You are claiming that by refusing to pull the lever Bob has killed five people, and this is a controversial claim on your part. — Leontiskos

No I’m not! — Fire Ologist

You literally say it in this very post:

Sitting still is both killing five people and saving one. — Fire Ologist

-

If you had the poise to think you could make this ongoing accident better and intended to make it better by pulling the lever, you are not intentionally killing one person. — Fire Ologist

Why not? (enter the doctrine of double effect)

I take the hypo to be an attempt to force you to participate. — Fire Ologist

Then I would say you are misunderstanding the trolley problem. But the deeper problem is that you are unaccountably assuming that the trolley problem was set up by an evil genius. It wasn't. It's just supposed to be a dilemma. The question is simply, "What would you do if you found yourself in this situation?" It's not, "Would you like to participate in the machination of an evil genius?"

It assumes you have to make a choice - choose five or one deaths. And under these circumstances, they are all innocent deaths. — Fire Ologist

It assumes you have to make a choice between pulling the lever or not pulling the lever. Everyone who finds themselves in that situation would be forced to make that choice. But there is a difference between choices about levers, choices about deaths, and choices about killing. You are claiming that by refusing to pull the lever Bob has killed five people, and this is a controversial claim on your part.

That, to me, is the right moral response - to stay out of the whole bloody death trap scenario. — Fire Ologist

Life happens whether we consent or not, and at times it involves tough decisions. — Leontiskos

You don't think there is an absurdity in letting the whole human race die because you don't want to kill an innocent person?

I think regardless of what you think of the morality of that behaviour, it is most definitely absurd. — Apustimelogist

I think it is "most definitely absurd" to justify killing innocents as a means to an end. Hitler was already brought up, and that's why we think Hitler was bad, after all!

But my simple point is, you need a duty in place before you can perpetrate a wrong by omission. It’s omission of a duty. The act is not the point. Sitting still is an act. Sitting still doesn’t tell you anything about whether that act perpetrates a wrong by omission or a wrong by commission, or anything.

The trolley problem, to me, creates a simple switch, if you switch the switch one way, five people die and the other way one person dies. The way you physically operate that switch is by sitting down or pulling a lever.

If we all have a duty to save the most lives at every opportunity to do so, then sitting still could be wrong by omission of that duty. If you switch the people on the tracks and put 5 on the lever side and 1 on the rolling side, then failing to pull the lever would be a wrong by omission as well. — Fire Ologist

Here is the original statement I disagreed with:

The heart of the trolley problem is this:
“Without any context or explanation, if you were forced to kill either 1 person or 5 people with no other options, which would you do?” — Fire Ologist

Here is what Bob Ross said (and I agree):

I would never pull the lever, no matter how many people I would save by doing so. Killing an innocent person is always wrong; and one cannot commit an immoral act to avoid a morally bad outcome. — Bob Ross

This is precisely the sort of answer that your construal cannot account for. You can't conceive of an omission, and therefore you assert:

What’s the difference? You are killing someone mo matter what you do. — Fire Ologist

The point at stake is omissions simpliciter. When you refuse to talk about any kinds of omissions that are not immoral omissions you are missing the point. Bob is omitting to pull the lever in order to omit killing. Is he allowed to do that? Bob thinks his omission is morally praiseworthy and someone else will think that his omission is morally blameworthy, but we first need to simply recognize that it is an omission.

As to your reasonable declaration that killing innocent people is wrong, sure it is, but folks do things that are wrong all the time (though perhaps not with such severe consequences). Thus wrongness is not a complete barrier to performing an action. — LuckyR

Sure, and people get math problems wrong all the time, too. That doesn't mean anything with respect to the question at hand. Suppose you are on a math forum and they are discussing a math problem and you say, "Ah, well it seems that you have arrived at the right answer, but people get the wrong answer all the time. Thus wrongness is not a complete barrier to arriving at an answer." This is an ignoratio elenchus at best, unless it is being proposed as an argument for mathematical (or moral) relativism.

I never understand these kind of criticisms. It reminds me of "If a tree falls in the woods.." arguments. One can say this about ANY moral claim. For example, if no humans were around, there would be no need for morality regarding murder. THUS, how can murder be wrong (whether through consent, rights, dignity of the human, or other normative ethic) if the norms behind "Murder is wrong" do not exist prior to the existence of humans?

Obviously this is fallacious thinking. Rather, we can simply say that "Once humans DO exist, then 'Murder is wrong' comes into play". The same with procreation. Once humans DO exist, then "Procreation is wrong" comes into play. I don't see it being more complicated than that. ALL moral claims presuppose "life" (people) exist(!) in the first place. — schopenhauer1

No, that's not what I am saying. Your premise is <Consent should precede birth>. Your conclusion follows, <Because consent does not precede birth, therefore we should not procreate>. This precedence is both temporal and ontological. It is that premise that I am targeting. Consent doesn't precede birth. Birth precedes consent. That's how reality works. What you are doing is asking for or wishing for a different reality. The ontological principle of reality is that we receive before we give. Your alternative principle would have us give (consent) before receiving (existence).

Antinatalism reminds me of Gnosticism, where nature and the material world were created by an evil god and one is thus supposed to escape this entire order of being. Or in modern terms, something like The Matrix. The true god is represented by Consent, and in the alternative, non-evil universe, Consent reigns. Given our gnostic situation, the best we can do is escape the material order by ceasing all procreation. Historically gnostics really did tend to eschew procreation.

(Edit: I now see you have authored a thread, "If there is a god, is he more evil than not?" :razz:)

I think this is throwing out a lot of important values we hold in other arenas. For example, if as a consenting adult I force you into a game you don't want to play because I think the game is bigger than any one individual's refusal, that seems mighty suspicious. And I am talking personal ethics here, which procreation (should) fall under. — schopenhauer1

I think consent has a place, but not the highest place. It does not trump everything else.

I also think it is a bit of a red herring to compare it to parental care of children under a certain age (often 18 yo). — schopenhauer1

But I never made that comparison...?

No it’s not almost certainly, because it’s not the premise at all. I’m saying sitting still doesn’t reveal an intention, you have to seek more facts (such as ask the person) what their intention is by sitting still.

A lifeguard sees a person drowning and does nothing and watches the person drown. That is intentional conduct. It is a wrong done by omission of a duty. — Fire Ologist

Here is what you said:

It’s not an omission if you intend to kill five people. It’s how you carry out your intention. It’s a physical act to stay seated in order to kill five. — Fire Ologist

Here is how I characterized it:

1. Nothing which is intended can come about by omission.
2. Suppose the death of the five is intended.
3. Therefore, in that case the not-pulling of the lever which results in the death of the five is not an omission. — Leontiskos

I notice that in the paper the situation is portrayed as "killing one or killing five",but that would be an inaccurate representation of cause and effect. The omission of pulling the lever does not kill anyone. — Tzeentch

I don't claim that the paper exactly parallels the trolley case, but later in the paper that portrayal is specifically disputed, so it does not depart in this manner.

Negligence, culpability, these are legal terms, and I think under most legal systems you would be charged with second-degree murder if you pushed some innocent bystander on the tracks, regardless of your intentions.

If you are talking about these terms in a moral sense, I think they need to be explained in more detail. When is one morally culpable? Negligence implies a failure to do a duty - what duty are we talking about here, and when can one be said to be morally negligent? — Tzeentch

This is a fair point, although I do not think that negligence and culpability are primarily legal in the sense of being non-moral. My guess is that the etymology and cultures within which they arose did not think of the legal sphere as a non-moral sphere. Our age which tries to talk about non-moral legal realities strikes me as odd indeed. So I think they are legal and moral.

So you are saying the scenario is asking us whether, in these circumstances, a duty arises to act at all, and then complicates it by then asking if you fail to act at all, or pull the lever, are you culpable for committing murder, or culpable by omission for committing the murder of five? — Fire Ologist

Yes, part of the trolley problem requires us to determine the nature of such omissions.

That’s not what I am saying about omission. I am saying there must be an affirmative duty prior to there being an intentional omission of acting on that duty.

If you intend to kill five you can sit still, but you are committing an act of sitting still.

If you see you have a duty to save five and you sit still intentionally, you are committing a wrong because of your duty by your act of omission. — Fire Ologist

This is a different point, and it goes back to my claim that an omission and an immoral omission are two different things. You have continually been unable to make this distinction.

What you said is, "It’s not an omission if you intend to kill five people," and the premise is almost certainly that, "Nothing which is intended can come about by omission." You're mixing up two separate arguments. This latter claim says nothing about duties.

An inversion is occurring where consent becomes more fundamental than life. A similar inversion occurs where the justification of society displaces Rawls' question of how best to order society. The problem is that life is the precondition for consent, and is therefore prior to consent. Making consent the summum bonum is therefore misguided from the start. Either God or Nature proves that consent does not deserve the highest place, for it simply does not occupy the highest place. These sorts of arguments look to be a critique of reality, and are incompatible with an acceptance of reality. I suppose one could argue that consent should precede life, but at the end of the day the simple fact of the matter is that it doesn't.

The variant on Rawls' argument is somewhat interesting: negative utilitarianism in the service of antinatalism. "I should not have a child if they will suffer much." Meh. I don't think life is ultimately about the avoidance of suffering any more than I think life is ultimately about consent, and I have found that those who are excessively focused on such things tend to lead impoverished lives. I'd say life is bigger than suffering or consent.

- The view your construal excludes is well-represented by Peter L. P. Simpson's, "Justice, Scheffler, and Cicero." The paper also constitutes a response to 's OP.

So the other guy on the trolley who is just sitting there unaware of anything, omitting to do anything at all, does he have a duty to choose a lane and save some people? Is he omitting his duty of vigilance over what lane the trolley should be in? — Fire Ologist

Arguably, yes.

The whole reason there might be a duty to save the right people is because you were given the responsibility to do anything at all. Or you take responsibility to do anything at all. But the raw facts of the scenario don’t address any duties at all. There is no reason to blame someone for failing to act when they had no duty to act.

So if we are allowed to bring in exterior facts, like a duty to save anyone, we can rework the scenario any way we want. The scenario as it stands, to me, doesn’t present a moral question about saving or killing human lives, it presents a moral question about whether there is a duty to make any decision at all, to take any action at all, to participate and consent to one or the other committed acts (5 or 1) dying. — Fire Ologist

As you say, whether a duty exists is part of the problem. The fact that the problem does not explicitly mention duties does not mean that duties are not relevant to the problem. Moral questions of this kind almost never explicitly mention duties.

Again, my point here is that what you described as "the heart of the trolley problem" is not the heart of the trolley problem. What you boiled it down to is not a problem or a dilemma at all. Everyone knows that the death of five is worse than the death of one, ceteris paribus. If it were that simple then there would be no disagreement over the trolley problem.

It’s not an omission if you intend to kill five people. — Fire Ologist

This argument has already been addressed:

Yes, it is. Just as you can be culpable for an omission, so too can you effect some outcome via an omission. Your claim that because someone can achieve an intended outcome by not-doing something does not invalidate the fact that not-doing-something is an omission. — Leontiskos

Specifically, here is your argument:

1. Nothing which is intended can come about by omission.
2. Suppose the death of the five is intended.
3. Therefore, in that case the not-pulling of the lever which results in the death of the five is not an omission.

(1) is false, and the fact that one can be culpable for an omission proves that it is false. If nothing which is intended could come about by omission, then one could never be culpable for an omission. But this is mistaken because some omissions bear on volition, and these kinds of omissions are called negligence. Whether omitting to pull the lever involves negligence is part of the problem at stake.

-

If you omit pulling the lever, are you omitting everything then, or choosing and physically enacting the killing of 5? — Fire Ologist

One of the central aspects of the trolley problem gets at the question of whether one is equally responsible for omissions and commissions:

To not-pull-the-lever is an omission. [...] Whether such an omission is wrong will depend on the analysis. — Leontiskos

Whether this omission amounts to killing or murder is part of the point of the trolley problem. It can't just be stipulated away. — Leontiskos

If I had a duty to save the most people when riding a trolley that had no proper conductor, than sitting still would be an immoral act of omission. — Fire Ologist

I have not spoken of "immoral acts of omission." I have spoken about omissions. See:

To not-pull-the-lever is an omission. [...] Whether such an omission is wrong will depend on the analysis. — Leontiskos

Whether this omission amounts to killing or murder is part of the point of the trolley problem. It can't just be stipulated away. — Leontiskos

To not-pull-the-lever is an omission. — Leontiskos

No it’s not. — Fire Ologist

It obviously is.

I want to kill five people? My choice is killing five people. How do I actively effect that choice - by actively refusing to pull the lever, but intentionally sitting still. These are not omissions. — Fire Ologist

Yes, it is. Just as you can be culpable for an omission, so too can you effect some outcome via an omission. Your claim that because someone can achieve an intended outcome by not-doing something does not invalidate the fact that not-doing-something is an omission.

1a. something neglected or left undone — Merriam Webster | Omission

To not-pull-the-lever is to leave the act of pulling the lever undone. This is particularly obvious when the whole question is one of whether to pull the lever. The one who considers this question and then decides not to pull the lever has omitted to pull the lever. Whether this omission amounts to killing or murder is part of the point of the trolley problem. It can't just be stipulated away.

It’s not a moral question - it’s a practical one — Fire Ologist

Moral questions are always practical.

It is only useful where we know nothing about the past or the future, the situation is entirely decontextualised from reality and then we are commanded to chose. — Benkei

The trolley problem says, "If you didn't know anything about the individuals, what would you do?" This is not decontextualized from reality given the fact that there are times in reality when we do not know anything about the individuals who will be affected by our choices. It is a somewhat tidy way to instantiate meta-ethical presuppositions within a simple problem.

I would say that the trolley problem is limited but not pointless. In particular I think it is pedagogically limited. The only strongly principled opposition to the trolley problem that I can see would be on the basis of something like "situation ethics," which is wary of moral principles per se. To speak about moral principles is already to have abstracted away from concrete reality, but it does not follow that consideration of moral principles is morally irrelevant. Most would say that consideration of moral principles is highly morally relevant, and that the trolley problem gets at moral principles. Thus I think it is useful if we were to find ourselves in similar situations (as others have noted), but it is also useful whenever we are in a situation where the moral principle in question comes to bear (i.e. whenever we must choose between two groups of people the principle contained in the trolley problem should be part of our analysis so long as we think the trolley problem is decidable).

I'm not sure I agree that scenarios like the trolley problem never happen - I think they probably do a lot in a messier way — Apustimelogist

If you go to the YouTube channel of <this video> the philosopher has another video on real-life parallels to the trolley problem (I currently have YouTube blocked to avoid wasting time, so I don't have the direct link). Off the top of my head, the case of Dudley and Stephens is fairly similar, and went to English court.

A wrong by omission occurs when you already recognize an affirmative good deed (saving a baby that falls in a fountain) and omit the action, choose not to act. You might be able to fabricate a trolley scenario where there is a wrong of omission (maybe with babies and pedophiles on the tracks or something), but choosing to stay seated is choosing not to pull the level, as much as pulling the lever is choosing not to stay seated. I only see acts of commission in leaving 5 alive or leaving 1 alive. No acts of omission. — Fire Ologist

To not-pull-the-lever is an omission. This is what you have left out of consideration. Whether such an omission is wrong will depend on the analysis.

You said that the heart of the trolley problem is, “Without any context or explanation, if you were forced to kill either 1 person or 5 people with no other options, which would you do?” The trolley problem gives two options: pull the lever or don't. Someone might construe those two options as "kill one or five," but all sorts of people do not construe the options that way, and therefore the trolley problem does not reduce to those two options. In fact, "Kill one or five" is not a dilemma; but the trolley problem is.

I actually think the moral choice here is to confront the trolley trap maker and say “I choose neither so all that follows remains your doing.” You could say that I am choosing not ro pull the lever, but no - if we are to judge my lever pulling as good or bad, we have to know what I would consent to, am consenting to as I act. — Fire Ologist

When you say "consent" what you seem to mean is "intention" or "rationale." In ethics it is common to ask about what should be done. This is not an exclusion of intention or rationale, largely because the question will soon follow your answer, "Why?"

Beyond that, to say, “I don’t consent to the dilemma” is not an option. The question is simply, “What would you do if you were in this situation?” You can refuse to answer the question, but if you find yourself in that situation you will not have the option to avoid it on the basis of consent. Life happens whether we consent or not, and at times it involves tough decisions.

Then the arithmetic is not crucial, and your justification based on the arithmetic is not valid. — unenlightened

Yep. :up: To appeal to arithmetic is to fall prey to the counterexample. To withdraw the arithmetical justification is to withdraw the only justification provided for the decision. There is an undeniable analogy which obtains between the trolley case and the organ transplant case. The similarity is strong enough to place the burden of proof on the naysayer to explain why they are relevantly different.

- Okay thanks, that is helpful. :up:

- :up: Essential to the trolley problem is the possible distinction between an act and an omission, and excluded that distinction from the problem. Regardless of what the trolley problem was to begin with, it has now become a stock argument for consequentialism. It is essentially the cultural reaction to deontology.

You’ll find a thread that I’ve created about him here. — Wayfarer

:ok:

I waffled a bit when I wrote "and oppose(s) naturalism." I think it is clear that Vervaeke is a Platonist, but his relationship with naturalism seems a bit complicated. Maybe it would be better to say that he wishes to redirect naturalism away from its anti-Platonist history. It may all come down to the question of how Plato and Vervaeke understand God and transcendence. At the very least I would say that Vervaeke is opposed to the standard, reductionist tropes of naturalism, such as materialism. What do you think?

That is an interesting question contrasting the ancient against the modern. I don't know how to think about Gerson's thesis in that context. My retort was to say that the "transjective"t sounded like a case of "having one's cake and eating it too" that Gerson objected to. A compromise between "materialists" and "idealist"; A position upon the history of philosophy as practiced now combined with an interpretation of ancient text. — Paine

That's possible, but I understand Wayfarer's implicit source (John Vervaeke) to be using "transjectivity" to uphold Platonism and oppose naturalism.

The difference between Plotinus and Aristotle that I have argued for is not put forward with that design. The ideas seem different to me. — Paine

Good posts. I agree with what you say about Aristotle in them. I would have to go back to see what you've said about Plotinus.

Leaving aside my (or other people's) objections to Gerson's idea of Ur-Platonism, Gerson certainly seems to group the 'naturalists' as unified in their opposition to what he supports:

[...]

But I take your point that a collection of five "anti's" has problems asserting a clear thesis. That highlights a difference with other critiques of the modern era. — Paine

Yes, that's a fair point. The five points converge on anti-naturalism.

Responding to your added text, the idea of transjective constituents would count as antithetical to what Gerson required. — Paine

I don't know too much about Vervaeke, but I don't think he would see it this way. There is an interesting question about whether the overcoming of the subjective/objective division existed before modernity. I am currently reading John Deely's book on Heidegger and he would say that it did exist, albeit in a qualified and seminal way.

- Wittgenstein criticizes in order to propose an alternative. He does not criticize in order to continue in the same general direction, with a slight adjustment. The whole, "What I preach to you I also preach to myself," is not particularly convincing. It simply is not true to the extent that it would need to be in order to avoid the fact that a distancing from philosophy is occurring.

...And now I will disappear for a time.

He only sees that logic and interest are tied together. But Cicero argued that a good speaker had to be a good man. Plato just didn’t trust individuals to be up to the task. — Antony Nickles

Anything can be used as a tool. Philosophy is no exception.

The history of philosophy is rife with one camp picking apart another and calling into question what philosophy actually is. — Antony Nickles

It is also rife with those who pretend that what they represent is more than a camp.

Yes, the history of philosophy is one attempt after another of trying to remove the human... — Antony Nickles

@schopenhauer1 has already addressed this strawman.

And drawing a limit around knowledge is exactly what Plato... — Antony Nickles

On the contrary, the boundary excludes certain forms of skepticism, and the one who is skeptical of philosophy has ceased doing philosophy. This is particularly true in this case where his skepticism attempts to undercut the discipline itself.

I would argue Witt is saving the true nature of philosophy from itself. — Antony Nickles

...by creating something new, something incommensurable with philosophy. This is yet another attempt to have it both ways.

When does one step outside of philosophy into psychology? — Fooloso4

The point that I have been making over and over again is that the one making the criticism of philosophy is intending to step outside philosophy. This seems obvious, unless someone wishes to claim that when Wittgenstein criticizes philosophy he is at the same time criticizing himself? It is neither here nor there whether someone who intends to step outside philosophy is still unknowingly and unintentionally doing philosophy.

- If the critique is only a critique of a particular epoch or school of philosophy, and not a critique of philosophy tout court, then my point is moot. However, many Wittgenstenians would not accept this appraisal, and the words used in the quotes from this thread which we are considering do not reflect such an appraisal.

Well, the form in which the question is posed, "What does philosophy want?", has neither a first nor a third person pronoun, so it is a matter of interpretation, of context, of intention. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I edited my post to include this idea. I don't think it changes my point.

--- Perhaps here it's worth mentioning that Antony Nickles offered a statement; I take responsibility for the question his statement would serve as an answer to. --- — Srap Tasmaner

A statement about a question, "I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”)..." ().

Why do you think it was clear the question was not asked within the "philosophical frame"? — Srap Tasmaner

When someone engages in the psychoanalysis of philosophy they are surely not in a self-consciously philosophical frame. I'm not sure how you could think that someone who claims to be examining the motives of philosophy tout court is at the same time thinking of themselves as a philosopher. In Wittgenstein's case he will reject those motives after analyzing them, and then profess to be doing something different from what philosophy had previously been doing, which makes my point all the more plausible.

Witt is solving a problem for many philosophers, that simply wasn't there to begin with, EXCEPT for certain ones demanding various forms of rigorous world-to-word standards.. And those seem to be squarely aimed at the analytics, if anyone at all. — schopenhauer1

I agree, and an interesting subtopic regards the distinction between the kind of philosophy which constructively builds on what has come before, versus the kind of philosophy which is a rupture with all that came before. I want to say that the latter kind is a weak in various ways. It also tends to walk hand in hand with hubris. And I am willing to concede that Wittgenstein is following this trend, not inaugurating it all by himself.

I'm just content that the human lexicon is intelligent. — L'éléphant

I am glad that this part of the human lexicon is still intelligent at this point in history, and I am pleasantly surprised that the argument does not seem to have have purchase on TPF. At the same time, I do not want to take such intelligence for granted.

Because it's a question about philosophy? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, and this is particularly true in the case where one is distancing themselves from philosophy. One could raise the question without leaving the philosophical frame, but it seems clear that that is not what is happening here. This would be the difference between the question, "What is it that we are doing as philosophers?" and the question, "What is it that those philosophers are doing?"

(And the reification of "philosophy" does not change this point, nor does asking about the motivation behind philosophy as opposed to asking about the activity of philosophy.)

I'll say it one more time, then I'm done. Medical care does not include only treatment or prevention of disease or damage. It also includes promotion of health. Pregnant women are not sick, but they still need care. I think it makes sense that that care is provided through the medical care system. — T Clark

No one is questioning the idea that traditional healthcare includes prenatal care. You are missing the point. I am explaining why some people are motivated to try to classify pregnancy as a disease. As noted in my first post to you, what are at stake are things like abortion and contraception, not prenatal care.

To take the proposition, <if something is a disease, then it should be treated by traditional healthcare> and draw the conclusion, <if something is treated by traditional healthcare, then it must be a disease> is to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent. The other thing to remember is that pregnancy is a condition, and therefore those who want traditional healthcare to remove or prevent this condition must argue that it is a malignant condition (i.e. a "disease").

But the question isn't why you or I do, or don't do, what philosophy does, but why does philosophy do what it does? — Srap Tasmaner

I am pointing out the fact that, according to their own intentional frame, the one who asks this question is no longer doing philosophy.

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that pregnant women shouldn't go to Ob/Gyns for care while they're pregnant or that the care shouldn't be covered by insurance? What about my annual physical? What about well-baby checkups? — T Clark

Diseases are cured or prevented, not carried to term. You are here speaking about accepting pregnancy and carrying it to term, which is incompatible with the idea that pregnancy is a disease. Traditionally, care for pregnant women has been ordered towards the natural term of the pregnancy: birth. Those who wish to construe pregnancy as a disease are those who do not wish to carry pregnancy to term. We do not carry diseases to term.

- Yes, and if X is a disease then its treatment must, ceteris paribus, be legal, insurance-provided, and an interest of medical research. Further, doctors have a responsibility to treat diseases, and therefore much turns on whether X is classified as a disease. The motivation for making pregnancy a disease is primarily practical, not speculative.

Are there really non-goofy people who propose calling pregnancy a disease? — T Clark

Those who want to construe things like abortion and contraception as forms of traditional healthcare are eventually forced to claim that pregnancy is a disease.

- "To examine why philosophy wants X," is to intentionally step outside of philosophy and into psychology (or else anthropology). It is to say, "I am no longer doing the thing that philosophy does."

- Aye :up:

Before going into the details of what Aristotle said or did not say, I would like to think about Rorty as the poster child for what Gerson militates against. Rorty is baldly "historicist" in his description of the 'end of philosophy'. I agree with Gerson that Rorty is too general and reductive in how the practice is conceived. — Paine

Yes, good point.

But is Rorty the best exemplar of what Gerson opposes? I have been questioning the unity imparted by Gerson upon classical texts in previous discussions. The assumed unity of what is being opposed by Gerson needs some consideration. — Paine

It seems to me that Gerson is not assuming a unity in what he opposes. I have understood your critique to be different, namely the claim that he mistakenly assumes the unity of what he proposes (e.g. Aristotle's inclusion). UR is a (overly?) complex thesis, but given that it consists of five "anti's" I don't think it envisions a unified opposition.

Taken too broadly, this battle of the books will make no distinction between the differences between different models. To pluck out one among many, will the argument about what is innate versus what is developed through events in life hinge only upon the categories by which they are described? Or will the process lead to discoveries yet unknown by studying them?.

That prompts the question of how Aristotle was searching for something new or not. And that is different from asking how a set of propositions, defended (and opposed) centuries later, relates to contemporary activities. — Paine

I may not be fully grasping your point here, but it would seem that for Gerson that difference between Plato and Aristotle (innate versus developed) is an accidental difference, especially when compared to what someone like Rorty is doing. Presumably for Gerson the analogous difference between Descartes and Locke is also not a difference that would place either one of them outside Platonism/philosophy. Aristotle and Locke (and Descartes) were searching for something new, but within certain boundaries.

Is it? — Srap Tasmaner

Yep.

Is that also predominantly psychological? No philosophy? — Srap Tasmaner

That's a claim about human nature. This is not only different but, arguably, diametrically opposed to a predominantly psychological claim.