Okay, this is the last time I respond to you if you do not engage properly in a discussion, which includes reading my entire post and at least attempting to understand it.

Did you bother to read the rest? Didn't I mention negative utilitarianism by Popper before (somewhere)?

Popper thinks he solved the issues of utilitarianism by turning it negative, namely solely focussing it on suffering -- I highly dispute that already in the rest of my post. You stumble upon the exact same issues that Kant mentioned regarding 'not using people as merely means to an end'.

Take the doctor's dilemma scenario with organ harvesting.

Go open a book about ethics for the love of god...

I wouldn't say I was a committed utilitarian, in the sense of being convinced that every decision I ever make should be made on utilitarian principles. I always leave the door open for other influences, be they deontological, virtue-based or something else. — andrewk

Yeah, you sound really consistent... :-}

What's wrong with being depressed? — Question

Antithetical to human flourishing. It is human languish.

I separate terminal depression with temporal depression, with the criteria regarding its cause. The former caused by no particular event and is therefore deeply maladaptive, the latter is caused by a particular event. The former remains forever, one has to live with it or take medicine, while the latter can fade away by non-medicinal habitual adjustments.

Now, I heard an evolutionary psychological explanation for the latter case. Namely that the state of depression is a temporal state that occurs after a person experiences a traumatic event, like losing a child. The mental state helps the individual to abolish romantic emotional biases and to rationally evaluate problems.

Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.

This analytical style of thought, of course, can be very productive. Each component is not as difficult, so the problem becomes more tractable. Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.

[1]


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[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/depressions-evolutionary/

Discussing philosophy

in the mornings. — anonymous66

How do you still have friends mate?

While we are doing test anyway.

How many five-year-olds children can you take on?

http://www.nerdtests.com/mq/uttake.php?id=109440

My results were 28 children.

Yeah, but like I said, he started the ball rolling for me.

You might as well not vote at all.

How did you arrive at your social conservatism? — Agustino

This is a good question. I am not sure how I exactly ended up here. I think the same way I became an atheist (from Christian theism); a Christian convinced me of atheism and a commie (Hitchens) convinced me of social conservatism. They got the ball rolling and got me here.

The Christian told me not the take my beliefs for granted and actually critically think about them -- the road to atheism started at that point. Hitchens provided some strong insights on the issue of abortion and why he considers himself pro-life, I started to think about it and quickly realised how disgustingly vulgar and poor the leftist/progressive arguments are.

My life has been quite ironic so far. I wouldn't be surprised if one day a redneck convinces me abstract art deserves appreciation.

I almost went to art school. I ended up choosing Engineering and Business school. Better career pro$pect$ anyway. :-$

I agree with the remarks here regarding that first test -- the questions are indeed loaded and a bit off.

So I did another one :D



And I get this knob:


http://uk.isidewith.com/

http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html


edit: But no matter what political test I do, I always end up with the Green Party at the bottom.

Exercise. Go fight some gravity and increase your heart rate.

In the Tragic Vision, moreover, human nature has not changed. Traditions such as religion, the family, social customs, sexual mores, and political institutions are a distillation of time-tested techniques that let us work around the shortcomings of human nature. They are as applicable to humans today as they were when they developed, even if no one today can explain their rationale.

-- Pinker (2006)

Why are there so few atheist social conservatives? — Agustino

Well, I am one of the few, but I have got to say that I have become more sympathetic towards religion (especially Christianity).

Group think and peer pressure. — Thorongil

edit: Christopher Hitchens is the only commie I respect.

A dot in purple.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-recovery/

I believe that humans are social beings with (often conflicting) interests and that we can all be better off if we 'get along' so-to-say. I believe that morality plays a role in the social dynamic (i.e. civilisation) and that its workings are extremely complicated.

Tradition plays a key role here.

I exampled tradition as to why I reject that sort of thinking I was referring to. I then explained why I rejected the moral (and political) reasoning from principles and maxims which is based on pure reason or rationalism, and not experience (i.e. tradition). Conservatives typically value tradition, because it is accumulated wisdom via many practices and experiences throughout many generations that we might not fully understand and/or are capable of to articulate. Combining this with the idea of human nature that has been evolved according to the theory of evolution and you end up how I approach my politics and ethics.

As Pinker said in his book The Blank Slate (2002):

“Traditions such as religion, the family, social customs, sexual mores, and political institutions are a distillation of time-tested techniques that let us work around the shortcomings of human nature. They are as applicable to humans today as they were when they developed, even if no one today can explain their rationale. However imperfect society may be, we should measure it against the cruelty and deprivation of the actual past, not the harmony and affluence of an imagined future. We are fortunate enough to live in a society that more or less works, and our first priority should be not to screw it up, because human nature always leaves us teetering on the brink of barbarism. And since no one is smart enough to predict the behaviour of a single human being, let alone millions of them interacting in a society, we should distrust any formula for changing society from the top down, because it is likely to have unintended consequences that are worse than the problems it was designed to fix”

I subscribe to Virtue Ethics with a personal tweak inspired by Zimbardo.

As a conservative, I do not believe in a universal principle or maxim that we ought to follow. Morality is extremely complex. I believe it is a practice based on tradition.

SEP:

"Conservatives reject revolutionary Jacobinism’s espousal of political rationalism, which attempts to reconstruct society from abstract principles or general blueprint, without reference to tradition. Conservatives view society not as a machine but as a highly complex organism, and hold therefore that “without the aid of experience, reason cannot prescribe political ideals that can be realised in practice” (Beiser 1992: 283).

(...)

Conservatism therefore rests on what may be termed particularist scepticism concerning abstract rational principles. Conservatives regard the radical’s rationalism as “metaphysical” in ignoring particular social, economic and historical conditions:

I cannot [praise or blame] human actions…on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction; (Burke, WS III: 58)

circumstances give every political principle its colour. (Cobban 1960: 75)"


edit: by the way, this is also how I dropped right-wing libertarianism. However much I tend to agree with libertarians, fundamentally, I find it simply untenable.

Let me elaborate a bit why I have some issues with utilitarianism or most forms of consequentialism.

Ask you yourself the following moral question: "when is it morally justified to rape an innocent child?"

A consequentialist would answer: 'well that depends on the consequences.' A utilitarian could state that it depends whether it maximises the sum of aggregate happiness. This means that group rape could make raping morally more justifiable, and the larger the group, the better it would be. Sadism would be morally justified to indulge.

Putting "suffering" at the centre of your normative moral view is troubling.

Let's say Bob murders Sarah. Is it morally justified? Well, that depends. How much did she suffer with the murder? Some murders can be done with pretty much no suffering at all. Let's say that when Sarah was alive, she was constantly suffering from an terminal illness. If your moral goal is to minimise suffering -- and there is no cure, nor medicine -- one ought to murder her to end the suffering.

Now, you can solve these issues -- as I have tried myself -- but only by stretching the definition of "suffering" to your own convenience, pretty much to the point of ad hoc justifications and inconsistencies.

Now, this is just the top of the iceberg of issues I have with these lines of reasoning. Having read more about neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology, has made me simply drop it.

Anyway, this is just a brief reply to give you an idea and to get the ball rolling.

I would love to see how one of you can persuade me back.

I don't think it is intuitively accepted amongst the populace, as to accept it implies ascribing rights to a fertilised ovum, and hence being opposed to abortion at any term. According to that interesting survey posted by Barry (here), in all Western countries except the USA, the vast majority of people have no problem with early-term abortion and, even in the God-fearing USA, just over half have no problem with it. — andrewk

I do not see how this is relevant. But anyway, most people are mostly pro-life, going by what you cited.

As to what alternative I have to offer, I just go with Jeremy Bentham's 'Can they suffer?'. This is completely consistent with my intuitions and just feels absolutely right. I understand that for some others, things like Freedom are more important, but for me 'Can they suffer' is the most important moral principle. — andrewk

"suffering" is extremely ambiguous, and I have yet to meet a consistent utilitarian, as I continually notices equivocations. I was a negative utilitarian for a period of time, but I had to give it up as I could not defend it without contradicting myself -- or coming up with ad hoc justifications.

This criticism is fair, but ultimately quite weak -- or better stated, all alternatives are more counter-intuitive, vague, ambiguous ("rubbery term"). Moral agency/responsibility seems to me to be the least controversial position. Chomsky even called it a "truism." I won't go that far, but I would claim it is intuitively accepted among the populous.

But if you have got something better to offer, I'd love to hear it.

Provide a link and - if it's not the entire post - a paragraph number, and I'd be happy to do so. — andrewk

http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/40176

Why do you have to be such a rude twat? — Ovaloid

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Al right, let's take a step back for a moment. It seems that I have hit a nerve with some animal lovers and that has led to some irrational, shoddy and lazy responses. With the latest replies, it seems that we are going off-track and heading towards a messy mud fight.

OP posits the following questions: “How can we justify zoos? (…) Is there any ethical argument in defense of locking wild animals up for entertainment and monetary gain?” This is a reasonable question and I responded: “Easy. Animals have no rights and can therefore be used as property/utility by moral agents (i.e. humans).”

Now, there are two ways to approach this issue. The first one is a legal one, which is extremely easily to do, because we already have zoos, so apparently it is legally permissible and justified to do so. In jurisprudence, animals do not have rights like humans do. This is an objective fact in a descriptive way. I can only anticipate on a response filled with red herrings and equivocations… 3…2…1... and here we go…

But what OP is looking for is the normative side of the moral debate. So the other approach is a moral philosophical justification, a normative one. Should animals have rights like human rights? I do not think so. I provided one, namely one related to moral agency (or sometimes referred as moral responsibility).

I am basically making a connection between rights and (moral) responsibilities/agencies. If Chomsky and I every agree, it is by sheer accident.

Only Thorongil has given a simple but solid response, namely: “To which one can reply, as I would, that they do.” So whatever normative claims I make, one can simply reject it in disagreement. There is not much I can say beyond “Ok.” I do not claim that my normative claim is superior or less arbitrary. I just simply answer OP’s questions.

If you think rights is given on the basis of suffering, or dick size, fine by all means make your case, as I can make mine. Most people eat meat, have pets as property or have utilised animals in some way (directly or indirectly). If you think we should not do that, then it is you that has a controversial moral position – I am the least controversial so far.

I already addressed this. I hope you respond to that.

No, it's not circular reasoning. — darthbarracuda

Okay this is the last time you play this trick before I call it quits. Yes, it is circular reasoning the way you phrased/reasoned it initially. Now you just rephrased it and pretend I did not notice it.

And it is exactly this line of reasoning that I reject. You don't have to have moral agency in order to qualify for rights. — darthbarracuda

That is fine. Like I said our moral philosophies differ. The keyword here is "suffering." I care more about (individual) rights than suffering.

You can't abuse something that doesn't have the right to not be abused — darthbarracuda

And they have that right because they can be abused, and they can be abused because they have that right, otherwise it would not be abuse, so they must have rights and their rights is not to be abused.

Like a dog chasing its own tail. I am a bit tired at this moment, is this circular reasoning or just an tautology...

I disagree. The capacity to suffer qualifies something as morally important. Things have rights in virtue of the fact that they can feel, or are related to things that can feel. — darthbarracuda

That is fine. Our moral philosophies differ.

Not being a moral agent doesn't mean one isn't morally important. We can't expect infants to act rationally or morally and yet we treat them with respect. And yet many non-human animals have a greater capacity of rationality than human infants. — darthbarracuda

I take humans as a species. What I am not saying is that you lose that moral right as soon as you are, let's say unconscious. If a man rapes an unconscious woman, it is still morally wrong (imo) because she did not lose her moral agency by temporarily being cognitively incapable of acting. An infant is a human in development, so a human being nonetheless.

As long as you are a human being, you remain to have moral agency and therefore human rights. That is because humans have a special property of moral responsibility -- call them moral agents or moral actors if you'd like.

To put it differently, they have the right features to take part in the moral and social dynamic.

If there were a species which is better capable of moral agency than us, would you consider them to have more rights than you? — Ovaloid

Yes.

e.g. God or gods (or angels).

I am not religious but let's say I am wrong and theism is right, it gives you an idea.

A species is a race on a larger scale though.

Lol. Species have a very specific biological and taxonomical definition, which is rooted in reproduction. People from different races can reproduce, i.e. can make cute babies. There is a point where two (sexual) organisms can no longer sexually reproduce with each other, which have by that very definition become different species.

Why do you think animals can't act morally? — Ovaloid

Lack of moral responsibility, moral awareness, moral reasoning and (moral) language. Or at the very least -- as I am very familiar with De Waal's work -- they are monumentally inferior regarding those things compared to humans. So in other words, lack of moral agency. Have you read my link? I didn't pull those words out of my arse.

Yeah, no, this is completely wrong. Animals have rights, recognized across the (developed) world. Animal abuse is a thing because animals have rights. — darthbarracuda

Come now... such a rash and lazy reasoning. The fact that you can abuse animals does not entail that animals have rights. You can also abuse buildings, plants (e.g. trees) and cars -- you can even get legally punished by doing so, but none of this entail "rights" like human rights.

Note that this is an otiose point. This specific point is regarding its controversy. It adds nothing to the crux of this discussion, but I found it interesting to mention nonetheless. I took some classes in law. The fact that animals have no rights was uncontroversially true (legally). The moral case is easily made as well.

Non-human animals might not be able to vote but they can certain suffer. — darthbarracuda

Suffering is not the basis of my moral philosophy. Besides, laws are more about rights than suffering anyway.

edit: note that you conveniently ignored my main point. :-}

"We might have to discuss some metaethics at a deeper level, but if we agree that humans are capable of acting morally and animals not without equivocating, then we can take it from there. If you disagree, then we should look where exactly we differ and how humans are morally different from animals."

What properties do humans have that give them those rights? — Ovaloid

Capable of being moral agents.

Would you be ok with being used as property/utility by beings with more of said properties? — Ovaloid

I have moral agency.

To which one can reply, as I would, that they do. — Thorongil

Ok

The exact same reasoning was used to justify racial discrimination, segregation, and extermination. — darthbarracuda

Moral agency is not limited within a race nor gender.

We might have to discuss some metaethics at a deeper level, but if we agree that humans are capable of acting morally and animals not without equivocating, then we can take it from there. If you disagree, then we should look where exactly we differ and how humans are morally different from animals.

Your claims are controversial. Morally and legally speaking, animals do not have rights the way humans do. This is pretty much a consensus everywhere in the world.

Easy. Animals have no rights and can therefore be used as property/utility by moral agents (i.e. humans).

Hanover can answer this one, he is a lazy green lizard.

My video gaming habit abruptly stopped when I entered college at the age of 17. I didn't have much of a choice, it just naturally happened as my workload increased.

Also, not having a desktop computer, nor gaming platforms (like a Playstation) helps. I have got a Macbook Pro laptop, which is not suitable for gaming, nor do I wish to do anything fancy with it to make it suitable -- this one is for work and I am terrified I cock something up and lose my valuable productive stuff.

Feminism is a moral and political movement. Analogous to socialists seeking to abolish private property/ownership, feminists seek to abolish the patriarchy. One hundred years ago, feminism was a respectable movement, take the Suffrages for example. They were concerned with the women’s right to vote and the women’s right to work, basically liberating women from the male/masculine oppression and/or dependency.

All of that has been achieved. Now, feminists have other priorities, such as manspreading and dismissing rape because that would be considered islamophobia, xenophobia or racism. Respect different cultures mmkay you bigot!?

Most people do not consider themselves “feminists” but do believe in equal rights if you’d ask them.

I am one of the seven percent. I am a conservative feminist.

If more than one wife is optimal to human flourishing, then so be it.

Al right, I am sick of this secular nihilism.

Here is some purpose to life for everybody to follow, an objective biological telos regarding human flourishing, namely to procreate with a stable long term traditional family.

With exception to Question and Darthbarracuda, all your music tastes stink.

Indeed, the whole idea of judging especially when matters of customs and morals are involved seems to be objectionable to some. — Ciceronianus the White

Quite ironic.

So we have two different perspectives at work here: we need meaning, and we need this meaning to make sense and reassure us. If we have no meaning, then there's nothing to reassure us. And if we have meaning but it's a gross and horrifying meaning, this also doesn't reassure us. So it all comes down to finding some way of reassuring ourselves of our place in the world. — darthbarracuda

The interesting question is: "why do we need the reassurance of our place in the world?" We may have to enter the field of psychology here.

I haven't heard anyone mentioning the relevance of death. The fact that we are mortal beings plays a role in the search of meaning. Some speak about how they would like to be remembered or what legacy they would like to leave behind after their death.

Now, I am personally quite apathetic to death. The fact that I am mortal and that some day I will die bother me as much as the fact that a film ends. It does not ruin the experience of watching the film, to the contrary, imagine if the film never ended, that would bother me much more. Another appropriate analogy is a party.

I hear some religious people claim that the absence of afterlife makes life on earth as mortal beings meaningless. Quite a strange thought that I can not really follow.

So I have read all the comments so far, but my question is not really answered.

In the context of a meaning of life, people have in mind an overarching goal or significance or purpose. It basically assumes that there's an intelligent, goal-oriented "reason that we're here." — Terrapin Station

Is this source of meaning objective (i.e. mind independent)? I think not, by the way you describe it, because purpose entails an intelligence with intentions.

I think that subjective meaning is intelligible, but objective meaning is not.

I agree with Camus' Absurdism, but I think that it is not only humanly impossible to find inherent meaning of life, but also logically (and metaphysically) impossible (i.e. incoherent) -- at the very best it is nonsensical/unintelligible.

I am curious to the psychology behind this. Some people mentioned depression, which I consider a mental disorder/illness and therefore adds no philosophical defence to the debate. It does give some interesting insights to what people might mean with those statements, but I think we ought to be careful not to conflate it with happiness.

Spirituality is closely related to the notion of meaning of life, which I addressed in this post. Women are more spiritual, but I would not conclude from that that women's lives are therefore more meaningful than men's lives.

The keywords here seems to be: "a sense of purpose."

I am temped to apply the Error Theorist's approach and consider the sense of purpose an error but nevertheless a useful fiction.

I am starting the wonder what the value is of formal education.

I sometimes play Minecraft to help me concentrating to listen to hours-long lectures, audio books or podcasts. I got this idea from a dialogue between the characters Sheldon and Leonard in the television series named The Big Bang Theory.

----------

I looked up the transcript, here is that bit:

Sheldon: When Albert Einstein came up with special relativity, he was working at the patent office.

Leonard: So, you’re going to go work at the patent office?

Sheldon: Don’t be absurd. That’s in Washington. You know I could never live in a city whose streets are laid out in a wheel-and-spoke pattern. No. I’m going to find a similarly menial job where my basal ganglia are occupied with a routine task, freeing my prefrontal cortex to work quietly in the background on my problem.


----------

I find that it is easier to concentrate while doing some simple routine-tasks, but I do not claim anything scientific here -- it may very well be rubbish.

Attention is limited and if the task becomes 'too complex' my intentions may backfire. The task has to be psychologically bearable to keep doing it for a few hours without feeling the urge to quit. So there is an optimum where the task is simple enough to maximise concentration but not too dull to feel as if I am a machine.

Claiming God's existence and solipsism is such a strange combination.

Casting that aside, any discussion regarding God's existence without coherently justifying and clarifying "God" is not worth having.

The Modal ontological argument is still very controversial with an unsound premise regarding the possibility of a maximal great being/sentient. Is it possible for a maximal great being/sentient to exist at all? Doesn't it conflate logical possibility with metaphysical possibility? If somehow, you pass the ignosticism test of defining God, why does it make God's existence metaphysically unobjectionable.

I believe that even Plantinga admitted that it isn't proof of God's existence -- though his epistemological basis is quirky, something I still don't quite grasp.