion to act one way or the other.

Logic’s justification can be grounded in its ability to find truths. Basically, if logic gets to truths then that’s a justification of its principles and ergo itself. — TheMadFool

Logic does not strictly speaking 'find truth', it's truth-preserving. It's about making good arguments that preserve the truth value of the premises. A good argument is valid. A sound argument is a valid argument which has premises that are true. To determine the truth of the premises you do not use logic itself, you go and verify them with data, or in the case of analytic truth they are true by definition.

So the justification is not that it finds truth, but that it explicates the further implication of truths, and shows you what are good and bad ways to go about that.

Edit: And again, logic is not about the world, it's about language, about the abstractions we make about the world. For instance there no X that equals X in the world, nothing is entirely equal.

Yeah but, but,... you are just assuming the golden rule there, when it's the thing that is being questioned.

I don't value being rejected by a women, nobody values being rejected... are women therefor morally obliged to allways give in to my advances? Wait a minute... why am i going through all this trouble to seduce women if i could've just appealed to an objective moral rule all along?

Of course a thief doesn't want his stuff stolen, and yet he steals from other people. That is precisly the point, that people don't allways follow the golden rule. In fact it seems to be pretty much the case that most people naturally hold other people to different standards than they do themselves. They may not want certain things done to themselves, but it doesn't follow that they believe that this is how everybody, including themselves, should act allways... unless you just assume the golden rule.

And that is where morality comes in, because people do recognise that it's maybe better for them to forfeit some of their own freedom to act in exchange for the benefit of other people restricting their freedom to act. Morality is an agreement to collectively restict certain actions, because without it people won't necessarily refrain from them naturally.

Logic is about language only, and not about the world itself. — ChatteringMonkey
If this were true, then deductive arguments would have no application in empirical science.

However, deductive arguments do apply to empirical science.

Therefore this is not true. — Wayfarer

Your argument is valid, but not sound because the first premise is not true :-).

Empirical sciences work with language too, so i don't see how it follows that deductive arguments wouldn't apply to it if logic were only about language.

People don't change their core-values, these are determined by biology. And ultimately this is the seed where the whole tree of their beliefsystem has grown from, to use a Nietzschian metaphor.

Those beliefs serve a function in a particular life of a particular human being.

So chances of changing an entire worldview are pretty slim. What can be done i suppose is shining another light on an individual branch of the tree, so it grows in a different direction.