"How do we know..." you asked earlier. Exactly. I counter with, "Should you know, and if you agree that you should, how would you determine the answer?"

Ans- By asking. This has been the advice of many responders so far.

Sam, that changes things somewhat. For me, though, it would be little. I would still offer the small courtesy, if that is all it turns out to be, of asking if the ring was an intended part of the box's contents. It's the right thing to do. Thing is, you won't know unless you actually determine that it's the right thing...by having asked. If he/she insists it's part of the deal, you can enjoy it any way you wish materially or spiritually secure that it is truly yours.

This was most likely unintended. If the ring, forget the diamond, were worth anything close to the cost of the most expensive non-ring object in the box, it's likely to have been an error. Who gives up such things and fails to wink at the buyer saying, "Oh, there's a little surprise in there that you are sure to be grateful to have?"

Men almost never wear diamond rings...women do. Women lose diamond rings off their fingers all the time. Seriously. The come off reaching into laundry machines, handling items in stores, reaching into grocery bags... How could a diamond ring end up in a box of items you purchased for much less than the value of the ring, diamond included this time?

As the person just above has said, treat people with dignity (one of Kant's principles if not stated quite that way). Kant also talked of the Good Will. How should you be oriented to people in a way you wouldn't like them to be oriented to YOU?

I have never forgotten the occasion when, just prior to my first year of university, I dropped a wad of money bills from my pants pocket. Desperately, I went to the store's lost and found desk an hour later and found, to my sober and grateful relief, that a well-intentioned person demonstrated concretely what Good Will really means.

Philosophy leaves room for speculation where religion does not.

Truths are conditional in philosophy, whereas in religion they are not.

Philosophy's only arrogance lies in its assumption that its sphere encompasses all forms of method, whereas religion generally eschews method in favour of rote memory, prescription, exegesis, and dogma.

Religion and philosophy enjoy a mutual proximity only in their treatment of morality. In logic, they are not so close due to the insistence upon blind faith in the former. Their greatest interrelationship is that both disciplines are practiced by humans.

Nullum iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius. - Terentius

Not with a bang, but a whimper.- T.S. Elliot, "The Hollow Men"

Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. - Julius Caesar

Belief is convenient. - gloaming

Economies, like all systems, require 'systems thinking' in order to understand what's really going on. Less than about 5% of the world's population is schooled in systems thinking and/or are capable of implementing it.
Every person alive, rich or poor, wants to maximize his/her advantages, potential, development, and way of living. Almost all of us will do so at the expense of others, including those we hold closest to us. So, while those who run businesses (meaning....employing humans) want to derive the greatest benefit from their labours, such as they are, their employees want the same things. The trick lies in the balance, the equilibrium. Equilibrium, over the past 45 years, has meant outsourcing or outright moving of factories and assembly plants to places where the equilibrium can be maintained. Trouble is, it never was a true equilibrium. It was always a drive to maximize profits/power/prestige/affirmation. It was always a scheme to get elected. It was always a way to build convenience distributively (taxes for schools, highways, day cares, hospitals, government buildings, shorter lineups at services, etc). All these things cost money. The money only ever comes from primary industries because that is where true wealth comes from. The rest is 'value-added' service of some kind. As mines and other primary industries are forced to close for any reason, public pressure, pollution, ores run out eventually, markets drop off and production costs more than revenue for the product, capitalization falls when investors abandon, etc, the outright costs of things rise. The vaunted smart phones go from a few hundred dollars to parts of plans where their true costs must be borne, and not by the company selling them. How does someone working at WalMart afford to maintain a data plan and a cell phone, plus a car?! And three kids? Increasingly, via stamps and welfare. Who provides those? How?

What is to be included in the set or sets of 'things'? We need to operationalize this first.

Quite a range of choices, all sensible to me and I appreciate the choices.

For me:

Piano - Piano Cto No. 5 in E Flat by Beethoven


Symphony - No. 7 by Beethoven


Organ - Toccata by Widor, Symphony No. 5 (I follow that closely with Handel's Organ Cti)

Solo Voice (male) - Russell Oberlin, Bach's Canatata "Wiederstehe Doch der Sunde"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFgxED6eIWE

Solo Voice (female) - Emma Kirkby, "Laudate Dominum" by Mozart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUrcLzk5oKE


Polyphony - Tallis, "Spem in Allium." (Huelgas Ensemble)


Solo Violin - Nathan Milstein performing Bach's Allegro Assai, Sonata No. 3 (at age of 80).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mYVT6CeAec

Okay, I see that I typed 'did' instead of 'die.' Sorry for not seeing my error sooner and correcting myself.

Death is merely an inevitable condition accruing to all of us, regardless of what brings it on. So, I see it as irrelevant in and of itself. What I meant is that, once all there is to us is history, because WE ARE history :-) ..heh!...the person perpetrating the injustice will have come off worse than the person who suffered it. I believe this is what Socrates was thinking. Life is now, but the future is forever. So is the past. We don't remember the millions of faces-with-names who were tortured, killed, or otherwise diminished by the Nazis, as a typical example, but we sure know more about those who perpetrated those indignities. And not because we hold them in high regard.

What does death have to do with the topic?

A triumph of desire over pleasure? Hardly. Hedonism is the force majeure of modern thinking, as I see it. Self indulgence is a pressure, to be sure, but it's mostly as an end-state that it is manifested in an ocean of tattooed skin, piercings, dyed hair, possession of the latest techno-gadgets, an internet awash in selfies in stills and video, forgetting carbon footprint in favour of 'skip the dishes' door-to-door prepared meals, and a number of other self-indulgences.

I am going to side with Socrates. There is no suffering but that it is initiated in a mind capable of administering it. Prima facie, the doer is worse than the sufferer. We all suffer in some way, even apparently unjustly. But life is transitory, whereas 'our story', our legacy, or what is left of us after we did, will suffer the ignominy of having done the injustice. Those whose legacy can lay claim to have suffered are going to be much better off in the long run for having endured it or having succumbed to its ravages.

If you are alone in any rational way, to whom do you address the question...in a meaningful way?

"...
By which standard would we be measuring our internal ethical rules and external judgments that allow us to change our internal moral compass or decide not to? "

By our standard of comfort with the results and our association with how it makes us feel. Included in the results are the approbation or censure from onlookers or from those directly affected by our actions, or by our own assessment of the outcomes if those directly affected are unable or unwilling to respond.

Agreed, and why I stated that co-operation isn't quite as Hobbesian as its alternative. I don't really believe in altruism, and no 'behaviourist' should.

Many people say things fatuously thinking that they sound enlightened and important. They haven't thought them through, or think so little of the reader/listener that they leave it arcane and abstruse and for those others to figure out for themselves. Context is everything, though, and I haven't seen the film or read anything else about it. I might be missing something quite obvious, something that helps to make his 'maxim' make a lot of sense.

As it stands for me, it doesn't ring true. I have many delirious moments that I cannot share without a great deal of effort. Also, I learned early in life to be contented. That goes a long way to being happy. (Thanks, Mom!!) To me, happiness is an internal condition. It can be shared, but it needn't be.

Or, would our author need to say the same thing about sadness?

Knowledge, to me, is a set of information that affords the holder greater predictive capacity. You could argue that there is false knowledge, but that, to me, is introducing fly sh.. into the pepper.

I will have to think about this and hopefully respond when I am more 'with it' than I am at the moment. Still nursing my morning pot of tea....

To me, though, just as an initial cast into the last ripples, morality is a hedge against chaos. Our physical universe is mirrored by that very rational immorality that you introduce here, the baseline. While it might serve the immediate and myopic requirement to reproducing, the biological imperative, it doesn't generally invite the necessary co-operation with likeminded people. It is divisive, self-serving abjectly in a way that co-operation isn't....quite so...….Hobbesian.

Not true. You do the right thing because it FEELS right and not because you have been tought that it is right.

People who have little compunction about self-service undoubtedly do as you suggest....they act if it feels right. Those of us who are more careful, more oriented toward the service to others, or who merely wish to live less-encumbered and troubled by the reproaches of onlookers with whom we share the cultural space and appurtenances, consider what IS right.

Yes, that is a bit afield. It's a different conversation. I don't know that secular/atheist thinkers would offer to 'do the right thing' for any less self-serving reasons. We all do what we are reinforced for doing. If that is a utilitarian aim, is it for the sake of the 'greater good', or because the person acting wishes to satisfy that aim? Is his purpose for the greater good or to adhere to the principle? What does she get out of it...what's in it for her. Some would say that it ought to be, or is, for the general satisfaction. Some would say it is for altruistic reasons. Either way, it is to diminish an inner tension or dissonance.

And, to address your statement about religion and morality, if the person accepts that the rules and values that govern them are inherently good, or have intrinsic worth, does it matter from what field of reasoning they come if that person then acts accordingly? Is religion going to be necessarily corrupt or mistaken in urging people not to steal from each other, whether it is trust or material things?

You might wish to learn a bit about Larry Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development. His thinking is that we change our orientation from pure self-satisfaction to an outward orientation and then ultimately to a universal and high set of values, although he suggests that it is the somewhat rare adult that will get to that lofty sixth stage. There are some problems with his method and conclusions, which you can learn at your leisure, but suffice it to say that he has a reasonable working model for how children move from 'the self' to 'being of service to others', which mature and autonomous adults must necessarily become in order to be parents and to work with others.

"...Is it descriptive in a subjective or objective manner? "
If I am correct in stating, as I did, that it is both descriptive and quantifiable...………………
;-)

The skeptic assiduously avoids becoming mired in the concrete of rectitude and certainty. That is to say, she studiously maintains an open mind.

the problem with communism is that its adherents and proponents, and its intended subjects, are humans. If we could just get rid of those increasing numbers of pesky humans...……………….

Aleksander- "...If, in this hypothesis, god didnt exist, how would mankind as a whole decide what is wrong and what is right? moral or immoral?..."

Philosophers have long taken it that humanity is fully capable of deriving objective ethical and moral reasoning outside of the bounds and confines of organized religion. We seem to agree that religions have contributed immensely to our moral values, but some values are entirely 'secular' in origin.

As for subjective/relative ethical values, and their moral sub-sets, this should simply stand to reason; they were generated largely outside of the confines of religion, or because of those confines. The same could be said, and for the same reason, for some objective ethical reasoning; some deeper thinking or new experiences relegated the teachings and values of organized religion to the slag-heap where they belong.

"Before anyone can answer this, you have to prove that he does exist so that we can then take him out of the picture and see what is left.
Where is your proof?..."

I don't follow your reasoning. We should just as well assume he doesn't exist, and then you can dispense with a proof that he does, and you have '...what is left.' You place an unnecessary condition on his topic. I suggest you engage him directly.

It is a condition. It can be, at the same time, an aim, a process, and a precursor to an end-state. It can be both descriptive and quantifiable. It can have both positive and negative values.

"...We only care about the people that are closest to us..."

Perhaps, to be more precise, we care most about those closest to us. We reserve a special place, a primacy, to those whom we know best and with whom we interact most often and most intimately. If this is the case, I could understand it since I don't know everyone, and couldn't possibly do so or interact with all the world's citizens intimately even on a monthly basis.

"... But, if your son or daughter or wife or husband asked you for the same favor, you would think twice..."

I think you meant that I wouldn't think twice. However, you'd be mistaken. With experience and maturity working for me at over 65 years of age, I know better than to act without consideration of ALL kinds. I choose to be careful, to be discerning, late in life. I think it's a duty by now.


"...It is morally right in some sense to want to increase the sphere of interest to encompass your fellow citizens and humanity..."

I can't really argue with that; it seems self-evident. I would want the whole planet to treat my grandchildren and their children as they would each other, with equity, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, etc.

"... Thus, if there is a philosophy or school of thought (think classical conservativism for example) that encourages or negates these tendencies to increase the sphere of interest, then it seems that a judgment can be passed on their moral worth..."


Does classical conservatism restrict to favour only those known to them? If so, and it's not demonstrated in anything you've offered thus far, are they different from liberals in that way? Perhaps you are conflating provincialism with a desire to see one's own flourish by devoting the limited resources each of them has to that end. It doesn't follow that classical conservatives have little or no positive regard for 'strangers'.

LOL!!

Jake, if he's wrong about what he replied originally, demonstrate as much. Just because he doesn't have a PhD (mebbe..?), or isn't published, or doesn't wish to/cannot provide written substance authored by him to demonstrate his interest in the topic doesn't mean he's wrong. Hence, and once again, ad hominem. Do you know what an ad hominem is? It's when you attempt to silence your opposition by irrelevant utterings or material. His authorship, or lack thereof, is not a demonstration that he is write or wrong. Your challenging him and pointing to his lack of authorship/unwillingness to produce same, are NOT proof that you have prevailed in your argument.

"... To debunk this, show us the articles YOU have written on nuclear weapons. There are none, right? …"
Ummm….what? An ad hominem?!?! In a philosophical discussion??!?!? Tsk tsk.

Tee hee!

Bitter wrote, "...Since the definition of the male orgasm is to ejaculate..."

This is a very common misconception. Ejaculation is entirely separate from the male orgasm. The orgasm precedes the ejaculatory response, even if by a scant second. Usually, that intense eye-rolling feeling takes place two or three full seconds prior to ejaculation...and this is the orgasm.

http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/stages-male-sexual-response

"...That basically means we shouldn't use people and that, of course, means people shouldn't be considered as having a purpose..."

I would take it as meaning that people shouldn't have your purpose. And if it that is true, then your subsequent statement is false. Rather straightforward.

"I think heterosexuality is inherently related to patriarchal subordination of women..."

Agreed. Just like homosexuality is inherently related to the patriarchal subordination of men.

If arranged by contract, either 'marriage' should be kept according to the understanding at the time. If a person cheats, and the process was intended to generate a monogamous relationship, cheating breaches the contract.
It's just me, but I feel that, based on MY arrangement with my only 'partner' in marriage, an open marriage is an oxymoron. Even if both partners agree to 'stray', or to seek hedonism with others, if their original contract was entered into under the rubric of a 'church' wedding, they are both in breach. They should both agree to end the marriage and then formalize it as something else...or not.

All contracts are meant to build formal trust and predictability. Any breach is theft because it robs the injured party, or if you prefer, the one still feeling bound by the original terms, of that trust and predictability. It is as injurious to a marriage as it is to society as a whole, and for the same reason; you can't build a society in chaos, deceit, theft, self-indulgence, and lack of compassion or empathy. In short, you have no relationship if it provides no avenue for trust and for predicting the maintenance of the terms originally expressed and promised by the several parties.

I recall one of the Seven Duties of William Ross. It is 'promise keeping'.

However, if several people agree to form some form of relationship among themselves, at least it is legal and done with informed consent. Even so, if one of them strays outside, they are still in breach.

Perhaps the 'easier' way out is more correct if you mean there are only two choices. There is appeasement, or capitulation, in addition to negotiated settlement and war. I would place the first two well ahead of war on a continuum of ease, a position apparently shared by J. S. Mill.


What if, in a failure of earnest negotiations, you run up against capitulation or retaining your values and ways of living? You would be correct in saying that the easier way would be to give in with what you still take for rectitude as your basis. What is not at all clear is if that choice is the correct one.

"Si vis pacem, para bellum."

That old aphorism has stood the test for many centuries. I don't see a change coming any time soon, unless AI puts every single last one of us up against a wall and does the right thing.

Has anyone defined terms...operationalized them? How would any of us know to answer yes or no without defining 'pacifist'?


Can a person be a pacifist and still be willing to engage in warfare if the cause is just? Was John Stuart Mill right about war not being the ugliest of things?

"...Utilitarians will obviously say to take the left track with the one person on it sacrificing his life to save the five on the right track. This is because more people would be happy with the outcome as the quantity of people is greater in five than one..." (From original post)


How does the utilitarian thinker know that he will yield the greatest happiness in this situation solely by the numbers of lives he will save? What information does he possess, or not, about those on the train and their needs or desires for possible outcomes? Maybe every one of them is against any form of killing, but also feel that one life is not to be discounted against a greater number. What if the lone person we feel gets the train is potentially the next Einstein or President of the USA? What if that person is just about to release a formula that will cure diabetes?

Not very artfully, I'm stating that the utilitarian thinker must make choices based upon expectations, and sometimes using a paucity of valuable information that can confound his reasoning, if after the fact. This makes the orientation on outcomes necessary in the absence of something more 'rigorous', in my view. Something like Kantian reasoning that says the outcome could be purely accidental and unfortunate as long as the 'intentions' of the person performing the acts are borne of the "Good Will." Few mention this all-important quality of Kantian ethics. Utilitarian ethics places the burden of consequences, I think unreasonably, on the person acting. And that person could absolutely act with the best of intentions, also of the Good Will (wanting more people to live than to die). Problem is, it places dying at the summit of the Great Mountain of ethical and moral values as something to avoid.

Perhaps your discussion needs to be expanded to rate utilitarianism against pragmatism.

As a previous responder has made clear, Kantian ethics/morality (the latter incorporated into the greater former) is merely a prescription for acting that frees the individual acting in Good Will from any responsibility....OTHER THAN acting via universalizable maxims and never treating the person involved as a means to an end. The outcomes, 'good or bad', are entirely irrelevant. To me, there can be no greater nod to realism. For example, a man attempting to rescue a child being swept along in a raging torrent, and does so, cannot be held responsible for accidentally knocking the child's mother into the same current while flailing about. What calculus would our utilitarian realist guru use to evaluate the outcome...a life for a life? Would the child be happy it had lived when asked years later? Would the husband and her other children be happier or sadder when confronted with the awful tally at the end of the day?

Can God "be" anything other than what God is? If not, God is a singularity with which we can compare anything else, be it a construct or something tangible and measurable. The comparison can only have meaning to something that exists. This means necessarily that God is commensurable. If God is commensurable, God exists. If God is commensurable, then that to which we compare God also must also exist.


I don't follow your reasoning that existence is a substance. I see it as a state of being, but of being commensurable. If nothing truly exists, it is incommensurable and therefore meaningless.

Nothing like an ad hominem to put a fork into a discussion, Marchesk. :razz:

Philosophy has taught 'us' how to think carefully about common phenomena, matter, and ourselves and what we do. Few of us do it consistently well, as just pointed out, because to think constructively and objectively is difficult. The resultant conclusions are at most not going to be understood due to what seems to be their low 'face validity', and at best decried because they seem to be at counter-intuitive or just plainly wrong. Many will reach the same conclusions that are at variance with those of the philosopher and deem the philosopher to be inept or misapprehended.

Is philosophy dead? No more than music is dead, or materials science is dead, or ethical reasoning is dead, or morality is dead, or legal machinations are dead. Philosophy still has the rudiments at its feet to help us to climb into that vast tree of reasoning to figure out why something does what it does the way it does it, and if any part of that construction could be wrong or even furthered to good effect.

Philosophy will be dead when our level of understanding ceases to change in any way, and when we cease to seek the arcane and unforeseen results of what we have just come to understand. I don't see sentient creatures such as ourselves closing the intellectual shop just yet.

Its very qualification, inherent in the first term of the name, is anthropocentric. On that basis, I agree.