Alright. Well... then maybe let's just stick to the golden rule then. I don't think what you say communicates the golden rule, exactly, but if that's all you mean then cool.

The problem with the golden rule is that it doesn't tell you much -- it's a guide for people who are already predisposed to be decent people to follow. But it doesn't help in harder cases.

How does the golden rule deal with injustice? I think that's where it fails the most. If we are all already predisposed to be generally decent people and we follow the golden rule then a just state of affairs may come about (though it may not too -- since predisposition plus principle isn't enough to warrant action)

But we live in a world where that is not the case.

Further, we live in a world where there are multiple goods which various people follow and which conflict with one another. So the other failing of the golden rule is it does not adjudicate between actually lived conflicting principles. It doesn't tell us how to deal with enemies.

Person A wants to live. Person B wants person A to die. How do either person A or B can act so that the equality in treatment is preserved at all times? — Samuel Lacrampe

Person A treats B exactly as person A wants to do -- since A wants to live, A will defend themselves. Person B treats A exactly as person B wants to do -- since B wants A to die, B will try to kill A.

But they'll both be treating one another exactly as their desires dictate.

To preserve equality in treatment, if you treat others and yourself as you please only, then you would be forced to accept others to treat you, others, and themselves as they please only. — Samuel Lacrampe

Yup. I agree that the notion of equality posited here would lead to something along those lines.

But the two behaviours cannot co-exist mutually because what pleases you does not necessarily coincide with what pleases others. — Samuel Lacrampe

The principle of the matter can co-exist, though. If I and everyone treated everyone and themselves exactly as they pleased there is nothing contradictory in that. It's completely equitable in that everyone is treating people in the same manner. Whether we succeed is another matter altogether.

But I do not think that the principle is exactly a just one. Which is why I was thinking there would need to be more to justice than mere equality.

I think "diving in" is the best way. Find some topic you're particularly interested in, look up names of philosophers working on that topic, and have a go at some of the material.

If it's not interesting then it's not worth your time -- because interest is what's going to motivate you to keep going in the first place. But, if it is interesting to you then Plato is a great place to start, I think.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a favorite online resource, for me, because it makes it easy to find further work after giving a cursory introduction to some topic.

In this case, because you treat the victims as what pleases you; not them. — Samuel Lacrampe

If I treat everyone as some sort of means to whatever happens to please me, then everyone is treated by the same rule, and would at least count as equal treatment.

If I expected everyone else to follow that same rule, then it would even be a kind of rule which applied to me.

Methinks you need a more robust theory of justice.

Haha. Cool. Thinking is always good :D

Just don't worry about what I say, at least, about whatever somebody IMPORTANT said. I'm just interpreting the words that went through by head. You can say the same as long as you've read the words.

But at the end of the day if you have unique thoughts sometimes that's a lot better than arguing over interpretation. (though I do love arguments over interpretation) We're just some folks discussing some ideas.

So until Harry Hindu or someone else sets forth the alternatives that I haven't thought of, I am left with emergentism, but emergence from "brainy-bodies-in-environments". — unenlightened

Physics has the film 'in the can', but consciousness is watching and acting in that same film. Perhaps physics is missing something. — unenlightened

Maybe this is an issue of preaching to the choir... but I definitely feel that even all of science, from physics on up, is missing something. And I say that as a used-to-be scientific realist materialist type guy.

But I will speak against emergence, too. Maybe because of my history as a used-to-be, but I think I have arguments too. The problem with emergence, from my perspective, is that it suffers from all the same arguments against dualism. Emergence is a kind of answer to the main question of dualism, "How do these two substances relate?" -- but without a real answer other than "Well, this one makes the other one somehow". Maybe I'm being a bit of a pedant, but at this point at least I feel that's not too far off, when you strip away the linguistic maneuvers

To be honest I have flirted with dualism in the past -- both property and substance dualism -- but now-a-days I feel a real ignorance, and a sort of wonder about the problem of consciousness. I don't feel that my thoughts obstruct the facts anymore. But I don't know what to make of it all. I guess that's where I'm at on the problem of consciousness -- just in-between and not quite committed.

Again, the way I am describing things sounds a bit like inputs and outputs, and it is a bit misleading. Seeing the coffee cup is an action and drinking the coffee is a sensation, there are not really inputs and outputs that are different kinds, but everything is both and neither, everything is integral, in the same way that a response integrates the creative initiative with what is already there as provocation. — unenlightened

Good stuff.

I wonder if it sounds like inputs/outputs just because we are accustomed to that way of thinking. I agree that it is both and neither, though. It's not as if I don't react or invent because of the world about me, but it's also not as if I am a puppet to the world about me too. At least as far as consciousness is concerned.

But it may sound as if we are automatons just merely by the way we are trained to think.

***

I sort of wonder which way you're leaning. Nothing is conscious or everything is. Or there is this thing called consciousness and there is also the world.

I member, I present, I re-member, I re-present. All that is now, in the here and now. They are kinds of actions, though maybe a bit different from wielding a hammer.

Is consciousness the sort of thing (I hate to use the word "thing", but alas, English) which acts whether I am moving bodily or no? Just a thought.

I just want more order. — T Clark

Consider this: Most philosophers we study aren't what you'd call all on the same page, making one single project which coheres well together. So even words like "Metaphysics" is going to differ from philosopher to philosopher -- consider how Kant and Heidegger use the word. While there is a kind of resonance between what they're talking about, the essay What is Metaphysics? makes clear that they also have very different things in mind.

So as categorizers of a field of knowledge, historians of philosophy, the boundaries aren't going to be exactly crisp. A word is going to gain more or less prominence through different historical periods, and it's not going to be used exactly the same between philosophers even within the same period.

What's important for us is just to be clear what we mean -- we can set the rules within our conversation, and communicate that way.


So when you say...

For me it's not. The existence of procedural, foundational concepts that set the terms of all discussions is central to my idea of what philosophy is. I want to be able to talk about it. It's not fair!! Oops, where did that come from? — T Clark

I would say that you can set the terms of the discussion yourself. Other philosophers may disagree with you, and I can offer you what I tend to think about as a starting point, but in order to proceed all you need do is say "this is what I mean" -- and we can go from there to talk about the underpinnings of reason, or whether there are matters of fact vs. matters of preference, or if there is an objective reality.

Does that make sense?

I very much want there to be a place to go to discuss the underpinnings of reason. Where we can agree on the rules, or at least argue about the rules, before we start the substantive discussion. — T Clark

Sounds to me like epistemology. But it doesn't matter what we call it, I'd say. What's more important is the question you're asking.

Though, this being philosophy, discussing the underpinnings of reason might actually be a substantive discussion :D.

The closest thing we have to that place I can think of is what we call metaphysics. If that's not what metaphysics is, then what is it - seems to me it's just a junk drawer where we throw unrelated stuff we can't figure out how to resolve.

I don't think that's too far off. I tend to think of metaphysics as being about being, or being about ontology -- questions about what exists, if it exists, and if there is some characterization about what exists what that characterization is.

As a historical category It's a bit eclectic, but from there I'd say it's just a category for dividing up philosophy and understanding it as a whole -- not something to invest too deeply into, overall. Almost like it's not-epistemology, and it's not-ethics, so it's all the other philosophy stuff.

The actual question at hand is more important than what category it might fall into.


Like discussing the underpinnings of reason, for instance. That's an interesting discussion, to me.

So, anyway - Metaphysical questions cannot be addressed with yes or no answers. They’re not issues of right or wrong, what matters is usefulness. — T Clark

On the face this seems false, just considered in a historical way. So I guess I'd ask -- Why do you want metaphysics to be one way, and not another way?

It seems to me that "Metaphysics" is a name for a category of philosophy which includes such and such. The division I had introduced to me in class was between Metaphysics-Epistemology-Axiology, and those were the broad categories which philosophy fell within.

But here's a problem; I am not present to you. Everything I present to you in the previous paragraph is not me, but the model of me that forms part of the model of the world I am offering for you to use as you wish or chuck in the bin. So I am inscribing on this model, 'the model is not the world, the word is not the thing, I am not my post'. Lest I be accused of nonsense. — unenlightened

Interesting.

I'm playing a bit here. Not exactly sure where I'm going, but trying to actually relate too.

To go back to the mirror example, words are the light and the model is the image. We can share words and see the image in our own mind, but that's different from seeing you. I'd have to be in Wales for that, for starters.

So you might say that since you are not present to me -- or since I am not present to you -- or perhaps I should say that you can't see my images? -- we have these two aspects of experience which seem to operate on different parameters of time, and even physics, and even in terms of experiential access. Which is where we may draw our dualistic inference from, these two aspects of the brain/mind.



One way of uniting the two, if that indeed be your goal, is to de-emphasize their experiential aspects. While I can look at the marker on my desk and confirm that it's blue, and were you here you could do the same without me, you cannot access my thoughts in the same manner on whatever it is I happen to be imagining at the time. But perhaps these experiential moments or modes are less important than we have the tendency to give them credit for. What if these are actually just two sorts of "worlds" -- structures of experience, or structures of discourse, or even metaphysical realities -- which act in different ways of find some kind of unity (depends on what strategy we might take -- transcendental seems to correspond to structures of experience, phenomenological to discourse, and epistemological for metaphysical).

But then, those would also just be models to be shared between our own mirrors. The real would still be right there. And then you really do wonder if these two aspects actually have a relation to one another, as one seems bounded and the other unbounded.

She comes close to the famous scientific anti-realism of Bas van Fraassen, who is an anti-realist about entities, precisely because he believes that it's all just a case of organising and classifying our knowledge. But Cartwright's point is that if you pay attention to the peculiar status of laws, one can admit this without being an anti-realist about entities. — StreetlightX

Interesting thread!

How would you differentiate entities from theories?

I ask because, as an old hack of a chemist, it seems that positing entities were part and parcel to theory.


Also, how would this analysis fair when considering thermodynamics? I have in mind the 2nd law, in particular. It's extremely abstract, but doesn't really deal with entities as much (as I understand it), but does seem quite universal ((edit: I should use your terminology better. Not universal, but rather a cover-law)) in that it's often linked to the arrow of time.

I'll just give it the ol' "neat"

:D

Not much to contribute just yet, but cool to read.

I think we may just be in strong disagreement then. To get personal: I am a very independent person. I have strong attachments to who I am, and live my life in accordance to what I think. Even so I have had friends who know me better than I know me. Not that this is something you might need or feel. But I know my most trusted friends well, and they know me better than me. I listen to them because of that.

No, nobody knows what's best for us, including ourselves. — Agustino

If that is the case then "I know what's best for me" is false. No?

I don't think that we have to follow friends in all circumstances to make the argument that "I know what's best for me" is false.

Maybe we're just talking past one another, here, and making the same point.

But to make the fallacious "No true Scostman" argument -- a good friend knows you better than you know yourself.

Even if in some cases they don't. I wouldn't disagree with that -- we are all responsible for ourselves, at the end of the day. It's just that sometimes we take that responsibility as a justification for bad decisions, and we all make bad decisions with respect to ourselves. (Even with respect to our own self-defined end goals and desires)

Alright, what do you mean by justified? — PossibleAaran

I think there is a set of principles we can follow that makes justification work. And epistemology is the debate about which principles we choose. I remember that you and I -- we -- agree that seeming is one such principle. So if something seems that it is so, then we are justified in holding a belief. Intersubjective seemings -- as clunky as it sounds -- is another such principle. To go to science, experimental setup and communication of results from said setup is another justification. If it is widely accepted by others then we are justified in holding a belief.

There is a kind of hierarchy, I think, between the principles. Seeming is less than intersubjective seeming is less than experimental setup is less than widely accepted experimental setups. Maybe the hierarchy of justifications is another principle in the set?

I'm not entirely certain. Justification is the beast, IMO, of JTB theory of knowledge. (not that JTB is the end-all be-all. Far from it. It's just a good starting point that's nice to hash out)

:D

It is a deliciously fun comic. (thanks for the tip btw)

If we don't know what's best for ourselves (and we know more about ourselves than others in most regards, since we have been with us the whole time), then who does? — Agustino

Friends. A good friend knows you better than you know yourself.

It's false. :D

Not to be too trite: We all very often make choices which are against our best interests -- even 'best interest' as defined by our own self, and not some external standard. We aren't always self-defeating, but we are at times. We need others to put us back on the right path.

Or is the idea of a probable belief just so much nonsense put forward in a desperate attempt to stave off scepticisim? — PossibleAaran

That is what I believe. But I do not think the strategy of casting beliefs in terms of probability works.

Bayesian analysis of inference is bunk, as far as I'm concerned. It's just dressed up mathematical hoolabaloo -- it makes someone feel good about inference, while at the same time not really looking like inference in practice. One can use Bayesian analysis, but that's very different from inference -- one uses Bayesian analysis because inference has already taken place, and one desires to have some sort of mathematical model after that fact.

Beliefs are true, false, or neither. We are justified in holding a belief, or we are not. There is no percentage roll that makes a belief more or less justified. It simply is, or isn't.

I wish i knew how to import the pictures from this comic onto our threads... alas, I am a failure.


BUT

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/9

seems apropos

Do we need a philosophy? — Philosopher

Yes and no.

In some sense the questions of philosophy are inescapable -- people answer them on the daily in their practical lives, even if they never engage with the practice of philosophy. We all act on beliefs about the minds of others, the nature of the world, how we know something, and what is good.

And, no, we don't need to reflect on our beliefs. We can get along alright enough without asking questions of our beliefs or examining them.

What philosophical questions are you interested in and why?

Right now my mind has been redirected to interpretations of Kant, cuz of a thread on here.

I'm also interested in the ontology of social entities, and the nature of love.

Do you think everyone can call himself a philosopher?

Not really. It seems weird to me to say everyone is a philosopher, in the same way that it's weird to say that everyone is a runner -- we can all do it, some better than others, but that doesn't mean we are defined by that particular potential.

I don't feel comfortable calling myself a philosopher, for instance. It just seems kind of weird, even if I've written some philosophical pieces. I'm a student of philosophy, but not sure about philosopher.

Again your argument here is against some perceived fault in another choice. (and I agree with @darthbarracuda as well)

But what motivates the point you've chosen? How is it not arbitrary?

FWIW, I'm comfortable with abortion being legal up to the point of birth. But I don't pretend that my comfort level is somehow superior based upon either biological facts or metaphysical argument. It, too, is a line in the sand arrived at by weighing the various arguments and positions.

Yearp. Sincere use of "Cultural Marxism" makes me pause and wonder about who I'm talking to -- not by necessity, since sometimes people just pick up words and don't realize their historical use, just makes me pay closer attention to see if there are other symbols of Nazi sympathy.

The Frankfurt school doesn't really fit, at least as self-defined. Not sure I know anyone who would call the Frankfurt school "cultural Marxists' who is in any way sympathetic to their writing.

Based on the poll that just went up, it caused me to wonder if post-birth "abortions" would be considered a legitimate view point. Does the difference of a few minutes, the duration of the delivery, really change the argument made by some people here? — Sydasis

Not in the least.

There simply is no point-like time which you'll find in the continuum of development where some life will be significantly different before, and after.

But we desire such a time -- we often desire to be able to say that this is right, and that is wrong.

But the facts don't fit our desires. And as such any point chosen will be a line in the sand based upon vague notions of rightness and wrongness -- in discussions like these, from the abstract, and in the moment of decision, the various factors of concern.

I think that we're trying to get at the same thing, here. The way I read you at least.

The OP argues against various positions, but never argues for theirs.

I mean... if we're going to rely upon scientific fact alone then why not?

There's certainly more being imported into assertions here than mere scientific fact. The similarity isn't completely out there. But if we believe in more than mere facts, like most people, then.... maybe it is. But it is also not quite right to then claim that you're being "purely scientific" or "biological"

if one accepts our premise that abortion is murder. — Thorongil

That there is the clincher, though.

Still not sure @LostThomist what makes you believe that conception is important. The best guesses I can make, based on what I've heard people say before, are not good criteria for human life. Usually when someone tries to argue that conception is biologically speaking human life they do so because the cell has a unique set of chromosomes -- the DNA which will proliferate throughout their body after said body has developed.

But I sincerely doubt that the mere presence of a unique strand of DNA is enough to qualify anything as life. DNA, after all, can and has been synthesized, one amino acid at a time. We do not think of these products as life, period, much less human life.

Potentiality is another criteria often brought up. But potentiality belongs to the gametes as much as the zygote. Is the menstrual cycle murder? I think not. Nocturnal emission? No.

Further, if we are relying upon biology I'd say we're actually looking at the problem from the wrong angle. Biology is the study of life as a whole. It's definition of life is largely differentiating what is alive from what is inanimate. It's not really looking at what is alive vs. what is dead. It's looking at species and ecologies, not individuals.

Also, if we're strictly scientific, there is no moral property you can ascertain from scientific observation. An individual does not become morally worthy at some point because it is alive in the eyes of science. So while we may reference this or that fact we will, very obviously, also have to introduce some sort of moral criteria and not pass our argument off as somehow scientific.

Lastly, given all that, I think the conception of time which this argument generally presupposes is entirely off. Organisms are alive in a continuum. They need to meet many criteria before they are definitively so, or before they are definitely dead. There are no necessary or sufficient conditions which are clear cut -- and certainly no singular event or point along the timeline of an individual life where something becomes morally worthy or not. The closest we might come to defining death comes from the medical field, but it's a bit hazy too. Life? There really just isn't a good point to pick where something becomes important, and before which it is not because the facts of the matter -- how life works -- doesn't easily fit into our desired legal framework.

The point of mentioning the metaphysical argument for biologically human life beginning at conception is to disprove any future argument which denies the humanity as a basis for abortion being moral.

Then.....I go on to argue against those who separate biological humanness from personhood — LostThomist

I use the word "magically" somewhat sarcastically........but what I mean by that is that...........the other places to use as the starting point for life would make it seem like a baby just popped into existence, whereas with conception you can see how it came about and thus proves itself more valid as an explanation.

Differentiating "hand waving" as an explanation for things from being able to show the causality — LostThomist

Wouldn't the zygote have to be a human life in order for it to be considered human life, though?

What about conception makes that point preferable and not "hand waving" to be human life and better than other points?

There isn't much significant difference, from my perspective, before and after. In fact I don't think you're likely to find any one point where there is going to be a significant difference, before and after.

Especially if you're just talking about biological life, from a scientific perspective.

it is philosophically impossible to claim that any group after conception is less than metaphysically human.

THEREFORE: Biological Human life begins at conceptions the same as all other mammals — LostThomist

How does you first premise connect to your second one? You begin by saying

For the purpose of a clear argument I will (for the time being) separate being biologically human from any concept of personhood. In doing so it is undeniable to say that biological human life begins at conception. — LostThomist

And then move into your metaphysical argument. But the metaphysical argument isn't connected to this beginning or your end. It doesn't argue that biological human life begins at conception.

The sperm and egg alone cannot grow a fully functional human body with free will. It is not until the sperm and egg meet that a substantial change happens and a human life begins. There is no other point in the development of the human body after conception that can be proven as the substantial change other than conception itself. — LostThomist

And, furthermore, you beg the question here by saying conception is the substantial change that happens where human life begins, even within your metaphysical argument. You go on to posit other possible places or reasons in order to argue against them -- but you don't argue for this.

Importantly: The sperm and the egg cannot grow a fully functional human body (not sure what free will has to do with this) without the mother. That's just a fact. It's not like conception is any more magical than any of the other points which you argue against.

I'd say that none of them magically make a human being -- that there simply is no point along the chain of events that magically makes a human being human.

Oi. That had to have been purposely ambiguous. So you could grade harsher on some and easier on others.

This is my point exactly. Showing that something exists unperceived and such that others can perceive it settles the interesting issue. If a philosopher continues to ask "ah but am I dreaming it?", I don't really know what he wants. — PossibleAaran

Well what if I park the car in the garage, and then ask you to go check to see if it is there. I'll give you a walkee talkee. I don't perceive the car in the garage, but you tell me that it's there. Isn't that just as good in that case?

Yes, I have read Quine. Why do you mention that?

It just struck me that some of what you were saying sounded like what he called Plato's beard. But maybe I'm off here.

Just a side note in the convo: I remember SR being treated as a minor point to GR in my physics class. SR was the sort of thing which we learned to do in order to be able to accept GR, or understand it. We, however, did not delve into GR since it required mathematics beyond what the SR class required. I only mention this because my take away was that SR wasn't meant to be taken ontologically (from a scientific realist perspective), only GR was -- in some sense GR reduced to or was "in line" with SR. I wish I could say more than that but alas I was a chemist (interested in philosophy, I hope thats obvious) and not a physicist.

I started a thread to explore being/having some time ago, but my mind got stuck. While I felt like I had the gist of the distinction, where I was stuck was with notions of character orientation, modes of being, and so forth. I'm still stuck there now, else I would have replied to my own thread by now :D.

A bit late but I do want to say I didn't want to "out" you in speaking to Banno. I have liked his exchanges with you because it's helped me get a better grasp of your philosophical orientation -- and, even if it may be frustrating for you -- I enjoy that fact.

I do not think of you as "outsider"; just thought that was worth mentioning with some of your posts I read here.

In my mind, at least -- not to contradict you, but simply to lay out how I think of these terms now -- I think of the terms in a kind of hierarchy where the first I mention is more "primary" to the last: being, existence, reality. But I know that I think of being in other terms than you do since I do not unite my thoughts on being with ourselves as humans. And maybe it is just a way of using words, too -- we may use different words for the same things. I tend to think of the way humans experience the world in terms of reality. Existence includes all logical propositions and propositions of mere reason. Being is the sort of term which underlies everything because everything, all named things whatsoever, "participate" in being. It's the sort of term which all names are a part of, and since it is so close to us (in that manner), it is hard to distinguish.

I should be able to eventually. My local library has access to a lot of academic journals. It'll just take some time since, like, I have to actually go there and stuff. :D