02-03-2003 10:21									#1
	Philosophy (Part 2) Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Continued from: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...&threadid=78264

	02-03-2003 10:23									#2
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one thing that philosophy is good for

creating large piles of BS

Jon Miller

	02-03-2003 10:23									#3
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BTW

I have a confession to make, I enjoyed the only philosophy class I ever took, The Philosophy of Time

wasn't useful though

Jon Miller

	02-03-2003 10:24									#4
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I absolutely detested the two Philosophy of Logic courses I took.

It felt like I was back in high school when they explained obvious things to you and the people around you act like it's so hard to understand and/or profound...

	02-03-2003 10:27									#5
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In response to jon from the other thread:

I was wondering if you meant in that sense or in another, more confused sense I've seen people use (for which I do believe in the "true ethics" idea)

I don't believe that there is an external mechanism or metric, since this would be equivalent to believing in a superior moral being.

But I think that while we come up with systems of ethics on our own, some do a better job than others.

	02-03-2003 10:28									#6
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Ah, I see your problem Asher....you're cursed with genius........

	02-03-2003 10:31									#7
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quote: Originally posted by Seeker Ah, I see your problem Asher....you're cursed with genius........

I'm in computer science, I've always been into it, philosophy of logic is like CS-lite without the math, programming, or general usefulness.

People had trouble understanding truth tables in that class.

I'm not cursed with genius, I'm cursed with being required to take two classes aimed at the logically inept.

	02-03-2003 10:31									#8
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Jon:

What about Theology? Are Theologians a waste of time and money?

Frogger:

quote: legal, safe and cheap alternative.

Do you consider 400$ cheap?

Do you believe parents are responsible for their children?

Asher:

I'd wait for Agathon, but you've contradicted yourself.

If morals are merely beliefs, one is no more right then the other, why would your beliefs change? You base your changes on your experience, so clearly morality is related to how one works with the world, and with society.

	02-03-2003 10:33									#9
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quote: You said part of philosophy is to keep recursively asking why, and if Godel's incompletness theorem holds any water wouldn't we face an impasse eventually that would render the purpose of philosophy (to recursively ask why) useless?

You misunderstood my post. I will repeat and expand. I have two claims:

(1) It isn't clear that Godel's theorem applies to this sort of question (it may, but I'd need reasons to believe it).

(2) Even if it does it says nothing about where the limit to explantion lies (this was my last response).

As for true ethics, I am not sure I would use the term "true", I would tend to use the term "correct".

And there is no problem with teaching people how to make better moral arguments. We don't teach them which arguments to make or which arguments we think are correct, we teach them concepts and strategies they can use in moral argument. Of course when philosophers publish papers on applied ethics they use these tools to form arguments for specific moral views.

Anyway, I want to deal with Frogger's abortion claim.

	02-03-2003 10:33									#10
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quote: I'd wait for Agathon, but you've contradicted yourself. If morals are merely beliefs, one is no more right then the other, why would your beliefs change? You base your changes on your experience, so clearly morality is related to how one works with the world, and with society.

How is that contradictory?
I've stated that there is no right or wrong beliefs and morals, and in fact my beliefs and morals have changed over time. The contradiction is where?

	02-03-2003 10:34									#11
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quote: Other questions impossible to answer: positivism, realism, theism, etc. You see a pattern? Every last fundamental divide of philosophy. Philosophical questions are rather easy to unravel to their lowest point, and beyond that is a question of belief, not reason.

That may in fact be right, but the only way to find out for sure is to provide some argument for it.

	02-03-2003 10:35									#12
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quote: Do you consider 400$ cheap?

When compared to the 200 000$ it will cost to raise a child, yes.

And I think the guy should be on the hook for 200$ of that.

BTW, before I get bashed, I would never abandon a girl I'd knocked up that way. But I don't think the government should be able to force me into taking care of a child that I didn't agree to have and took reasonable precautions against having, since it provides a much greater choice to the woman than the man.

	02-03-2003 10:40									#13
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quote: He's not being given an equal choice; he's being given an equal opportunity to opt out of the financial burden of raising an unwanted child.

That's not what you originally said. You said:

quote: that men be given an equal choice in the decision to abort an unwanted fetus.

I don't think that they should be given any decision making power at all. If they did it would entail situations of coercive surgical procedures or coerced pregnancies. Talk of equal choice is silly anyway, since if the interests of both parties were counted equally no decision could be made unless they both agreed.

Why do you think that men should be given opportunity to get out of paying maintenance then? After all, men and women are in different situations - it is hardly as if the man has to endure the physical side of childbearing.

	02-03-2003 10:40									#14
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quote: That may in fact be right, but the only way to find out for sure is to provide some argument for it.

You just keep searching for that sure way. But here's the question: where do your axioms come from? Or your manipulation rules? Because so far as I've seen, the only axiom which isn't arbitrary is the "I think therefore I am" one. And it's impossible to reason anywhere from there, given no knowledge of the nature of the "I" other than internal senses can provide (and even they aren't guaranteed).

And this even assumes that the rules of formal logic are self-consistent, which is demonstrably unprovable with any less powerful system, IIRC.

	02-03-2003 10:41									#15
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quote: That's not what you originally said. You said:

I'm aware, but if you read the second part of that post I explained myself better...

	02-03-2003 10:43									#16
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frogger,

If you're not responsible for the 200,000 who is? That's your bill, even if it was her decision to have the baby.

	02-03-2003 10:44									#17
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quote: I've stated that there is no right or wrong beliefs and morals,

Asher:
Philosophically, this makes you a relativist.

Do you believe your beliefs now are better than they were before?

	02-03-2003 10:46									#18
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quote: Originally posted by Asher How is that contradictory? I've stated that there is no right or wrong beliefs and morals, and in fact my beliefs and morals have changed over time. The contradiction is where?

I think his point is: how do you explain the change? Did you come to think that some reasons were more compelling than others or did you just wake up one day and decide you hated, say, euthanasia.

Whatever your views on particular ethical subjects, they will still at a single point in time have to be logically consistent, or you will be contradicting yourself. Say for example you believed that doing X was right and doing Y was wrong. If you came to discover that belief in X and Y was incompatible (perhaps believing that X is right entails that doing Y in certain situations is right) you would be forced to revise one of them.

That's not a particularly profound point, but it is a useful one.

Anyway, you've stated that you think there are no right or wrong morals, why should I believe that?

	02-03-2003 10:47									#19
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quote: Originally posted by obiwan18 Asher: Philosophically, this makes you a relativist. Do you believe your beliefs now are better than they were before?

If they were better, wouldn't that imply one is more right than the other?

My beliefs change so that they're more appropriate to what I know of the world, which goes hand in hand with the idea that there is no absolute right or wrong beliefs.

I don't see a contradiction anywhere.

	02-03-2003 10:50									#20
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quote: they're more appropriate to what I know of the world,

= more correct/right?

	02-03-2003 10:51									#21
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quote: Originally posted by DuncanK frogger, If you're not responsible for the 200,000 who is? That's your bill, even if it was her decision to have the baby.

She is, since she makes the choice. If she doesn't want to pay she should get an abortion. There wouldn't be any argument about this if abortion wasn't such a contentious issue and people accepted the legal view that there is no child present prior to X point in the pregnancy.

Let's take an analogy: I hit a woman accidentally in my car. She sustains a minor ankle injury and requires a 400$ visit to the doctor to put a plaster on her and take an xray.

But she's from an obscure religious sect that believes that modern medicine is wrong. She requires a trip back to her native Hamjakistan accompanied by her entire family, a month of preparation and sacrifices to the gods, and finally a trip to the local medicine man who binds her ankle in vines. Total cost: 200 000$. Why should I have to pay her 200 000$ medical expenses when the 400$ fix was only unacceptable due to her moral objections, but was completely legal and safe?

	02-03-2003 10:51									#22
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon I think his point is: how do you explain the change? Did you come to think that some reasons were more compelling than others or did you just wake up one day and decide you hated, say, euthanasia.

When I meet and talk with people from different walks of life (like on Poly, for instance) and learn more about the world in general, my beliefs do change.

Poly has made me more left-wing politically, since I've never really been around people other than well-off upper-middle class before, and I know people from all walks of life here. It's why I support the concept of public healthcare, public education, welfare, etc.

quote: Whatever your views on particular ethical subjects, they will still at a single point in time have to be logically consistent, or you will be contradicting yourself.

Which law of the universe states beliefs must logically agree with eachother? Humans are, after all, not really logical creatures in the first place -- isn't it a large jump to assume all of a human's beliefs must be logically in agreement?

quote: Anyway, you've stated that you think there are no right or wrong morals, why should I believe that?

You don't have to, it's not my job to change your mind. Believe whatever the hell you want, I really don't care.

	02-03-2003 10:52									#23
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quote: Originally posted by Frogger In response to jon from the other thread: I was wondering if you meant in that sense or in another, more confused sense I've seen people use (for which I do believe in the "true ethics" idea) I don't believe that there is an external mechanism or metric, since this would be equivalent to believing in a superior moral being. But I think that while we come up with systems of ethics on our own, some do a better job than others.

if one set of ethics is better than another, than a limit might be possible, and therefore best system(s) of ethics

I agree that we all have personal ethics, but I think that there is a direction to it also, although this is often not readily apparent

one of my freinds beleives that we ahve no decisions but wrong ones, I think that we can make right ones (and therefore that right ones exist, he beleives that right ones exist, but that we can't make them)

what sort of space do you view ethics on? (such that a limit can't be taken)

Jon Miller

	02-03-2003 10:52									#24
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quote: Originally posted by obiwan18 = more correct/right?

No, because there is no correct/right.
It's more appropriate to what I know of the world and how I want to live my life.

That in no way equates to correct/right.

	02-03-2003 10:54									#25
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why not?

is not correct/right just what you define it to be?

you are defining what obiwan would define as correct/right as appropriate to your knowledge of the world and how you want to live your life

Jon Miller

	02-03-2003 10:55									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Jon Miller why not? is not correct/right just what you define it to be? you are defining what obiwan would define as correct/right as appropriate to your knowledge of the world and how you want to live your life Jon Miller

That's right, I've always said that morals and beliefs are relative to each person.

I'm avoiding using terms like "more correct/right" because people could confuse it with being "more correct/right" in the absolute sense -- in the sense of teaching ethics to other and arguing over if something is ethical.

	02-03-2003 10:55									#27
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That a limit can be taken, and that there is in all probability a "best" set of ethics...but that the metric is an intrinsic, not extrinsic property of the space. We can only decide on ethics based on their effects on people and things in our Universe, not how much they'll offend the gods, karma etc.

	02-03-2003 10:56									#28
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BTW

while I think the objectivists are crap, I do think it is possible to beleive in a ethical metric, but not beleive in a supreme being

you would have to beleive in the possibility of a supremem being though (I think()

Jon Miller

	02-03-2003 10:57									#29
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quote: Originally posted by Frogger quote: That may in fact be right, but the only way to find out for sure is to provide some argument for it. You just keep searching for that sure way. But here's the question: where do your axioms come from? Or your manipulation rules? Because so far as I've seen, the only axiom which isn't arbitrary is the "I think therefore I am" one. And it's impossible to reason anywhere from there, given no knowledge of the nature of the "I" other than internal senses can provide (and even they aren't guaranteed). And this even assumes that the rules of formal logic are self-consistent, which is demonstrably unprovable with any less powerful system, IIRC.

None of this tells me precisely where I have to stop asking for reasons nor does it assure me that better arguments cannot be found. For example, in the realist vs anti realist debates one can produce good reasons for one side or the other - I tend to fall on the anti realist side because I tend to think that realism entails that we can't really understand our own utterances. The realists are just arguing out of prejudice in my view since they don't have any good arguments to counter this (or any that don't introduce some more radical anti-realism). Just to say that this debate cannot be solved requires some reason why it can't in order to separate it from all the other cases where we say we can't solve something and it turns out in the end that we can.

What are "internal senses" by the way?

There are plenty of indubitable truths. I can't doubt that all triangles have three sides for example. But in any case none of this addresses the second point.

	02-03-2003 10:57									#30
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quote: Originally posted by Asher That's right, I've always said that morals and beliefs are relative to each person. I'm avoiding using terms like "more correct/right" because people could confuse it with being "more correct/right" in the absolute sense -- in the sense of teaching ethics to other and arguing over if something is ethical.

well. you do beleive in teaching ethics, mainly one of relativism (where the best possible eithcs are those that coincide with your understanding of the world and what you feel like)

Jon Miller