One thing that PF had that I think was quite effective was the automatic text speak/spelling detection. When I first signed up I bashed out a reply to someone only to be automatically informed that I should fix up my post. At the time I thought you were a bunch of snobs who I couldn't be bothered with and left. I'm sure plenty of other newbies have had similar experiences.Well I expected it wouldn't be possible, but I always thought that it was a bit too easy to sign up and spout off in pf. Good posters tend to lurk a bit anyway. Open is good, but some kind of speed hump? Actually, needing approval would work - you give it every time, but they have to wait a bit. If it's flagged up in advance, most spammers won't bother to sign up. — unenlightened
This is really interesting. I have been thinking about moral rules in analogue with the way people teach chess. At first the beginner learns rules, 'develop knights before bishops; castle quickly...' later they learn more complicated rules 'place your rook on the seventh rank...', while the best players don't evaluate positions in terms of these rules at all. Rather they use their intuition from experience playing in many situations. Splitting the game up into rules is an oversimplification and while they may often be relevant they will also lead you a stray. So from that perspective it would make sense that the most morally out-of-touch would be the ones that are most reliant on the rules.In fact, there's good evidence to show that this kind of universalizing is what the least moral among us fall back on to fill the vacuum of their moral character. I've just been listening to an interview with a researcher who questioned prisoners diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder on their moral beliefs, and their answers tended to be very much in line with rule-based systems of morality, i.e. you shouldn't steal, you shouldn't swear, you shouldn't kill etc., but with a striking lack of gradation as if the interviewees were reeling off a shopping list of moral requirements without really engaging with them because their sense of morality was based much more on their understanding of the dictats of authority than any personal sense of sympathy with the victims of the stated transgressions. — Baden
I'm not sure about this, I think that reasons for action include moral feelings i.e that we cannot separate the reason's to do something from the emotions attached to it. That's part of what is wrong with using rules they try to separate rationality from sentiments.And I think sympathy must be at the core of morality, sympathy tempered by reason. You can't rely on reasons for action alone because then you are not really inhabiting morality as StreetlightX suggested above. — Baden
I have argued elsewhere that certain features of empathy make it a poor guide to social policy. Empathy is biased; we are more prone to feel empathy for attractive people and for those who look like us or share our ethnic or national background. And empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data. As Mother Teresa put it, “If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” Laboratory studies find that we really do care more about the one than about the mass, so long as we have personal information about the one.
In light of these features, our public decisions will be fairer and more moral once we put empathy aside. Our policies are improved when we appreciate that a hundred deaths are worse than one, even if we know the name of the one, and when we acknowledge that the life of someone in a faraway country is worth as much as the life a neighbor, even if our emotions pull us in a different direction. Without empathy, we are better able to grasp the importance of vaccinating children and responding to climate change. These acts impose costs on real people in the here and now for the sake of abstract future benefits, so tackling them may require overriding empathetic responses that favor the comfort and well being of individuals today. We can rethink humanitarian aid and the criminal justice system, choosing to draw on a reasoned, even counter-empathetic, analysis of moral obligation and likely consequences. — Paul Bloom
Hey AaronR, Putnams point is about reference. He thinks that there needs to be the correct causal connection between the picture and Churchill such that for the picture to refer to Churchill, Churchill's existence itself must have had some influence. A closer example to what we are talking about could be if I write a book with characters that were supposed to exist 100 years from now. In 105 years time Jason finds the book and thinks 'this is an exact description of my mate John'. He may present the book to John as a book about him, but after they check the author, shmik (2015) they'll likely conclude that the book can't be referring to John, because the author never knew (of) John i.e there was no causal connection between John's existence and the words in the book.I think the problem with Putnam's argument is that whether or not the line traced in the sand depicts Churchill is not entirely (or even at all) determined by whether or not the ant intended it to be such a depiction, because it is at least partly dependent on the subjective evaluation of other creatures. Abstract art functions on pretty much exactly this possibility. — Aaron R
The problem is not that these individuals in the future literally are fictional characters rather that we cannot refer to them. So when think we are talking about them (as individuals) we are really just talking about and feeling empathy towards fictional characters, as we fail to refer.But I can both think about and direct my empathy toward fictional characters, can't I? Isn't that one of the very things that makes reading fictional stories so compelling? — Aaron R
In classical philosophical terms, it is very important to distinguish three domains of human activity: theoretical reason, which investigates the truth of contingent events as well as necessary truths; practical reason, which determines whether a prospective course of action is worth pursuing; and productive or technical reason, which attempts to find the best means for a given end. — From Wiki
Even if we imagine someone in a detailed way and build up a view of their lives, then someone who fits the exact description comes into existence 100 years later. Our thoughts can not have been referring to them and any empathy we have felt could not have been directed at them.An ant is crawling on a patch of sand. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line that it traces curves and recrosses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill. Has the ant traced a picture of Winston Churchill, a picture that depicts Churchill?
Most people would say, on a little reflection, that it has not. The ant, after all, has never seen Churchill, Or even a picture of Churchill, arid it had no intention of depicting Churchill. It simply traced a line (and even that was unintentional), a line that we can 'see as' a picture of Churchill. — Putnam
That really depends on the deontological rule. The rule might be "do not kill people", in which case turning on the stove is the wrong thing to do. It seems to be that whether or not some moral system is deontological or consequentialist depends on its phrasing. — Michael
No worries. I think this also could have come about because the word 'action' is ambiguous. I meant to use it as referring to agency i.e an action is something an agent does. But I can just switch to using agency, its a better word for it.This isn't just a wacky ad hoc means of getting around you, by the way. I am, in fact, very grateful for your objection, because it made me realize why people looked at me funny - they don't share my weird views about time. — Pneumenon
I guess all the typical counter arguments against utilitarianism have the utilitarian doing some harm only to have it create better consequences. In almost all of the more realistic examples, its the deontologist that can advocate causing some harm and the utilitarian that is against it. This makes sense because all the utilitarian cares about is avoiding harm (or maximizing pleasure, maximizing preferences etc) while the deontologist cares about the proper way to act.What the deontologist would not do is cause some kind of harm, justifying it as paying dividends down the line. Not short vs. long term consequences, but willingness to trade bad for good. — Pneumenon
you're not really describing deontology.Is it because P2 is good in itself (Deontology?) — Pneumenon
So here you're framing it as short term consequences vs long term consequences. But, deontologist don't concentrate on either of these, rather is the action against the rules, distasteful etc.Perhaps we could cash this out in a kind of spectrum: one is deontic to the extent that one is unwilling to allow something bad to happen for the greater good, while one is consequentialist to the extent is willing to allow something bad to happen for the greater good. That is to say, the amount of harm you're willing to cause in order to pay future dividends is directly proportional to how consequentialist you are. — Pneumenon
One of his ideas that I like is that there are 2 types of happiness. That of contentment, removing of suffering and this nice feeling in the stomach. In other words that of weakness, decline, passivity and stagnation. The other type comes from facing up to great challenges and overcoming them. To face up to great challenges is necessarily to struggle and suffer, so (at least a certain type of) suffering part of the good life.But, to say the point again, there are higher problems than all those of enjoyment, suffering, and pity, and every philosophy that leads only to these is something naive. — N
Maybe it doesn't require something outside of language but we still need an account of how language refers. If I asked how a car takes petrol and produces motion, it can't be answered by saying that it doesn't need anything out side of a car, it is something that the car does... Edit: Apart from this relatively minor point, I agree with your post.The former does not define the latter. So there is no extra "metaphysical connection" which ties language to the states it talks about (language, itself, is that connection: it needs nothing else). Realism is, instead, necessary because a state talked about is a different in empirical terms to the state of language. Reference doesn't require an extra "metaphysical connection" (i.e. logical) outside language. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I think this is a bit much, you're demanding more than you have supplied yourself. To say that language just refers does not provide any insight in to how it refers. As much as Sapientia needs to supply a theory of reference which shows that it depends on ontology you need to supply one that is independent of ontology.If you think that there is more to reference than this then you need to explain the origin and nature of whatever (meta)physical connection ties particular sounds or ideas to things which aren't these sounds and ideas (or experiences). If you can't then your claim that these other things are required for reference to work seems rather vacuous. — Yahadreas