What's the meaning of your life? — Cynical Eye

Do you mean the purpose of my life?

Please define "meaning".

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO I'm confused as to where you think my OP was meant to be somehow exclusionary of other approaches to things. To affirm the importance of something is not to devalue the importance any anything else... — StreetlightX

I can see how asking "What is the meaning of life?" can open a lot of doors to understanding and wisdom for some people. Even if it contains a categorical mistake. Even if nobody is initially sensitive to that categorical mistake and everybody travels down a long road with a dead end.

I can see philosophy being done productively in the absence of some particular "sensitivity".

What is "nonsense" by everybody else's standard may be "sense" to one person.

Even if we could get everybody on the same page semantically, how do we know that any two concepts are commensurable or incommensurable? Just because the concept in your brain that corresponds with a word is incommensurable with the concept in your brain that corresponds with another word does not necessarily mean that the respective concepts in my brain that correspond with those respective words are incommensurable.

It is not about saying what is or is not important. It is about recognizing that not everybody necessarily functions the same way intellectually, that probably neither philosophy nor science can account for all of that variation, and that if there is anything we need to be sensitive to it is the latter.

I can see how you might take what I wrote that way, as if the goal were just to avoid mistakes and avoid failure. I don't think I really brought out how much can be learned from finding yourself in a blind alley.

But I don't want to be stuck in one. ("But the answer must be here.") I'm talking about recognizing when you were wrong and getting out to see some more of the world instead of staying in your alley because it's the right alley. — Srap Tasmaner

Do you think that we have done that collectively?

Empirical science has all the answers! The answer must be in physics! Don't waste your time with philosophy, history, art, sociology or theology!

I believe it is what Ken Wilber calls "flatland".

What about in policy? Everybody on every point of the political spectrum seems to make insurance the focal point of the debate over health care in the U.S. The answer must be in distributing insurance the right way! Things like how our culture thrives on behavior that compromises health (for example, the physical and emotional toll of, say, the stress of our extremely competitive, individualistic way of life) are never seen, it seems.

I can see how we can get stuck. I wouldn't focus too much on sensitivity to certain errors/fallacies, though. I would encourage the cultivation of a holistic, multi-disciplinary, multi-tradition way of functioning.

I don't know where you're drawing this vocabulary of 'subjective' and 'objective' from. It certainly isn't in my post, and nothing about my post warrants any appeal to orthodoxy or intellectual tradition for the validation of a concept. Indeed part of what's at stake in it is the celebration or the affirmation of the creativity inherent in the need to forge conceptual links between seemingly disparate concepts - with the caveat that one 'does the work', as it were, that one does not take for granted that meanings are simply given. I'm still not convinced that you've understood the point of the OP, and I think you still think it says something that it doesn't. You seem to be riding your moralist high-horse a bit too stridently to actually engage with the OP on it's own terms, it seems. — StreetlightX

But the OP is prescribing a certain approach to intellectual functioning and saying that the lack of that approach is unacceptable.

I am saying that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to anything intellectual.

If you are simply saying that people need to be more aware of the possibility of category mistakes, that's fine.

But saying that one approach is the bulk of the work in (insert name of tradition/discipline) or one particular thing such as a "sensitivity" is an indispensable or most important tool in doing any intellectual work is severely limiting in an intellectual world full of diverse communication styles, thinking styles, learning styles, intellectual goals, intellectual needs, etc.

You are saying that we need to be sensitive to category mistakes. I am saying that we need to be sensitive to the diversity of intellectual lives/experiences. Maybe I am committing a category mistake, but I think that I really am trying to engage the spirit of your words and show that a category mistake, like any mistake/fallacy/error, does not automatically deserve don't-touch-with-a-ten-foot-pole treatment. I am trying to do the same thing you are trying to do: be a good shepherd of our personal and collective intellectual experiences.

I am inclined to think that the question "Does God exist?" is nonsense.

But what may be nonsense to me may be the key that opens many doors of understanding and wisdom for others.

Frankly, I think that obsessing with "avoiding" anything or being "sensitive" to anything is intellectually self-defeating, even if we are talking about category mistakes.

The only benefit of an "avoid" or "sensitive" approach that I can think of is efficiency. Well, I suppose if your work is being funded by a grant from a particular source and you are working under deadlines efficiency might be an issue.

But if we are talking about the personal intellectual lives of all individuals efficiency is probably not a goal of many people and any demand for efficiency may take the joy out of the whole process. Even if one later determines that he/she took a "wrong turn" the journey can often still be fascinating, enjoyable, edifying, and rich in wisdom.

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO For a moment there I thought you might have actually been responding to the OP, only to realize that the only way you could have reached this conclusion:

Arguments like yours above make it sound like logic, grammar, etc. are the work, not tools for doing the work. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
...is to literally not have read a word of the OP (charitably assuming you are not simply grossly incompetant at reading). Nice off-topic rant though. — StreetlightX

Before previously responding I read this:

But there is nothing self-evident about the meaningfullness of such - or any - question whatsoever, and moreover, the attempt to work out the question is itself the very practice of philosophy. If there's any kind of 'moral' to my thread it's simply: be sceptical about sense; the fact that certain questions look grammatically correct ('what is the meaning of life?') shouldn't deceive us into thinking that there is any sense whatsoever to these kinds of questions (this is Wittgenstein's lesson). But sense is not something that can be specified a priori; only ever in it's working-through — StreetlightX

I then responded with this: What may subjectively be "nonsense" to a lot of people or objectively be "nonsense" according to the present prevalent orthodoxy in an intellectual tradition or academic discipline may be the "sense" that at least one person needs to meet his/her intellectual needs. The fact that a lot of the thinking--thinking that may well be the final piece to a puzzle that somebody has been working on his/her whole life--that a lot of people utilize is often dismissed as "nonsense", "philosophically useless", etc. betrays an anti-intellectualism that one does not expect to find in sources that supposedly value intellectual life, I said.

In other words:

"It is good that you are working on this question/problem" = the spirit that supposedly motivates philosophy.

"Your question contains a categorical error and is nonsense" = an anti-intellectual attitude.

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO

About 78% of human societies are polygynous, in which some men marry more than one wife.Only 22% of societies are strictly monogamous. Almost no modern societies are polyandrous, in which one woman marries several husbands (although such societies have existed historically in the Canary Islands, the Himalayas, the Canadian Arctic, and possibly other places). Only 3% of mammal species in general are monogamous, although at least 15% of primate species are.
In historical terms, it is monogamy that is in need of explanation, not polygamy.[4]
—Janet Bennion, Women of Principle (1998)
Wikipedia — Cavacava

I'm not defending or criticizing the practice of or idealization of monogamy. I'm trying to be objective here.

I believe if we are going to be objective then we can't take monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, celibacy, chastity, etc. out of their cultural contexts and say that they do or do not represent what is "natural". We don't say that 90% of historic and prehistoric cultures practiced some kind of religion and, therefore, religion is "natural".

It could be that monogamy was the only arrangement that worked in feudal and later industrial Europe. It could be that the extended family was a burden to industrial and post-industrial America and therefore the nuclear family emerged as the ideal basic family unit. It could be that in contemporary Western societies the family is irrelevant, more people are able to support their own selves--the basic economic household unit is now households of one person, therefore more people are living alone for long periods, and relationships are now simply for sex. Therefore, it could be that vilifying monogamy and its supporters misses the point. The point we should be getting could be that marriage is becoming increasingly obsolete, never mind if it is between one man and one woman, one man and twenty women, two men, two women, etc.

Why are people saying that cultural practices are not "natural" anyway? It's culture, not biology. Whether we are talking about monogamy, polygamy, agriculture, manners/etiquette, digital communication, theocracy, democracy, muskets, chemical weapons, HVAC, fire pits, etc., etc., isn't it already understood that it is not "natural"?

It sounds like we have ideologues cherry picking out-of-context ethnographic facts that support their agenda.

More and more, I'm convinced that perhaps the most important skill in philosophy involves the diagnosis of category errors: errors in which there is a confusion of kinds. For example, one might ask, 'what color are ideas?'. Assuming no clever play on words or metaphorical flourish, this is, prima facie, a nonsense question. It takes one 'kind' of thing, ideas, and asks of it a question to which another kind of thing, colors, do not apply. Because of this confusion in kind, one cannot answer this question either correctly or wrongly. The question itself is confused in it's very formulation. Any answers to this question would be 'not even wrong'.

The example above is fairly straightforward. Things become confusing however - and philosophically precarious - when category errors are less obvious because of certain illusions of grammar. One immediate example of this lies in the ever popular 'What is the meaning of life?' question. It is not at all clear, in this case, that 'life' is the kind of thing to which 'meaning' would be applicable at all. Which (to be absolutely clear) is not to say that 'there is no meaning to life', but that it is grammatically inappropriate to speak of life as having, or even not having, a meaning at all. One may take issue with this particular example, and insist that one can, in fact, make sense of the question. Doing so, though, would involve specifying what is meant both by 'life' and by 'meaning', and demonstrating how the two can be articulated together as being of commensurate kinds.

I want to suggest that this kind of work, of making sense of questions, is perhaps the majority of the philosopher's work. To even ask - and make sense of - a question like 'what is the meaning of life?' is already to commit to an entire web of presuppositions regarding the kind of thing both life and meaning are, and dilating upon these presuppositions is just to do philosophy. Gilles Deleuze once wrote that 'every problem always has the solution it deserves, in terms of the way in which it is stated... and of the means and terms at our disposal for stating it". Which is to say that every philosophical 'problem' is co-eval with it's 'solution', that the two invariably come as a pair, and these is no way of posing a (true) problem that does not already contain, in the very terms in which it is posed, it's own solution.

One final way of trying to understand the above is that above all, 'philosophical work' is the work of 'sense-making'; 'making' here understood in the artisanal sense of forging and assembling. That certain questions have any sense at all, simply mustn't be taken for granted. Questions must 'prove themselves' worthy of sense through elaboration. As a means to do this, category errors, and our sensitivity to them, mark our ability to recognize the limits of sense-making efforts, the points at which our sense-making constructions fail, and are, as it were, the first and perhaps most important tool in the philosopher's toolkit. This is especially important insofar as philosophy is largely a matter of concept-mongering, and it's through the delicate probing for category errors that we can ensure the conceptual consistency of not merely our 'answers', but more importantly, our questions too (as with the 'meaning of life' question).

--

Incidentally, Wittgenstein's PI might be taken to be nothing other than red-light warning against the dangers of category errors, but I just mention this just as food for thought. — StreetlightX

People should function intellectually in whatever way meets their needs.

Reason, logic, grammar, concepts, etc. are tools to be employed to do the work one wants and/or needs done.

Arguments like yours above make it sound like logic, grammar, etc. are the work, not tools for doing the work.

Probably more people would be able to experience satisfying intellectual lives if we would stop splitting hairs over what does and does not qualify as science, philosophy, etc.; what is the right way to do them; whether or not they are what people say they are; etc. and instead encouraged every person to employ whatever tools he/she needs to in whatever manner he/she needs do the work he/she needs/wants to do (finding the meaning of life; understanding the nature of things; knowing what is right/wrong; etc.).

The more that I participate in forums like The Philosophy Forum the more that I am beginning to think that philosophy is an anti-intellectual enterprise/tradition. Maybe it is the humanities' own anti-intellectualism that explains their present decline.

A popular argument seems to go like this: monogamy is not natural, therefore it is bad. In other words, monogamy is an instrument used to oppress and control people by denying them what is natural: a lot of different mates.

Seems like a case of the naturalistic fallacy, maybe.

— Question

David Smail covered all of this already.

Start with his internet publication, "Power, Responsibility and Freedom".

Taking exception with a handful of aspects of modern society isn't really a strong enough argument to convince everyone that "progress" is not progress. — VagabondSpectre

I am not even convinced that progress is real.

Sure, improvements are made.

But improvements are not proof of the existence of a linear, cumulative, inevitable process called "progress".

The intellectual alternative to progress is that history is cyclical.

Nobody pretends that agriculture didn't lead to some disease or that European diseases didn't wipe out huge swaths of indigenous peoples; we know what happened and we've learned from it. If you mean to ignore all the beneficial technological and medicinal applications of modern science and focus only on it's failures and the risks, that's fine, but you're going to wind up painting a far from realistic picture of the world. (instead of the purely optimistic western liberal which you denounce, you become the exact opposite: a purely pessimistic Luddite/troglodyte). — VagabondSpectre

I believe that the realistic scholars show that human biology and culture evolve under changing conditions and that all ways of life, cultures, and civilizations are eventually destroyed. There's nothing teleological or linear about it, in other words. It is evolutionary and cyclical, in other words.

If Ronald Wright is correct in A Short History of Progress, it would be absurd to say that agriculture was a progression from the hunter-gatherer / forager way of life. Agriculture and its cultural offspring, civilization, were lucky breakthroughs made in desperation after hunting and gathering left humans on the verge of extinction with depleted food supplies, Wright shows.

Rather than being some liberating, ever-accelerating trajectory that destiny has us on, progress has always been a trap, Wright shows.

Earlier thinkers believed that history is cyclical. This whole idea of progress is a very recent creation of the Enlightenment, as far as I can tell. To dismiss anybody who is skeptical of progress as unrealistic is absurd, if not the height of intellectual arrogance and condescension.

Let me explain what I mean:

Imagine that a small island tribe one-day discovers a new kind of fishing technique (nets) that allows them to catch more fish than they can possibly eat. As a result, let's imagine that the population of this island tribe increased by a factor of 20 in only a few generations. Once a tribe of only 300 is now a tribe of 6000, and eventually the local fish population starts to decline due to their increased fishing habits, which then poses a problem to the population that is entirely depends on that food source.

At this point, starvation could cause the island population to decline until they strike a balance with how much fish they catch and how quickly the fish population can replenish itself. That would surely be a bad thing (the starvation), but would it mean that the invention of the net ("progress") was a bad thing from the get go? Many would argue that the many extra living souls on the island are thankful for the net because it was required to bring about their very existence.

Instead of starvation occurring, it could be that the now 6000 strong island is motivated and able to build bigger and better boats which can take them further out to sea for better fishing ("more progress", or as you would put it "progress to deal with the problems caused by previous progress"). It's possible that this tribe then discovers new islands and subsequently populates them over time. Under the right conditions, these tribes could become distinct enough that violent conflict emerges between them in the form of tribal warfare. This war would likely lead to individuals traveling further afield (finding new regions to populate where territory is not contested) and cause many socio-economic developments that spur constant cultural and technological innovation and "progress" where growing powers seek to secure their long-term existence. — VagabondSpectre

That just shows that people adapt and evolve under changing conditions.

It is not proof of a linear, cumulative process.

New problems will always arise because we're not perfect or all-knowing, and so change can be chaotic. But to suggest that "progress as a whole is a bad thing" because of this is merely to assert "I would rather deal with the current and known problems forever rather than through changing states of affairs try to improve our conditions and risk more/greater/different problems.".

You're basically asking mankind not to invent things or to find and exploit more resources. Your attitude would have the island tribe kept at low and vulnerable population levels, forever living out the same primitive lifestyle. — VagabondSpectre

Straw man.

I do not know of any individual or group who has ever said that we should not try to make improvements.

What the critics of the idea of progress are saying is that we are deluding ourselves when we think that history is a linear, cumulative process.

We could already be past the point of diminishing marginal returns and all of modern Western civilization could quickly collapse and be destroyed (I once read Niall Ferguson saying that civilizations do not gradually decline, the abruptly collapse) along with our idea of progress.

Who knows what will emerge if all of this collapses. Whatever it is, I doubt that anybody will be calling it "progress".

P.S: I have this sneaking suspicion that everything you say is satirical, including your name. It's a bit of an oxymoron; "wisdom" is supposed to be well tested, but the reactionary attitude that is contemporary post-modernism is a green babe compared to the values of the enlightenment which it seems to reject. Are you serious about your dedication to "post-modernism"? If so, where did you learn about your post-modernist ideas? — VagabondSpectre

None of it is satirical.

I have always been skeptical of the sunny, rosy picture of modern Western civilization that was force-fed to me from the moment of my birth through high school.

There are individuals such as Wendell Berry and Ken Wilber who give reality checks to the progress narrative. But the one reality check on the intellectual landscape that seems to have undeniable intellectual and political teeth is the work of postmodern theorists. Therefore, I have gradually gravitated to and gained a lot of knowledge and wisdom from the latter.

The fact that anybody would say that the Enlightenment, a small drop in the pre-historical and historical bucket, has by itself produced tested wisdom is evidence of its delusional effect. The jury has not even heard all of the evidence for and against Enlightenment products such as the nation-state, yet people are already saying that the Enlightenment is time-tested wisdom?!

Could you possibly say more about Wilber in relation to the current ecological situation and related topics — 0 thru 9

"Rather, an all-quadrant, all-level approach to ecology allows us to situate the physiosphere, the biosphere, the noosphere, and the theosphere in their appropriate relationships in the Kosmos at large, and thus we can emphasize the crucial importance of the biosphere without having to reduce everything to the biosphere..." -- Ken Wilber.

Likewise the wheel in the form of carts and chariots... — Bitter Crank

That strikes me as extreme ethnocentrism.

As I am sure plenty of thinkers have pointed out, in some environments there were no animals suitable for domestication and therefore there was no need to invent the wheel.

But that seems to be what all of the proponents of "progress" do: take their own culture's development (the modernist West), project it onto all peoples and places in all times, and say that the results show a linear process of "progress" with "advanced" people like them being the agents and everybody else being hindrances.

The fact that "advances" are often just adaptations to problems created by previous "advances" (the "advance" known as agriculture resulted in infectious disease; the "advance" known as microbiology and antibiotics was coping with the consequences of that earlier "advance") never seems to be on the radars of the progress preachers.

The dumb luck and tragic consequences of "progress" always seems to be left out of the narrative of "progress". Apparently we are supposed to believe that the "discovery" of the New World was something deliberately engineered by geniuses, not the culmination of greed, narrow politics, and an unexpected good break on the sea. Apparently we are supposed to pretend that the infectious diseases that that "discovery" later brought to the New World killing a large percentage of the indigenous population there is something minor or something that never happened. It's always nothing but a sunny, rosy, self-congratulatory picture from the progress preachers ("Our genius European ancestors from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment developed advanced navigation techniques and that led to trade, prosperity and the high standard of living and quality of life that we enjoy today! We are living in the most glorious period ever to be alive!").

But, re: your last paragraph: can we discover "universal laws" (scientific terminology), or is the process something different? Wouldn't universal laws preclude free will? — Noble Dust

We can accurately predict the behavior of sub-atomic particles, the atmosphere, trees, etc., right?
Maybe if determinism is true such predicting is itself an illusion.

But, no matter if it is an illusion or not, we do not have that same ability to make accurate predictions with respect to the behavior of humans. If we did we would know in advance exactly when, where and by who every bank robbery will be done. If we did we would know in advance who will win every U.S. presidential election.

If we did have the ability to predict and construct accurate models / laws of human behavior like we do with the weather, ecosystems, solar systems, etc. then that would be the end of anybody being able to rationally believe that we have free will, it seems.

However, we may never have those universal laws and predictive power in the realm of human behavior because we consider it unethical to treat humans like lab rats.

Apparently "Free will is an illusion" means "The belief that you are anything more than a collection of matter and energy behaving according to universal physical laws is a false belief".

But as far as I know there are no known universal physical laws that predict human behavior.

Isn't that the heart of the matter? Isn't the big implication of determinism that we could have the ability to accurately predict every thought and action of every human person, and that people could therefore be controlled/manipulated like matter and energy are controlled/manipulated to design and make buildings, cars, communications networks, etc.?

It seems to me that until we discover the universal laws that govern human behavior--if they exist--and are therefore able to accurately predict all human behavior like we are able to accurately predict the weather, we can't say if the aforementioned belief is false or not.

But here you're just basing your conception of free will on how it's colloquially presented. There's no philosophical grounds (or there might be, but there are definitely opposing other grounds) to assume this colloquial assumption. — Noble Dust

I don't have a conception of free will.

I am reporting, as requested, what I think people who say "Free will is an illusion" have in mind.

Notice that I used words like "apparently".

For all I know, free will could be some metaphysical novelty like triangular circles.

What if free will wasn't a choice between alternatives, but an ability to create reality? — Noble Dust

That would seem to go against every Enlightenment/modernist assumption about there being objective reality that we observe, inductively or deductively model with theories, etc.

It would seem to play right into the hands of postmodern theorists who say that reality/truth is culturally constructed.

Choosing "between alternatives", after all, involves set choices; if the choices are set, is it really free will? If free will is truly free, then nothing can be extant with regards to freedom. — Noble Dust

I thought that free will simply implies having freedom within the parameters one is working within. We do not hold people accountable for things that they could not have done--we hold them accountable for the choices they made out of everything they could have done.

Even an omnipotent being can't create a rock so heavy that he/she can't lift it, right?

the question of how to define freedom — Noble Dust

The absence of constraints.

What kind of thing is free will? — StreetlightX

It seems to always be presented as one part of a binary: free will vs. determinism. And determinism seems to always be presented as saying, "You thought that you had a choice between chocolate or vanilla bean, but you did not have a choice".

Therefore, free will is apparently the freedom to choose between alternatives.

Until the very conceptual cogency of 'free will' is clarified (and it is not at all obvious that it can be), falsifiability remains, at best, a derivitive or secondary issue. — StreetlightX

Yet, we have people stating unequivocally that "Free will is an illusion".

If somebody says "Vanilla bean cupcakes are an illusion" then it is clear how that statement can be falsified: show everybody a vanilla bean cupcake.

How can the statement "Free will is an illusion" be falsified?

Is it falsifiable or not?

I doubt that Sam Harris is the only person saying it. Alex Rosenberg, among others, has probably said it.

Let's not make this a thread about Sam Harris. Let's address the thread topic, please.

I believe that Ken Wilber offers a lot of helpful insights in his work that if heeded might inform some of the change we need to avoid further ecological disaster.

Alas, Ken Wilber is not accepted by the mainstream intellectual or spiritual communities and is, as far as I can tell, considered to be a quack.

Does anyone ever experience moments of the "uncanny absurd"? — schopenhauer1

On the contrary, I have moments when I forget about everything that has been thrown on my shoulders.

I do not think that any words can do justice to the calm, quiet and peace of those moments.

In those moments I certainly do not see some theoretical absurdity that the routines of life soon make me forget.

On the contrary, in those moments I experience profound spiritual integrity; freedom; joy and beauty.

Everything else, including philosophers and their concept of "the absurd", quickly drowns out that spiritual integrity; freedom; joy and beauty, unfortunately.

The question in one paragraph... Is the destruction we are inflicting on the world, and on our selves because humanity is flawed, weak, bumbling? Or is it because our culture believes and acts as though every inch of the planet belongs to humans, who are the ultimate end of creation. Will this be the end of creation, or what other choice do we have? Since 7.5 billion of us cannot go back to being hunter-gathers, now what? Could things like extinct cultures, early humans, the behavior of animals in nature, and the book of Genesis offer clues to understanding the "story" we are enacting, if looked at in a new way? And finally, can we escape this story before it kills us? — 0 thru 9

In A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright shows how people in earlier civilizations such as Easter Island and the Maya saw red flags, tried to stave off ecological collapse, but were no match for the powerful in their society who had a vested interest in the status quo. Sound familiar?

But, Wright says, while the ecological collapse of civilizations like the Roman Empire was destructive, the destruction was limited geographically. However, the ecological collapse of Western civilization today could be global in scope, Wright says.

I don't know enough about ecology to say if all humans will perish. My guess is that the people in the world who still have something close to agrarian life will survive the evolutionary cut while industrial society and its members who do not know how to provide their own food are both destroyed.

Biological race does not exist.

Race is a cultural construct.

See the American Anthropological Association Statement on Race.

If you want to do your part to end racism, reject the myth of biological race.

Because the idea that everything is getting worse is so widespread, not because everything is getting worse. — jamalrob

But if it is obvious that everything is great and will only get better, why write long books about it?

Like Berman said, if it's something that is obvious then writing a book about it is like writing an 800+-page book saying that the Pope is Catholic.

As I have seen at least one person put it: "Science is a nicely packaged philosophy".

Everybody should read Max Weber: A Critical Introduction, by Kieran Allen.

Allen shows how Weber's work was motivated by his personal political agenda. He contrasts that reality with the popular image of a value-free founding father of sociology.

If that is the roots of sociology, maybe it is no wonder that a lot of sociology today seems like people, feminists for example, advancing a political agenda rather than being objective investigators trying to find the truth.

The problem you are speaking from YOUR perspective/opinion and arguing under the context that it is a GIVEN that there is some kind of OBJECTIVE MORALITY... — dclements

No I am not.

I don't know if you ever hear of David Hume, but one of his famous quotes is "you can't get an ought from an is", and that is exactly what you are trying to do in your argument... — dclements

No I am not.

even though the "is" part (ie the facts meant to back up your position) are so messed up I wouldn't even know where to begin with it... — dclements

Every objection to my "is" has turned out to be unfounded.

Whether you know or like it, PEOPLE STEAL ALL THE TIME/EVERY DAY THROUGHOUT HISTORY AND HAVE PROFITED FROM SUCH ACTIONS... — dclements

That does not mean that it is ever economically justified.

Your assuming there is some kind of "justice" system in place that punish all thieves for ALL of their actions,... — dclements

I have never made such an assumption, let alone expressed it here.

however in the bigger picture of things I'm guessing most thieves can justify most of their actions and are in no way as eaten up by their conscience as either you think they are and/or that you think they should be... — dclements

I have never said here that anybody does or does not have any experience.

I never said that anything should be the case. I never thought about it either in working on this question.

I think someone pointing their gun at the head of either them or one of their family would likely do it. I don't know whether you are ruling out such people as you are ruling out the criminally insane and/or inclined to commit such crimes but when you rule out BOTH people who do it UNDER DURESS AND BECAUSE THEY LIKE TO, it is a given that you are taking out nearly anyone who would want to perform ANY ACTION... — dclements

That doesn't make any sense.

I mean what person would want to WORK if they COULD just WISH for SOMETHING and get it?... — dclements

A person who enjoys working.

And economics is about using resources to produce things of value.

If we could just "wish for" things then economics would not exist and we would not be having a discussion like this about economics.

Work is called "work" because one does it whether or not they always want to do it because someone pays them to do the thing they don't or can't do themselves. I'm pretty sure there are people who would rather steal stuff (if they can get away with it) then have to work for someone else and have to deal with them while performing such tasks... — dclements

First, it is a fallacy to conflate work and "for someone else".

I am doing work right now. I am composing prose. I am not doing it "for someone else".

And if nobody ever worked and produced stuff there would be nothing to steal for people who would rather not work.

While it is likely that people most people have to work are not under the same duress as those who steal and/or commit similar crimes, I believe it is safe to say they are under some duress that is not completely differ from those who steal... — dclements

Yet they choose to not steal.

So if we take out ALL people who are NOT "RATIONAL ACTORS" (ie criminals, and the criminally insane are not rational actors according to society),... — dclements

Criminals make rational calculations just like non-criminals do.

They may even be more rational in that sense. It probably requires a lot more information gathering and processing to successfully shoplift than it does to make a purchase at a cash register.

and we take out everyone who is DOING IT JUST FOR FUN (ie kids, bored rich people), and we also take out everyone who is doing it UNDER DURESS (ie working class Joe's and Jane's who need a buck and don't have can't earn it and/or under the threatened with body harm to make them steal),... — dclements

Some people under those conditions choose to steal, others choose not to.

the only people we are possibly left with are robber barons/king of thieves type people who may already have enough that they don't need to steal but since they fit under the spectrum "not rational", either doing it just for fun or because they are under duress (which such people it could be either given the circumstances) they are excluded as well... — dclements

This is a straw man, red herring or some other fallacy.

I never said that anybody does or does not qualify as "rational", let alone that any particular behavior such as "doing it for fun" disqualifies anybody as rational.

I said that things like doing it for fun must explain the choice to steal--the thing stolen does not explain the choice to steal.

Also according to your definition such people CAN'T EXIST (ie. impossible for people to profit by stealing), or what they do isn't technically "stealing" to you even if it is the same thing to others... — dclements

I said no such thing.

I said that I can't imagine a scenario where the value of the intrinsic qualities/properties of a tangible economic good could in the mind of any rational economic actor economically justify the marginal choice to steal ("I could steal this. I could pay for it at the cash register. I could forgo trying to acquire it. I could beg that shopper over there to buy it for me. What should I do? Hmm.") rather than not steal. I asked for an answer to a question: the intrinsic value of what tangible economic good could ever in the mind of an honest, rational economic actor who is considering all possible options economically justify the option of stealing?

I recall only getting one response that has any semblance of being an answer to the question: it depends on the person.

Well, again, if it depends on the person then we could engineer society so that stealing never occurs. We could put all the people for whom the intrinsic value of an iPhone makes them steal in an environment free of iPhones and those people would never steal. We could organize society around everybody's calculations and eliminate stealing. But that is counterintuitive. People steal for an abundance of reasons other than the value of the good stolen. Eliminating this good from that person's environment and that good from that person's environment won't change the fact that people rebel against authority and that stealing is one way that they do that. They will steal for the sake of rebelling, among other intangible things. The intrinsic value of the good they steal will at the most decide what they steal.

I think I covered this somewhere, but I'm not sure. I've started getting a headache from thinking to much so it is getting more difficult to continue writing and thinking about this. At any rate what your saying is debatable since a large part of what western civilization is today was by "acquiring" (ie. often through outright theft and/or murder) land and other good from other societies that existed hundreds of years ago. The term "Manifest Destiny" is a concept that created to justify/sugar coat the fact that in order for Europeans acquire the easy land and wealth they had to often take it from the natives/squatters who where using it at the time; and of course through force and murder if and when it needed to be done.

Manifest Destiny
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

Also I believe you should watch a video called "Why poverty?" which talks about both how Manifest Destiny/Colonization was used to rob people of whatever wealth people had in North/South America, and Africa AND how (and implied by the video) the VAST DIFFERENCE between RICH and POOR is a BIGGER social problem AND the LEVERAGE the RICH use AGAINST the POOR/WORKING CLASS is not much different then STEALING ITSELF.

Poor Us: an animated history - Why Poverty?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxbmjDngois — dclements

Some people say that economics and politics are the same thing. Other people say that economics and politics are not the same thing ("It's good politics, but bad economics").

I think that a feature of politics that does not necessarily apply to economics is that in politics values and resources are allocated authoritatively.

I have never heard imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, etc. being described from any perspective (neoclassical economics, economic anthropology, etc.) when addressing how values and resources are allocated non-authoritatively. The authoritative part, it seems, is always presented as something that distorts the non-authoritative part (like when neoclassical economics says that government intervention in the economy results in less economic output than if government had not intervened).

If there was nothing worth stealing then how would you get people to do work and/or anything else they may not want to do? Without the blood,sweat, and tears of the working plebs and the monopoly paper being printed by the wealthy use in exchange for it what incentive would there be for someone to take out trash/ clean toilets/ and do any of the nearly INFINITE other unfun tasks that seem to be needed to be done?

In the book/movie Clockwork Orange, they is an example of what might happen if criminals and/or those criminally inclined where put through something have been called "reeducation programs" by other countries and I think the results were mixed at best. I'm not saying it can't be done but I think it is safe to say there is moral implications for those who try to implement them and as well as those who are forced to go through them as well. — dclements

The role of tangible economic goods in economically justifying in people's minds the marginal choice to steal remains in doubt.

And just because something is not economically justified does not mean that people won't do it. People make decisions through irrational thought/feeling processes all of the time.

That really isn't true since most currencies in use today are merely FIAT CURRENCY and not backed up by gold, silver, or anything else for that matter. The banks that print money for the US, and most other governments, merely back up there currency for awhile (with the Euro for a time, they backed it up by holding one US dollar in their vaults for each Euro they printed) and after some time after the currency becomes accepted they just start printing money which isn't backed by anything at all. While there may be an several advantages of fiat money, the disadvantage is that you CAN NEVER RETURN THEM TO THE BANK AND HAVE THEM RETURN ANYTHING WITH INTRINSIC VALUE SUCH AS GOLD OR SILVER, which you use to be able to when we use to use non-fiat currencies such as the silver back dollar bills..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

So in the end paper money is virtually the same mere "quantities reported on an account statement" other than you are able to use them to help settle private debts without having to use of credit cards, etc and go through a bank and/or electronic process to resolve such debts. Although there are things like Bitcoin which in many ways allows people to use virtual currency (which itself isn't backed up by anything) to resolve private and/or black market debts as well almost just as well; which is a lot harder to do without paper money... — dclements

Trees were harvested, wood was turned into pulp, ink was made, plates for a printing press were made, etc. to produce a value-added product: a dollar bill.

That paper could be sold to a company that recycles paper who could then sell the ground up material to somebody who makes newsprint paper.

A dollar bill is a product of many economic transactions and could be involved in many other economic transactions that have nothing to do with it's extrinsic value as currency, FIAT or non-FIAT

Of course it has intrinsic value.

Can we get a synopsis?

The question in one paragraph?

What implications do you think can be validly be drawn from the theory of evolution?

Throughout its history it has been used in various ways to justify ideologies and actions. The worst examples stem from The Nazis ( "Alles leben ist kampf"), eugenics and communists. This should concern us I think, when a theory can be interpreted in such a damaging way. This is not usually the case with ideas in science such as gravity or Quantum physics.

On one account evolution is deflationary and destructive of purpose and meaning and all action can be seen in the light of attempts at brute survival. I have not heard pf a positive account of evolution although some people talk as if it involved progress which is controversial.

In a trivial way it easy to claim anything we do is ultimately a survival trait regardless of our intentions. i don't like being in service of this system.

I am not keen to save someone from harm just so they can go on and mindlessly reproduce. — Andrew4Handel

Evolution by natural selection is a mechanical process, like water vapor condensing into rain.

Water vapor condensing into rain does not imply that things are getting better or worse, that certain responses are warranted or not warranted, or anything like that. It just means that under certain conditions water vapor will condense into rain, nothing more, nothing less.

Nobody says that rain is "advanced" and water vapor is "primitive".

Nobody says that a rock is "primitive" and a pebble formed by the action of water is "advanced".

Nobody says that the wind transporting pollen and pollinating a plant justifies a certain social structure or threatens a certain tradition.

Anybody who thinks that evolution means "progress", "advanced", "backwards", "better", "worse", etc. is reading way too much into it.

Evolution is just a description of a mechanical process like water turning into ice at or below a certain temperature is a description of a mechanical process. Period. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Evolution does not "imply" anything other than genetic material being produced and distributed through a particular mechanism.

There is such a vast variety of reasons of why people steal (and/or commit actions that are the same as stealing but we call it something else) that it could be difficult to answer that question if you "really have no idea whatsoever of why people steal" and me being a person who grew up in projects as a kid it is fairly easy to understand why some people do it. Some of the reasons including for fun, to get something they want or need, or for social/peer/gang approval.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dreaming-freud/201408/why-do-people-steal
http://www.healthline.com/health/stealing#overview1

From a philosophical standpoint, all you have to do is either have a decent understanding of human condition or some understanding of hedonistic calculus, pragmatism, Machiavellianism,etc (ie some of the basic theories to explain ethics and human behavior that have been around for hundreds of years) to have some idea why it is done.

In nature, animals will often steal food from each other whenever they can and through out human history, tribes or countries have been willing to take whatever they can from others through force and the only thing that usually stops this is the threat of force if such actions are taken. However even when the threat of force is present some will try to take things through guile instead of force (although on a personal level they can also be just about the same thing) and perhaps the only thing stopping this kind of theft (or than force itself) is either people are are content enough with what they have or they are indoctrinated not to steal but I'm pretty sure even these measures do not prevent it from ever happening.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicific_calculus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellianism


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_condition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature — dclements

I see everything above out of context.

The context is very specific. It is not "Why do people steal?". It is "Why do people marginally choose stealing over purchasing, begging, or other non-stealing options?".

Maybe in some or a lot of cases stealing is done out of habit or done subconsciously like breathing. But such cases are irrelevant to the question.

The question is about behavior under very specific conditions/parameters. It is about when a person could choose to steal or not to steal--to instead make a purchase with money; beg; not attempt to acquire anything at all; etc.--but chooses to steal. What tangible economic good, alone, economically speaking could in the mind of any rational person economically justify the marginal choice to steal?

Not only have I said that I believe no such good exists, I have said that I believe that no tangible economic good plays any role in the marginal choice to steal rather than choosing a non-stealing option. I have said that at the most a tangible economic good such as an iPhone, a pair of shoes, an acre of land, etc. plays a role in the choice of what to steal.

If I participate in a transaction and I get goods that I value at $1.00 and in return I give goods that I value at $1.75 then, economically speaking, that is irrational of me and is not economically justified.

Choosing between two non-identical things, such as stealing or non-stealing, means losing, at the least, the value of the thing not chosen and gaining, at the least, the value of the thing chosen. Therefore, a person choosing stealing loses value that comes with non-stealing such as the security of not having the status of a criminal offender.

If a rational economic actor takes into account all of the different options for obtaining a good--stealing, begging, exchanging for cash, forgoing the good until a later time, etc.--and all of the positive and negative value associated with each option, what tangible economic good could in that person's mind economically justify the choice to steal?

I illustrated all of this at the beginning by showing that for me personally the sum of the value of every single tangible economic good would not economically justify stealing because the value of never stealing, to me, exceeds the aforementioned sum of the value of every single tangible economic good. If the sum of all tangible economic goods would not economically justify stealing in my mind, then no individual tangible economic good would economically justify stealing in my mind.

The only role of morality in all of this is how much one values his/her moral integrity. Even if he/she believes that stealing is wrong he/she might make the marginal calculation in a particular case that the positive value of choosing to steal exceeds the negative value of being a hypocrite.

The role of the intrinsic value--the value that it possesses in and of itself--of a tangible economic good in the marginal economic choice to steal rather than not to steal is the question. I have asserted that such intrinsic value plays absolutely no role in the marginal economic choice to steal rather than not to steal--that extrinsic values, such as the adrenaline rush one gets from playing cat and mouse with the law, are the values that inform such a choice.

If the intrinsic value of tangible economic goods decide whether a person chooses to steal or not to steal and a person is presently not stealing then that means he/she has simply not yet encountered a tangible economic good which the intrinsic value of in his/her mind economically justifies the marginal choice to steal, but when such a good is encountered he/she will chose to steal.

If the latter is true then we could engineer society so that stealing never occurs. If iPhones make a set of the population steal then you could put that set of the population in an environment free of iPhones and stealing would never occur. Imagine the money that would be saved on law enforcement, trials, corrections, etc.

But the latter two paragraphs are counterintuitive. People would likely steal anyway no matter what tangible economic goods can be encountered in their environment. Intangible things such as rebelling against authority could still be accomplished through stealing, and that urge/desire would still exist.

But when you ask "why do people steal" when there is "some many other ALTERNATIVES to stealing" you are framing your question within a moral framework whether you like it or not; even if you are doing you best not to make to too obvious which it still is anyways.

If you really did think that it wasn't either ok, good, bad, wrong, etc. then the issue would be as relevant to you as to why little Timmy prefers strawberry ice-cream to vanilla ice-cream (or vice versa as the case may be) and it would a given that your question in your OP wouldn't any more relevant to the topic of philosophy then any child's preference in ice-cream.

BTW, what do you mean by "intrinsic value" other than the mere potential monetary value? If that is mean there are nearly countless instances of where people have either tricked or taken things by force from others and profited from it. During the period of colonialism North and South America (as well as other continents and land) where taken from the native people in order to make the people taking them rich or make them richer than they already where. There are entire criminal organizations such as the Mafia and Yakuza who operate and are founded on the principles of selling drug, racketeering, stealing, murder, etc and you are honestly trying to say that it is impossible (or at least impossible according to your point of view) for someone want to steal in order to acquire some kind of "intrinsic value"? I believe you are either using "intrinsic value" different then what might be conventionally used, or that you have absolutely "zero" understanding of human behavior/psychology 101 when it comes to criminal behavior and/or people who might be pressed to performing the same actions as one, or you perhaps you are deliberately just being obtuse — dclements

I think that I covered all of that above.

Obviously either you come from a very privileged life where you have never had to want for anything beg, work minimum wage jobs,etc., etc., or you just pretending like you have no idea of and just pretending to be so naive. While I shouldn't try to pretend why you are doing it, to be honest it is pretty insulting to me (and very likely other people like me who may have not had it so easy) that someone could even SUGGEST that EVERYONE in such situations should find it easy to beg and grovel for whatever spare change someone might toss at them. For one thing it is very, very demeaning for someone to resort to begging and the other issue is that begging often doesn't work (not to mention the health hazards for beggars could be potentially more dangerous than even those who get what they need from stealing).

I don't know if your just deliberately being obtuse or you merely have the "misfortune" of having a very privilege /sheltered life and have never as they say had to "walked a mile in their shoes" in order to give you some perspective of how other people have had to live and go about their lives and understand what they really go through.

Also as a side note, there is psychological/social theory known as the "1% rule" which means that 1% of society are from a psychological perspective much more incline to commit criminal act than the rest of the population (ie. who supposedly only do so if they are under duress or similar conditions) and this "1%" makes criminal activity more common among the population than it really is. I not sure what the actual numbers are but when you figure it is somewhat rational to believe that 1% of the population is precondition for criminal behavior and a number of potential "normal" people who are not one of them but are under enough duress to be willing to consider criminal activity under the right conditions, and all you need is to let them have a chance to intermingle with the rest of society, and you have an your example or examples of why people steal for "intrinsic" or whatever other value they do it for. — dclements

I think that I covered all of that above.

I agree with ↪dclements when he says that even money has no intrinsic value and only has extrinsic value as a means for exchange of other goods... — Samuel Lacrampe

Depends on what you mean by "money".

If you mean something intangible like the quantities reported on an account statement then, no, it probably does not have much, if any, intrinsic value.

But if you mean something tangible like a one dollar bill then, yes, it has intrinsic value. The value of the ink and paper is just one example.

The question is thus, what good can you think of that has any intrinsic value? It seems that me that all tangible things that can be stolen only serve as a means to a greater end, ends such as pleasure, necessity (like surviving) or ethics. — Samuel Lacrampe

Every economic good has intrinsic value. Otherwise it would not be an economic good.

Economics is cultural just like language is cultural. Asking what economic good does not have intrinsic value is like asking what word is not part of any language.

There are plenty of sound combinations outside of language, such as the sound of thunder. But such sound combinations not part of any language (imagine if your vocal cords and mouth could produce that sound, though; imagine making a statement orally like "[insert the sound of thunder] is what I plan to do") can be words if they are incorporated into a language.

Likewise, there are probably things that humans have no knowledge of, let alone enough familiarity with to assign value to. Maybe an object made of a mineral presently unknown to humans. But once it becomes incorporated into a cultural system it has value.

Something that has no intrinsic value would have to be something that has no properties of any kind (shape, physical state, etc.) and something that humans have either no knowledge of or very little familiarity with (they've just discovered it for the first time and the process of integrating it into their cultural system has had little time to develop). If such a thing exists, it sounds like something metaphysical that is irrelevant to a discussion about economic goods.

Your argument about extrinsic vs intrinsic is moot since it is already a given that spy's in a war are not trying to steal the paper and ink that is used to create a document otherwise they would be targeting Office Depot or Staples instead of the Germans. The same is true of all thieves since money is also merely just ink and specially made paper and even a hungry person isn't going to steal a loaf of bread for it's "intrinsic qualities/properties" and just look at the thing but instead for it's "extrinsic" value of it serving to end their hungry..." — dclements

None of that answers why stealing is chosen rather than non-stealing alternatives such as begging, purchasing, tricking a person, etc.

All your doing is stating the obvious and creating a form of begging the question fallacy in order to avoid the problem posed by me and other forum members as to why you think it is "ok" or "good" for some people to steal (and/or commit similar crimes) but not for others... — dclements

Straw man.

I never said that stealing is ok, good, bad, wrong, etc.

I said that it is difficult to imagine anyone ever thinking/feeling that the intrinsic value of a tangible economic good justifies choosing stealing over all other alternatives such as begging, purchasing, never possessing the good, etc.

It is not difficult to imagine someone thinking/feeling that some extrinsic value of a tangible economic good, such as looking cool to fellow gang members when you are able to say that you pulled off a theft, justifies choosing stealing over all other alternatives.

It is descriptive ethics, not prescriptive ethics.

All your arguments so far seem to suggest you are trying to argue in support of some kind of objective morality (since you constantly suggesting you have no problem if people steal for some "social good") and reject the notion that people who seem to be stealing for their own selfish reason's could in any way be operating from a moral paradigm that is in any way be just as credible as the people you are praising for stealing from the "greater good". — dclements

I have not argued in support of anything, and I have no idea where these tangents like "objective morality" come from.

I have asked what tangible economic good (like an iPhone, a pair of shoes, an acre of land, etc.; not something intangible like safety, education, reputation, etc.) has intrinsic value that any person could think/feel justifies choosing to steal that good over all alternatives such as begging for the good.

It is true that if there is no end, then the means to that end becomes obsolete. But back to your original question about if there is something worth stealing, are you saying that it is not worth stealing the plans from the nazis, even if it would serve to end the war? — Samuel Lacrampe

Serving to end the war is not an intrinsic quality/property of the plans. Serving to end the war is something extrinsic.

The intrinsic qualities/properties of the plans are things like the paper they are typed/printed on, the ink they are typed/printed with, the fonts that the words are typed/printed in, etc.

If somebody can give an example of a person stealing such plans for the paper and ink--and for the paper and ink alone; not for something external like ending the war--then we can see what role the intrinsic qualities/properties of a good play in the choice to steal.

What would count as believing science. — creativesoul

Using an established dating technique, getting an age of around 10,000 years for a fossil, and believing that the fossil is around 10,000 years old.

But a person could say that he/she believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old, perform the same dating of the same fossil, and get the same result: around 10,000 years old. He/she could then say that he/she still believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old.

Philosophical ideas do not necessarily have to be approached from the point of view of which is more logical than the other. One can approach it, and possibly gain more insight, by analyzing how and who benefits politically and economically from a particular point of view.

Confuciusism is a good example. In response to Daoism, which was quite egalitarian, the Emperors of China promoted the teachings of Confucius that emphasized fidelity to the hierarchy. It b is not that Daoism was any more or less logical than Confuciusism, rather it was which was better at promoting certain political and economic objectives. One can study Determinism, Fatalism, and Free Choice philosophies in a similar light. — Rich

You are preaching to the choir.

It's dangerous to not believe truths.

So, choosing not to believe in science is dangerous. — TheMadFool

That's not the question.

The question is if it is possible to do science while not believing the truth of the results.

Didn't Michael Behe study and start practicing science with the intention of destroying much of what sciences says? If I recall correctly, Kenneth R. Miller says in Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul that the agenda of people like Behe is to change the definition of science and in the process subjugate or destroy science. Yet, Behe is a scientist.

Doing science is like following a recipe for baking a cake, isn't it? How would what a person does or does not believe keep him/her from practicing science?

I tend to have postmodern worldview and take modernist/Enlightenment institutions like science with a grain of salt. Yet, that has never stopped me from successfully doing research in the social sciences. I'm sure that I could perform research in biology, geology, etc., in spite of my postmodern skepticism about all of it.

I have read that artificial intelligence may replace humans and do all of the science.

I doubt that AI believes anything about anything that it performs.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that stealing the plans is only a means to the end of the good cause, and thus not the end itself. This is true, but then again, this also applies to stealing money does it not? Nobody steals money for the sake of keeping money, but always as a means to purchasing other things. So just as money acquires value as a means to purchase other goods, so do the nazi plans acquire value as a means to another good, like ending the war. — Samuel Lacrampe

The plans could be stolen with a number of intentions. Selling them as a historical artifact. Using them to blackmail somebody. Etc.

No intention to sell, no intention to blackmail, etc. = no theft being attempted.