Just checking as a non-philosopher here. Aren't biases generally like axioms or presuppositions, which provide a kind of foundation to one's thinking? — Tom Storm
Is a potential task of philosophy to question and perhaps dismantle axioms (beliefs, biases) one holds to find enhanced approaches to thinking and living? I can't help but find myself in a realm of 'good' biases and 'bad' biases and how this is determined strikes me as needing to be bias led. — Tom Storm
But I’m not sure what you’re getting at. — Jamal
We come into the world with proclivities, tendencies, traits, character, talents, and so on. These are all characteristics of living beings that are not reducible to physical forces. (One of the motifs from Buddhism, which is said to eschew the idea of soul, is that each individual is actually a 'mind-stream' (citta santāna) that manifests from life to life - a process, not an entity.) — Wayfarer
But I don’t agree, on those grounds, that it is a meaningless term, or connotes an obsolete or supestitious idea. — Wayfarer
That is typical of fundamentalism, not so much of the classical tradition. — Wayfarer
You are not getting it Christoffer. — Metaphysician Undercover
Well, if you cannot understand how it is contradictory to say that a neutral phenomenon is bad, I don't see much point in continuing this discussion. — Metaphysician Undercover
I suppose you're referring to the semantics of deception here, also known in philosophy as sophistry. — Metaphysician Undercover
Clearly no force is neutral — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, good and bad are human judgements, but so is "neutral" a human judgement as well. — Metaphysician Undercover
By your own description of bias Christoffer. You said that a bias is a gravitation toward what is preferable. Doesn't "preferable" imply what is satisfactory or desired? Since this is the definition of "good", then we ought to conclude that biases are good. Where do you get this idea that biases are bad? — Metaphysician Undercover
Is a potential task of philosophy to question and perhaps dismantle axioms (beliefs, biases) one holds to find enhanced approaches to thinking and living? — Tom Storm
I can't help but find myself in a realm of 'good' biases and 'bad' biases and how this is determined strikes me as needing to be bias led. — Tom Storm
I still think a presupposition or an axiom is different to a bias. I suppose you could say that a strongly held but unexamined belief might constitute a bias. And that there are ‘cultural biases’ that are held by many people who take them as ‘the way things are’. Some will characterize religious attitudes like that but I think the same can be said of scientific materialism. — Wayfarer
Actually I guess ‘confirmation bias’ would often be very difficult to expose and often effective as an accusation. See this case of.a biased investigator accusing juries of bias. — Wayfarer
I must not be understanding what the discussion between C and MU is about then. — Tom Storm
Everything humans do is a product of culture and society, and always has been. — Jamal
But not all philosophers have this attitude. Some feel like they've come up with something significant, an important original idea, and so they work to put this idea across to others. — Metaphysician Undercover
Everything humans do is a product of culture and society, and always has been. — Jamal
have found most religious people to be far more fundamentalists than they even seem to be aware of themselves — Christoffer
I'm not sure there is a "classical tradition", a religious life seem to be mostly very subjective even if practices as an institution looks collective. — Christoffer
The detachment of the sage in philosophy has a different quality to the detachment of the scientist because it is concerned with more than what is simply quantifiable. — Wayfarer
I agree, but it is still an active detachement even for the sage. — Christoffer
the notion that humans did things before there were cultures or societies for their activities to be a product of, is hardly self-contradictory — Mww
I would like to have that concentration more as an automatic thing in my unconscious approach to everything in life, something that I do more regularly, and I'm constantly training myself to be better at it in any situation, even in everyday life, but it has a sense of life long dedication that takes a lifetime to master because it is an act against the very nature of our basic psychology. Just like we do not eat off the ground, everything in modern life is a forced behavior to act against basic instincts of our animal self. — Christoffer
Seriously, now you're just acting stupid. A rock falling is a neutral thing, a rock falling on you is bad for you. — Christoffer
Your entire schtick relies on my concept being faulty in this neutral/bad logic, so you try to force this notion onto the discussion in order to be able to win the argument. — Christoffer
A phenomena can be neutral, how that phenomena affects a certain thing can be negative. — Christoffer
You are applying arbitrary values of good and bad (emotional human judgement) onto a thing that is neutral. Bias is neutral just as gravity, in that it does not inhabit any arbitrary human values in the form of "good" or "bad. A neutral force can have a negative or positive effect on something, and that is not the same thing as it inhabiting an arbitrary value of good or bad in itself. Your argument relies on there existing an objective good and bad value that exist outside of human values, and such a claim have a burden of proof to show what these values are, comes from and why they exist. How can this be confusing for you, I don't understand. It is pretty basic stuff. — Christoffer
No, physics are neutral, there's nothing arbitrary good or bad about them. I — Christoffer
If you say that "neutral" is a human judgement of physics, then you need to explain how you define physical processes. If they are not neutral in the form of not having arbitrary values, then what are they? If you ignore to answer this you are ignoring a vital part in what holds together your reasoning. — Christoffer
Preferable" means whatever is preferable in your psychology. You are biased towards liking hamburgers, so your thinking while planning dinner might be that you lean (gravitate) towards ordering hamburgers than the more objectively concluded healthy eating of a sallad. If you are unable to understand that this kind of pull towards preferable arbitrary and emotional values of your subjective and individual preferences has a negative effect on your critical thinking when you try to form an objective conclusions of a complex concept, then you simply are uneducated about what bias actually is in psychology, and don't know what it means in the context of critical thinking and also don't understand the importance of critical thinking in philosophy. Which seems obvious based on the incoherent and confused way you have structured premise-based arguments earlier. — Christoffer
Bias is an always existing neutral psychological phenomena that is a core part of our human mind and cognition. This bias has a negative and bad effect on the ability to conduct critical thinking (which is not all that people do and therefore the value of "negative" or "bad" is applied to specifically how it affects critical thinking), often taking the shape and form of some error in thinking found in lists like the above. — Christoffer
Generalizing even further, philosophy is—or is part of—enlightenment, a means by which humans are freed from domination, whether by nature, myth, religion, governments, whatever it happens to be: — Jamal
Marx said that after turning Hegel on his head. I won’t argue the case beyond noting dissent. — Wayfarer
Only in (primitive) 'creationist'-based cultures; however, not so according to Brahmins or Daoists (or, for that matter, either classical atomists or Spinozists) for whom nature itself is eternally naturing (à la autpoiesis).Interesting how nature, once 'the created', is now imbued with the power of creating itself. — Wayfarer
6371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.
And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained. — TLP
I notice in modern discourse that even the notion of laws is called into question. This goes back to the discussion about the erosion of the idea of an animating cosmic purpose. — Wayfarer
The problem I see is that he is defining the value of philosophy in terms of philosophy. That is, he explains, perhaps without realizing, not how philosophy is used as a tool on other disciplines, but how it internally works. — Hanover
What is a good bias? This question has not been answered in this thread so far and I don't think it ever will be. — Christoffer
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