Thanks for trying to rephrase, but that sounds to my ear like it still means the same thing. You seem to use "overreaction" to mean "reaction worse than what it's reacting to", whereas I use it to mean "reaction that is unjustified", where as previously elaborated "unjustified" doesn't mean "worse".

That stuff you quoted is not perfectly okay. It's far less bad than, as you say, the incalculable suffering caused by systematic racism that is now symbolized by the George Floyd murder. But just being less bad than that doesn't make it perfectly okay. There's a lot of stuff less bad than that that's also not okay.

Let's look at it this way: the Holocaust was maybe the worst thing that's ever happened. Would a hypothetical systemic discrimination against German people up to and including state actors murdering innocent Germans in cold blood (basically the situation we're talking about here, but directed at Germans instead of African Americans) have been "not an overreaction", or "justified", or "okay", because it's not as bad as the Holocaust that it's in response to? (Or conversely, if African Americans had done a genocide, would that make what's happening to them now okay, because it's not as bad?)

You evaluate that this is worse (an unjustified reaction) — praxis

You keep repeating this "unjustified = worse" things despite repeated, IMO very clear, disambiguation of them. In fact the very next sentence after the bit you quoted began:

"None of that is as bad as the brutal murder of a human being,"

...but, as that sentenced ended, "not as bad" isn't the same thing as "perfectly okay" either. And "justified", or "just", implies it's okay, or even good.

There are reactions and there is justice. Yes, they should not get confused. — praxis

Justice is a topic that applies to the reactions as much as anything else. Reactions can be just or unjust. You mentioned justification. Justice and justification are closely related. Doing something unjustified is unjust, even if it's in reaction to something also (or even much more) unjust.

Maybe it would simplify things if you explain what you mean by the riots being an overreaction. It seems to be an evaluation of some kind.

I don't think the riots as a whole are an overreaction. Angry people taking to the streets loudly and visibly complaining about the murder of George Floyd and the systemic problems that underlie it is a perfectly justified reaction. Some property violence, like overturning and burning police cars, I could also see as a justified reaction. Destruction of unrelated storefronts, including ones owned by people who are struggling to make ends meet themselves, or especially (in that video posted earlier) some homeless guy's mattress, is not justified. None of that is as bad as the brutal murder of a human being, but "not as bad" isn't the same thing as "perfectly okay" either.

And I wouldn't even be talking about this if it weren't for people saying or implying that it is perfectly okay, because it's not as bad as what it's in response to.

This means that you believe the rioting is unjustified or is worse than the original crime and the systematic racism that it stands for. — praxis

The point of the post you're responding to is to argue that "unjustified" doesn't equal "worse that the original crime". (To be clear, I don't think the rioting is worse than the original crime. But I think some specific acts of the rioters are unjustified).

You can respond to harm with lesser harm and still be unjustified. It's not the amount of harm dispensed by whom that constitutes justice.

You are a mod, feel free to split this conversation about conversations about tragedies into a different thread if you want to keep it out of this one. Like I said, I'm only talking about this topic (the meta-topic of where the conversation is focusing) because you are.

Yes there is definitely Nothing more to say about the structural violence that led to yet another black man being murdered in broad daylight and the links between capital, policing, poverty, crime, and a hundred other social factors — StreetlightX

I can only speak for myself, but I personally don't have anything more to say about that than has already been said well by lots of other people here, like you. You and others have already said all I would have to say, so what more can I say about it?

Also, claiming an "overreaction" means that you evaluate the riots to be worse than the original crime and everything it stands for. — praxis

I don't think that's true at all. That kind of thinking implies "an eye for eye" sense of justice: that any reaction is justified up to the level of harm of the original offense, and only when you do something worse in response is it an overreaction. Justice isn't arithmetic like that. The right response to a crime should not be something exactly equally wrong as the crime but "in the opposite direction" or something; it should be constructive, something to remedy the harm done and prevent future harm, not just return harm upon its original perpetrator.

If you can share a word that ends with -sophy, that would be translated in a way akin to "x of knowledge" rather than "knowledge of x", I will seriously reconsider my position. — Tzeentch

Misosophy and phobosophy, though both are probably coined by analogy with philosophy.

Possibly sciosophy, which seems to mean "shadow knowledge", not "knowledge of shadows".

But look also at the other side of the equation, other words beginning with "philo-" that mean "love of..." something, not something "...of love":

Philodemic, people-loving.

Philography, love of writing.

Philogyny, love of women.

Philomuse, a lover of the muses.

Philomusical, music-loving.

Philolexian, discourse-loving.

Philomathy, love of learning.

Philopolemic, war-loving.

Philoprogenitive, offspring-loving.

Philoxeny, love of strangers.

Philozoic, animal-loving.

I'm a socialist/anarchist, as you've hopefully noted, and, just speaking for myself, the only reason I've commented here at all, and only on the topic of the riots, is because I have nothing new to add about the systemic injustice of police or the murder of George Floyd. That's an obviously horrible thing and I haven't seen anyone saying otherwise in a place or way that I would have something useful to say in response. (Admittedly I haven't been reading this thread very closely... way too much too fast to keep up). If anyone was, and especially if nobody else was refuting them, then I would say something. As it is though, I have nothing useful to say. But then I see people like you, who obviously have the right sentiments at heart, saying things that I have little technical disagreements about, so that's a thing there's reason for me to comment on.

I've long had a suspicion that a pattern like this is behind a lot of arguments over outrageous topics (in the literal sense, of topics that provoke outrage):

Say someone stomps a kitten's skull on video, and that provokes a bunch of (righteous) outrage, and lots of people are shouting "kitten stomping is wrong!" That's a pretty obvious truth that I think almost everybody is going to agree with, and when everyone else is already shouting it, a lot of people won't feel any need to say anything more about it themselves.

But then someone outraged about the kitten stomping does something a little over the line to express that outrage. Someone who had nothing useful to add about kitten stomping being wrong (because it obviously is, what more is there to say) might speak up about that reaction being over the line, not to defend kitten-stompers, but just as a matter of principle.

While that outrage is completely justified, and some people overreacting is understandable, it's also good that some people with more emotional distance from the situation keep level heads and watch that things don't get too out of hand. But then some people spin that level-headedness as not being outraged enough about the kitten-stomping, and consequently as defending the kitten stompers.

That in turn provokes other people to defend the level-headed people and their right to not be outraged, and so the conversation ends up circling around that topic, instead of the original kitten-stomping.

All because there isn't really anything to add to "kitten stomping is bad", not because anybody disagrees with that. If people did disagree, then there would be more discussion about that, and not about overreactions to it. The only reason the conversation keeps circling around the reactions to the original offense is because everybody agrees that the original offense was wrong, but some people contend that the reactions are all perfectly justified, and conversation centers around wherever there is disagreement.

TL;DR: You defending the overreactions to the original crime is why everyone is arguing with you about that, and not talking about the original crime. Everyone agrees the original crime was wrong, so there's nothing more to say about that.

I don’t want to position myself on the side of people who care more about the riots than the systemic injustices the riots are about, but since this is a philosophy forum I do think it’s appropriate to be pedantic and technically correct in all the little details. Poverty can be violence, yes, but what is poverty but lack of property? So destroying property can create poverty. I’m not going to cry for the sake of specifically Target or other huge conglomerates who can afford the losses, but attacking property in general does hurt whoever’s property that is, in precisely the way that poverty hurts. If the victim is big enough to take it, shrug... we don’t need to worry about an adult who got punched by a toddler, he can take it, but that doesn’t make punching in general harmless.

Just so! Word order in Greek, it being an inflected language, can be arbitrary. — tim wood

This is the important point.

Consider also “philanthropy”, which is “love of man”, not “man(liness?) of love”.

Or “philately”, which is “love of stamps”*, not “stamps of love”.

* “atelos” is not literally the Greek word for “stamp” but is apparently the closest idiomatic translation.

Download link for Firefox is broken now, got a newer one?

I've always like that quote — path

Do you perchance know where it is from / the exact quote?

I want to open by saying that my biggest concern in this story in Minneapolis is the murderous police, not the riots, but I don’t have anything novel or interesting to add to the conversation about the police, while I have a curiosity about the riots.

Imagining myself in the place of someone in a situation like this, imagining my local police had brutally murdered someone here, I find no motive in myself to go target some random business in town. Targeting the police somehow, if there’s any way I can, absolutely. Just randomly punching some nearby wall out of anger, quite probably. I just don’t understand what’s going on in the minds of people who attack local businesses etc that have nothing to do with the events they’re angry about. Are they also attacking local homes? I can’t see any motivation that I can morally sympathize with, only possibilities like opportunism that normally wouldn’t even cross my mind.

No, but apparently Levinas thinks it should mean that. (Funny enough, I just discovered him tonight when trying to search for anything on the pejorative meaning of "totalizing").

As philosophy becomes safer and more dry, perhaps it also becomes the dry legitimization of an ordinary sanity that doesn't really need it. — path

I do think that that is the direction that philosophy needs to head, getting back on the topic of progress.

There some old aphorism I heard once in my first philosophy class along the lines of "Before walking the path to enlightenment, tables are tables and tea is tea. Along the path to enlightenment, tables are not tables and tea is not tea. Upon reaching enlightenment, tables are again tables, and tea is again tea." (If anyone can help me find the original source of that, I'd appreciate it).

I see progress in philosophy as consisting of, basically, tallying up all the broad kinds of confusion that people could find themselves getting trapped in, elucidating why those approaches are wrong, and then once people are securely shielded from that kind of insanity, letting them just go about life in a way much like they would have if they had never been tempted into that kind of confusion. Or as I write in the intro to my philosophy book, in which I try to make such progress:

The general worldview I am going to lay out is one that seems to be a naively uncontroversial, common-sense kind of view, i.e. the kind of view that I expect people who have given no thought at all to philosophical questions to find trivial and obvious. Nevertheless I expect most readers, of most points of view, to largely disagree with the consequent details of it, until I explain why they are entailed by that common-sense view. Many various other philosophical schools of thought deviate from that common-sense view in different ways, and their adherents think that they have surpassed that naive common sense and attained a deeper understanding. In these essays I aim to shore up and refine that common-sense view into a more rigorous form that can better withstand the temptation of such deviation, and to show the common error underlying all of those different deviations from this common-sense view. — The Codex Quaerentis

I'm pretty anti-fond of Nietzsche, especially of his style, so I'm not surprised to see that this anti-totalizing personality that I find off-putting in a similar way finds affinity with him.

I'm unclear what you take the aim of philosophy to be, that your account of its progress is as you've said. And if you see attempts to do different things as unrecognizable as philosophy.

I, for instance, as outlined in the OP, see philosophy as something like meta-science: the aim of philosophy is to account of how best to go about answering our various questions, investigating things like what our questions even mean, what criteria we use to judge the merits of a proposed answer, what methods we use to apply those criteria, what faculties we need to enact those methods, who is to exercise those faculties, and why any of it matters at all.

There's no kind of comforting narrative or anything about God in any of that (though I address the topics of comforting narratives about God and such under the banner of that last question about why anything matters, mostly to reject them). The only thing "totalizing" about any of it is just a big picture of what abstract principles have what implications on all of those different kinds of meta-questions.

Do you (or others like you here) see that kind of project as not philosophical? Or not totalizing in the sense you mean?

Perfection literally means completeness. Something is perfect when there is nothing missing from it. That of course depends on some concept of what a complete thing of that kind is like, so you can compare the assembled puzzle to the picture on the box and tell if anything is missing — if it is imperfect.

I don’t understand this seemingly pejorative use of the term “totalizing”. In all fields, finding common principles that underlie many diverse phenomena is an admirable goal. Are QM or GR too “totalizing” of physics because they explain too many diverse phenomena previously accounted for by separate, unrelated theories? How is not relating things to each other good?

More on topic, is that not exactly what constitutes progress, at least for most fields? Explaining more and more with less and less?

Definitely including political philosophy. That is part of the area I see progress still remaining to be made, because progress there has historically been so slow. Ontology and things on that half of the field, on the other hand, have come very very far over the millennia, and have very little (and only very technical) progress remaining to be made, so very little progress can still be made there anymore.

Science.

We eat things to get those chemicals. In principles our brains and bodies could survive just fine on synthesized versions of all the appropriate chemicals — if we could get them like that.

So you think that while a philosopher can make progress on themselves, philosophy as a field is no better today than it was thousands of years ago? Not even better at leading people to clarity of thought in such a way?

Thank you for the opportunity.

On a slight tangent from this discussion, I've started sort of a sequel to this thread, on the subject of progress in philosophy, which I think is very closely related to the relationship between philosophy and science:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8432/does-philosophy-make-progress-if-so-how

It’s pretty common:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_mundi

Also, I’m not sure if Syamsu believes this, but if I were building a system like this, I would draw an analogy between the relationship between God and the material world, and between the human soul and body: God is the world-soul, and as human bodies are parts of the material world, human souls are part of God’s soul. And as God’s choices determine the laws of the material world, human souls’ choices determine the actions of their bodies.

Off the topic still going on here, I just wanted to say that I find Syamsu’s weird philosophical system kind of anthropologically interesting, and I’m kind of sad to see him go before anyone could tease out exactly what it is.

From what I’ve gleaned of seeing him here and elsewhere (I first saw him editing the wikipedia article on free will, where I learned he is also kind of a notorious creationist on talk.origins), it seems like he divides the world up into two kinds of things:

- creators, including God and human souls,
- and their creations, which are everything else.

The creators are also “subjects” in the sense that they have a first person, subjective perspective; unlike their creations, which are mere objects.

Things to do with those creators or subjects are subjective, and exist entirely in the minds that those subjects/creators are; while things to do with their creations, objects, are objective, and exist in the material world.

Subjective things in the minds of creators are “opinions”, and are freely chosen; while objective things in the created material world are “facts”, and are determined (ultimately by the choices, or opinions, of the creators, including the laws that God chose to put in place).

That’s about all I’ve gleaned. I pretty much disagree with the whole picture of it but it’s kind of a fascinating study in someone else’s system of philosophy.

I don't know why you say "baseless" -- it was speculation on what the world is made of based on at least some observation, experience, deduction. And however we classify it, it turned out to be very close to what we currently believe about matter. — Xtrix

“Baseless” is maybe a bit too harsh, but the point is that Democritus wasn’t presenting something that we today would call a scientific theory, with proposed observable consequences that could (dis)prove it. Nor was he engaging in a priori reasoning about abstract concepts. He was just saying “hey I think the world is like this”. That’s fine for his time, I don’t knock the guy, it’s just neither good science nor good philosophy by today standards.

True, but this is completely irrelevant. — Xtrix

No, it’s completely relevant. Democritus was doing stuff under the name of “philosophy” that was both primitive science and primitive philosophy because neither was well defined yet at that time. Speculating about atoms was neither good science nor good philosophy, by today’s standards and best practices, because best practices for neither existed yet at the time. In general, that kind of baseless speculation is seen as fitting of neither science nor philosophy today.

Well that's debatable too. Is logic a kind of philosophy? Many have tried to reduce mathematics, at least arithmetic, to logic. — Xtrix

Logic is a tool of both mathematics and philosophy. That bit of overlap doesn’t mean the two are the same though. Pythagoras’ reasoning about triangles is not philosophy in the sense we now use the word, even though it formed part of his philosophy as they used the word back then.

Likewise Newton’s Principia is not a work of philosophy as we now use the word, even though it has “Natural Philosophy” in the title, because what was once called “natural philosophy” is now considered a different field outside of philosophy in today’s sense of the word: something we call “science” instead.

As it was foretold, so too it has come to pass.

And the latter is what philosophers supposedly do? — Xtrix

No. The entire reason I started posting here again was to day no to that. I don’t know how much clearer I can be.

Speculating about an indivisible unit which constitutes the world was what Democritus was doing — Xtrix

Democritus lived in a time before philosophy and science were clearly differentiated. Pythagoras did mathematics under the name of “philosophy” too. That doesn’t mean that, today, math is just a kind of philosophy.

I wanted to say something similar. People go against science all the time... when they have some kind of tribalistic, religious or politics agenda that makes them want to. The chemical composition of water isn’t one of those issues, but if it were you bet that somebody would be railing against the libuhral evilutionists and their globalist dihydrogen monoxide agenda.

An “ism” isn’t the same thing as a religion. That’s the point.

If "speculative philosophy" is making claims about the world that can be proven wrong, it's natural philosophy. — Xtrix

In other words, science, which no longer falls under the umbrella of philosophy.

Science engages in speculations all the time -- in hypothesizing, in explanatory theories, etc. Sometimes it takes years to test these ideas. Is this all "speculative philosophy" until an experiment is conducted? — Xtrix

No, that’s just science, presuming they aim for the things they speculate about to be testable and eventually tested, and aren’t just armchair positing things to be so without respect for whether observation agrees or not.

on this hand, fact, on the other, soaring speculation — Xtrix

I think you missed my entire point, which is that philosophy done properly isn’t at all about speculating on the same subject matters that science investigates. Such speculation is either philosophy overstepping its bounds, or badly done attempts at science. That kind of baseless speculation is neither proper philosophy nor proper science. Science investigates the same subject matter in a better way. Philosophy investigates a different subject matter entirely: higher-order question about conducting such investigations.

That assumption is however required in atheism. I've been doing this for 20 years, and have yet to meet an atheist who arrived at their perspective by any other method. — Nuke

The method of thinking about the question, possibly looking for evidence, and then coming to the best conclusion they can? What other method would you think better?

You simply want to confine philosophy to speculations — Xtrix

I’m only partially following this conversation so I can’t speak for David, but I agree with him that there is a clear line between science and philosophy, and I don’t agree at all that philosophy is just about speculation. Speculative philosophy happens when philosophy tries to cross over into the domain of science, without “doing as the scientists do” when there. If your philosophy is making claims of the kind that science could possibly prove wrong, your philosophy is overstepping its bounds.

The relationship between philosophy and science is not one of two different approaches to the same questions. Rather, philosophy is (in part) about the questions that underlie science’s approach to its questions. Philosophy is (in part) meta-science: the study of how to do the things science is trying to do and why to do them that way instead of some other way.

The general principle I'm operating under here is: it's not okay to achieve good ends via bad means. Both the ends and the means must be good. Bad ends can happen either because bad means were used, or because there was some prior bad that has not been ameliorated despite all the means being good.

This is like how a sound argument cannot merely be a valid argument, and cannot merely have true conclusions, but it must be valid — every step of the argument must be a justified inference from previous ones — and it must have a true conclusion, which requires also that it begin from true premises. If a valid argument leads to a false conclusion, that tells you that the premises of the argument must have been false, because by definition valid inferences from true premises must lead to true conclusions; that's what makes them valid. If the premises were true and the inferences in the argument still lead to a false conclusion, that tells you that the inferences were not valid. But likewise, if an invalid argument happens to have a true conclusion, that's no credit to the argument; the conclusion is true, sure, but the argument is still a bad one, invalid.

I hold that a similar relationship holds between means and ends: means are like inferences, the steps you take to reach an end, which is like a conclusion. Just means must be "good-preserving" in the same way that valid inferences are truth-preserving: just means exercised out of good prior circumstances definitionally must lead to good consequences; just means must introduce no badness, or as Hippocrates wrote in his famous physicians' oath, they must "first, do no harm".

If something bad happens as a consequence of some means, then that tells you either that something about those means were unjust, or that there was something already bad in the prior circumstances that those means simply have not alleviated (which failure to alleviate does not make them therefore unjust). But likewise, if something good happens as a consequence of unjust means, that's no credit to those means; the consequences are good, sure, but the means are still bad ones, unjust.

Moral action requires using just means to achieve good ends, and if either of those is neglected, morality has been failed; bad consequences of genuinely just actions means some preexisting badness has still yet to be addressed (or else is a sign that the actions were not genuinely just), and good consequences of unjust actions do not thereby justify those actions.

The trolley problem tries to force you into a circumstance where you must choose between unjust means or bad ends. Preventing those bad ends does not justify injustice. You must act justly. That bad things will still happen is something that those who contrives this situation have forced upon you. The bad things aren't a consequence of your actions. You only have to do the best that you can do. If bad things still happen despite you doing no wrong, that's not your fault; but if you do wrong to try to prevent bad things, that is.

Killing something isnt impermissibly bad. That's a convenient framing to service your conclusions. — DingoJones

So you think not saving someone is impermissible (you have to save them if you can), but killing someone is permissible (you can kill them if you have to)? That’s pretty backwards. Also contradictory: if you can save someone by not killing them, and you must save them if you can, it would follow that you must not kill them, yet you say also that you may kill.

There is no different way to achieve it, thats implicit in the trolley problem, its designed to exclude creative, problem solving ways around the moral dilemma posed. — DingoJones

Sure, in which case it’s a contrived morally intractable situation. That doesn’t mean you get to murder someone.

I can’t eat 1 chip cuz I cant eat the whole bag. — DingoJones

No, you’re still misconstruing it. It’s: you can’t be expected to stuff yourself sick on as many chips as you can possibly eat, so it’s okay to leave some chips uneaten.

If for some reason eating chips was a morally good thing to do, that principle would make it a supererogatory good: you should, but you are permitted to not. If you had to do something you otherwise aren’t permitted to do, like stealing, in order to eat more chips, that would pit eating chips, a morally good but only supererogatory thing, against not stealing, a morally obligatory thing. So you have to not steal, even if it means you can’t eat as many chips, even though eating chips is (we’re stipulating for this example) a good thing that you should do.

Look at it in symbolic logic. Deontic modal logic uses the same symbols as alethic model logic:

P => Q
P => R
Q
[]~R
.: []~P (from 2 and 4 modus tollens)

Consequentialism commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent when it argues:

P => Q
P => R
Q
[]~R
.: P (from 1 and 3 affirming the consequent)

Confirmationism in philosophy of science commits this exact same error regarding epistemic modalities. Yet another thing that my Structure of Philosophy draws attention to:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8303/the-structure-of-philosophy

Your framing is “shifting the track to the one is killing one” and its just as easy to frame it as “shifting the track to the one is saving 5”. Semantics. — DingoJones

Shifting the track does both of those things. One is supererogatorily good: saving peope. The other is impermissibly bad: killing someone. That makes an act that does both of those things impermissibly bad.

Like if a hypothesis implies some things which are contingently true, but also some things that are impossible. That makes that hypothesis impossible. The true things are still true, but you need a different explanation for them. And the good thing (saving people) is still good, but you need a different means to achieve it.

Also, you use the impossibility of preventing all bad things from happening as a justification to not prevent something bad where its entirely possible to do so. Thats fallacious reasoning. — DingoJones

No, I use the unreasonableness of saying that anyone who does anything short of absolutely everything they can do to help everyone they can is morally wrong (that that is impermissible) to conclude that failing to do good things is permissible, and therefore that failing to do a good thing because it would require an impermissible thing is permissible.