Yes, the enlightenment is about ending ignorance and realizing the human potentia — Athena
But it has turned the world in a more dark place than ever and natural disasters, the still immanent thread of a global nuclear conflict, wars raged with technological monstrosities, and an unprecedented poverty and hunger, a cultural monotony, and a deterioration of spoken language, makes the religious madness in the dark ages seem childplay. — Raymond
Okay, have a good day. We are done. — Athena
It meaning Enlightenment? — ssu
? You really think that negative aspects of the modern World exist because of Enlightenment? — ssu
With the same kind of thinking, perhaps we would be better of with any kind higher culture or society — ssu
Once again, the point is that if the absence of harm can be considered better, then the lack of happiness is bad. — DA671
This is only about consistency, but I did also mention in my previous reply that I am willing to consider non-creation to be neutral. However, it still would not be obligatory, and creating the positives will always matter. The "imbalance" lies in your arguments, not mine. — DA671
the lack of all life cannot be considered a moral obligation due to the fact that the genesis of the positives is necessarily good. I am repeating myself, yet again, that if the creation of "collateral damage" is bad, the creation of innumerable goods is good. — DA671
You are the one who seems to be missing the point since you refuse to see things from outside your lens. If nobody is born, nobody is harmed. This is either neutral or good. If it is good that the harms do not exist, I do not see any reason to think that the lack of happiness is not bad. If it is neutral and the only relevant consideration are the lives of those who exist, then the creation of happiness can certainly be good, just as the presence of harms might be bad. If someone is born, one can experience a happy life due to a decision someone else was capable enough to take for them. — DA671
I care more about the actual implications of a view, not what one might think about it. Personally, I don't think that it makes sense to call an act a harm (collateral "damage") if it does not lead to a worse state of affairs for a person. The comparison might be an abstract one (though I tend to disagree with that), but it still exists and gives us a reason to deem one state of affairs to be more ethical over another. One could plausibly say that it's "better" for a person to not live and suffer than it would be to exist. But if that is the case, I think that it is also instrumentally worse for them to not experience the positives of life, irrespective of whether or not there is any concious feeling of deprivation. In my view, an ethical obligation exists (in terms of harms/benefits) only when it's clear that doing or not doing the act always leads to an outcome that's preferable or undesirable for the person. If neither has any value, then the lack of action can only be ethically neutral, not obligatory. Neutrality is better than a bad outcome (the negatives), but it is also worse than a good one (happiness), and, considering that many people do cherish their lives, I think that it can be justifiable to create a person. — DA671
You once again employ double standards when you start talking about deprivations with reference to the lack of happiness. If creating suffering leads to "collateral harms", giving birth also contribute to the formation of invaluable positives that do have worth. — DA671
Although I consider "start for someone else" to be slightly misleading, since it can seem to imply as if someone already existed who was brought into a harmful state where harms began, the simple truth is that there also is the formation of happiness in one case, and there isn't any value in the other. I believe that it can be good to choose the former. — DA671
1. If the absence of harm is good because there is "no collateral damage", the lack of happiness is also bad because there is no benefit. And nobody is satisfied from the absence of damage, so if the lack of goods is not problematic, then the absence of harms cannot be good. — DA671
I am not sure. After all, there might be invisible souls suffering due to a lack of existence ;) — DA671
Yes, I agree that there is no intrinsically valuable benefit and what you call "collateral damage". But I would again say that if the latter is positively significant, the former is negatively so. — DA671
Would you agree that there are also goods that are taking place, and in the other case, there aren't? If not, then there is no point in endless repetition. — DA671
Talking about damage that does not exist is also a "projection" of sorts, but I suppose I agree. — DA671
You really think that negative aspects of the modern World exist because of Enlightenment — ssu
Start first from either having a culture or not. Culture starting from some specialization in the society, things like language and then written language, agriculture, or not having all that. Being just hunter-gatherers. Can you make an claim that one is more preferred to the individual or is it a too vacuous claim?Why should one culture be better than another? Because a vacuous claim on objectivity? Religious societies do exactly the same. — Raymond
The links I gave you were not my sources of information. My sources of information are old books about education and include old grade school textbooks that are no longer in circulation. And thank you so much for recognizing the biggest reason humans disagree is different sources of information. I seem to be at war with everyone because my sources of information came from the past. — Athena
My apologies. The problem you mentioned in this paragraph was totally my fault and I realized that while driving to the store. I regretted not having a more playful response to what you said about Athena. And as I said above, I feel like I stand alone because of the old books giving me a different perspective. I feel very burdened by the information I gathered many years ago, when I began buying old books about education to gain an understanding of my grandmother's generation of teachers, who thought they were defending democracy in the classroom. :lol: :cry: Oh, the futility of it all. My grandmother was a very important source of information and you would have to know her to know why. She and her generation are all dead now and facts are not enough to explain how different our past was. — Athena
The root of the illusion of disagreement is the difference between Prussia and Germany. Have you read Charles Sarolea's 1912 book "The Anglo-German Problem'? He was trying to warn the world of Germany's intentions to go to war and he was ignored until the first world war had begun. This was one of the first books I bought when I began my research. I bought it because of great admiration for the Germans and I had heard the US had adopted the German model of education. The other book I bought that same day, was a copy of the 1917 National Education Association Convention. These two books are the beginning of the burden I feel. — Athena
They became politically irresponsible and this really distressed Charles because he saw them as the superior people. All this relates to what happened to the US and Trump being our Hitler and the political struggles we have now because of reactionary politics just as Germany had before Hitler was able to take power. There is an education link to all of this. — Athena
Please give that paragraph some thought so you get the nuances in what I am saying. What I am saying is not without nuances! I just can not say everything all at once. Imagine entering a relatively high-tech war, with a population that knows though about technology. No typist, no mechanics, no engineers, but they know about Washington and Benjamin Franklin and Lincoln as national heroes and have an idea of what is expected of them as good citizens. You know, like God's good children. They knew our national mythology that had as much to do with real-life as Homer's books, that told the Greeks how to be Greeks. (Americanized Greek mythology) — Athena
The Prussians lived for the love of military might, as the citizens of the US lived for a love of God. So we technologically were in big trouble but now think of the teachers' argument. Education for patriotic citizens and mobilizing the nation for war. The book of the1917 National Education Association is full of interesting information about mobilizing for war. — Athena
Now let us jump to 1958 and the new warfare of air warfare and nuclear missiles. President Eisenhower put the Military-Industrial Complex, also known as Hitler's New World Order, in place, and the 1958 National Defense Education Act is an essential piece to the Military-Industrial Complex. We can now mobilize for war in 4 hours or less, long before the citizens need to be mobilized for war. Patriotism was essential to past wars, it is no longer important. Are you thinking of the differences in education and the cultural differences? I hope so. I hope you come back with a reply that advances this discussion. — Athena
Specialization is poison to democracy! Can we turn to classical literature once again? Pericles' raised the spirits of his fellow citizens at a funeral for fallen warriors, by comparing the differences between Sparta and Athens, and why Athens is right to defend its way of life in war. Sparta specialized their males for military service. All other work was done by slaves. Sparta determined what citizens needed and provided it through the use of slaves. Our technocracy is in line with Sparta the enemy of Athens. — Athena
The US had education that generalized everyone. Education for well-rounded individual growth. At the same time was education for independent thinking. These differences are why I keep speaking of the 1958 change in education that most certainly took us in the direction of specialization and replaced education for independent thinking with "groupthink". We have been killing our democracy since 1958. — Athena
That is very interesting. I am really interested in your research because indeed schooling, the way we mold our citizenry is a crucial aspect in the way we govern society. In that sense I really like this foray in different education systems. I did (and do) not know enough about the change in education system in the 18th and 19th century. So your old text books are really great sources of information. Can I ask, do you have a theory for your research, in other words is it guided by a certain hypothesis or theoretical framework? I am immediately thinking about a Foucauldian research on 'governmentality' and what the governmentality is of these different systems of schooling, the old American way and the Prussian system. Do you do your research yourself or in the context of a PhD research? Is there a research community or are you working on this by yourself? — Tobias
That explains my question about the embeddedness of your research, because you would be burdened doing everything by yourself without other to talk to and to compare data with others who share a similar interest. Historic research is very hard to do because you need a grasp of the interlocking structures of these societies you examine. — Tobias
Yes, I do and find it fascinating. Also here I see many links to governmentality research. The states of Europe, in the 18th and 19th due to mutual competition perfected the science of the state, aptly called 'statistics'. Germany, but also France and the UK had to mobilize the people to gain the upper hand in the race for the colonies. In the US there was space enough, no competition and there was enough land to carve out a good agricultural living. However, do not idealize one form or the other. Those children of God also ruthlessly murdered the native Americans and institutionalized a system of racial aprtheid until well into the 20th century. Ideas in the 18th and 19th century were just very backward everywhere. — Tobias
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