darb, please stop filling this thread up with (okay i won't say gibberish) opinions and points that come from nowhere and lead in no particular direction whatsoever and follow no sense of logic that i can find.
i think i might continue writing in this thread just for my own fun. you guys can feel free to skip it in the future. i wouldn't mind commenting on some of the comments in here (particularly the one that we possess free will - i always found that debate exciting and my opinion differs from most i'd imagine).
I believe u phucknuts have too much time on your hands
i somewhat agree with you. contemplating life does take some time. however, to paraphrase bertrand russell, the man who doesn't consider such things is a man under siege and it's only a matter of time until the outside world comes crashing down around him.
I know that time maybe just a perception, but it serves me no purpose to see it or understand it another way, it's just wasted mental energy.
for the average person, i guess i agree with you as long as they have actually considered at least once and somewhat understand the notion. personally, i rather be in the know even though knowing means that i'm more confused than when i began.
I also don't disbelieve that we are all interconnected, I think we will evolve more and more to understanding this,
one of my favorite philosophers espouses this concept. spinoza wrote one of the clearest and cleanest philosophical pieces of writing i've ever read. it's really hard to disagree with his argument. he stated that the entire universe is just one thing (he would refer to it as the universe, substance, god, and nature was all one and the same). we are just extremely tiny parts of this overall whole.
No no, we were just stoking the fire a lil so we didn't lose it in the meantime.
darb, please stop filling this thread up with (okay i won't say gibberish) opinions and points that come from nowhere and lead in no particular direction whatsoever and follow no sense of logic that i can find.
I will aim to be sincere with my posts, but I can't promise my points will come from a center or have direction, or that you could follow them. But they will have sense.
personally, i rather be in the know even though knowing means that i'm more confused than when i began.
I think that the answer, understanding, or correct perception, should actually leave us with clarity. If someone thinks that understanding should leave us without clarity, or in a confused state, I think its the condition or our religions and educations that falsely taught us that.
spinoza ...... stated that the entire universe is just one thing (he would refer to it as the universe, substance, god, and nature was all one and the same). we are just extremely tiny parts of this overall whole.
The source of the worlds problem come from the perception that we are separate from each other and the totality, things like racial division, and national boundaries any from of division that views the entity as any difference than a complete whole..
darb, please stop filling this thread up with (okay i won't say gibberish) opinions and points that come from nowhere and lead in no particular direction whatsoever and follow no sense of logic that i can find.
i think i might continue writing in this thread just for my own fun. you guys can feel free to skip it in the future. i wouldn't mind commenting on some of the comments in here (particularly the one that we possess free will - i always found that debate exciting and my opinion differs from most i'd imagine).
This I would find interesting. In my own perception there has never been an experience or meeting, no matter how positive or negative that didn't indirectly affect future events. It's never clear when or why till it happens, but I somewhat have come to believe and roll with "fate"
Perception is a funny thing . . . I am a relatively pessimistic person by nature. Lately I have been having some very good fortune at the poker table, and then things started to go a little wonky in the area of my health. My test results were not an all-clear so, is this the universe balancing things out? I had actually commented that I was expecting some sort of negativity to enter my life as a result of my good run, as well. Alternatively, did I bring this on myself? Or, did my medical issues finally hit that two-outer to send me back to my original starting stack of "luck".
This I would find interesting. In my own perception there has never been an experience or meeting, no matter how positive or negative that didn't indirectly affect future events. It's never clear when or why till it happens, but I somewhat have come to believe and roll with "fate"
i agree that past experience plays a huge role in our futures even in minute indirect ways that we may never be able to comprehend.
let's look at it this way. every decision that one makes is based on certain factors. these are past experiences, emotions, and reasons. none of these factors are actually under our full control even though we like to think they are. the one that we may have the most control over are our reasons but even those are formed based on our past experiences and decisions since that is the only information we have to form our reasons from and therefore they are subject to this same problem of infinite regress.
what i mean by infinite regress is that the decision i'm making right now depends on some previous decision(s), experience(s), etc. from my past. and that previous decision was based on one before that and so on until we can pretty much go all the way back until we weren't capable of making our own decisions (i.e. a baby without clear rational thought). even then though we can move on to our parents decisions which fall into the same infinite regress trap.
therefore, as a result our current decision right now is based on arbitrary events all throughout our life in which we have never had any control over. so sure, you may think you're making this decision out of your own free will and that you could easily choose the other option, but that feeling is just an illusion.
it is worth noting that there is an element of chance as well that needs to be taken into account. however, i'm pretty certain that no one will argue that complete random chance works to benefit the concept of free will.
i'm personally a hard determinist but if i'm really pushed up against the wall in my argument i'd probably agree that everything may just be complete randomness, but we for sure do not have free will.
I'm glad you brought this up. It's common for people to think that if we have no free will then we also have to get rid of blame and praise. In actuality that is not necessarily true. I'll post about this later when I have time.
I'm glad you brought this up. It's common for people to think that if we have no free will then we also have to get rid of blame and praise. In actuality that is not necessarily true. I'll post about this later when I have time.
i've written papers on this in university but i can't find them at the moment.
in general though, i think the following quotation sums it up nicely (this example is specifically in reference to blame):
"...even if the wrongdoer’s future actions are completely determined by the current state of the world it is still reasonable to assume that their future actions would be different in a world that includes them being punished versus a world that did not include their punishment.... The key idea here is that determinism doesn’t imply that a person’s actions are fixed by themselves but are fixed with respect to the state of the entire universe; there is still cause and effect in a deterministic universe."
so simply because we can suggest that it is not that person's fault for what they did, it stands to reason that they should still be punished for wrongdoings.
i've written papers on this in university but i can't find them at the moment.
in general though, i think the following quotation sums it up nicely (this example is specifically in reference to blame):
"...even if the wrongdoer’s future actions are completely determined by the current state of the world it is still reasonable to assume that their future actions would be different in a world that includes them being punished versus a world that did not include their punishment.... The key idea here is that determinism doesn’t imply that a person’s actions are fixed by themselves but are fixed with respect to the state of the entire universe; there is still cause and effect in a deterministic universe."
so simply because we can suggest that it is not that person's fault for what they did, it stands to reason that they should still be punished for wrongdoings.
but morally he doesn't deserve punishment because its not his fault?
but morally he doesn't deserve punishment because its not his fault.
well now we're getting into morality. i skipped that part and jumped to my favorite since jontm brought some fun stuff up. i'll go back to morality and clear that all up too.
well now we're getting into morality. i skipped that part and jumped to my favorite since jontm brought some fun stuff up. i'll go back to morality and clear that all up too.
i'll try to keep this as short as i can.
judeo-christian morality is the dominant morality in westernized countries and this fact is simply taken for granted. the important point to know about this morality is the origins of good vs. bad and good vs. evil.
in the past, 'good' simply referred to those who were rich and successful and 'bad' referred to those who were poor and struggling. it wasn't until judeo-christian morality came along and reversed this notion. the weak and the meek became the 'good' and the rich and the powerful became the 'evil'. this is the notion that we mostly stick to today despite this false dichotomy that it was created upon many years ago.
furthermore, judeo-christian morality is similar to aristotle's virtue ethics in that both argue that there are universal morals that we must all follow and strive to achieve.* however, it is argued that these virtues might not be the best possible virtues. nietzsche, for example, argues that such virtues as pride and confidence are important as well (notice that pride is actually one of the seven deadly sins according to judeo-christian morality).
it's also important to reference another type of morality which was introduced by kant (kantian ethics). his main argument is that one cannot will something into a universal law if it creates a contradiction. the popular example of this is making a promise. you can't make a promise if you know you plan to break that promise because if that action was willed into a universal law, there would be no such thing as promises because everyone would always break them; hence, we'd have a contradiction. therefore, such an action would be immoral.
i'll stop here since i don't want to bore you guys any more than i probably already have (but we could get all into consequentialism and its varying moralities), but my point is that morality is practically arbitrary at its most basic point and it really depends on what type of morality we're talking about. however, all of them have giant holes in their functioning.
*Just to give an example, in teacher's colleges in ontario, we must take a class that specifically deals with the laws that surround the teaching profession. There is a specific law that states that all teachers must abide by all the judeo-christian morals - it then goes on to list maybe ten different ones and ends with 'and all the rest'. This is not a job description between the school boards and the teachers or anything like that; this is literally a law written by the government.
*Just to give an example, in teacher's colleges in ontario, we must take a class that specifically deals with the laws that surround the teaching profession. There is a specific law that states that all teachers must abide by all the judeo-christian morals - it then goes on to list maybe ten different ones and ends with 'and all the rest'. This is not a job description between the school boards and the teachers or anything like that; this is literally a law written by the government.
This i'd like to read about.
You were gonna relate morality to this question.....
but morally he doesn't deserve punishment because its not his fault?
Also, so we don't have our own free will, but I guess we can effect others free will....for example by sentencing them and making them less likely to re-offend?
You were gonna relate morality to this question.....
the law is found in ontario's education act clause 264 (1) (c) which states the following:
"It is the duty of a teacher and a temporary teacher ... to inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality and the highest regard for truth, justice, loyalty, love of country, humanity, benevolence, sobriety, industry, frugality, purity, temperance and all other virtues."
keep in mind that this is all teachers in ontario, not just catholic teachers.
as far as that guy being morally responsible, it depends like i said on which type of morality we are considering. for example, marquis de sade would probably blame society for not allowing that guy to have a place where he can go kill things or people and instead he had to just go kill a bunch of innocent people to satisfy his urges (sade was a lunatic however lol).
in general though, once one considers all the different varying moralities and the way they function, it's pretty easy to see that none of them actual work and all of them are extremely flawed. if you really want i can go through them in detail and outline how no entire moral code in itself can actually be held up to scrutiny. it would be long and boring though (well i've come across very few that find it interesting - i however love this type of stuff).
in my personal opinion from a few years of studying, i've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as morality in a true sense of the word. it is mostly an individual choice and even then it's very easy to find inconsistencies and contradictions. i can try to remember and/or come up with some mind experiments to further my point if you want.
Also, so we don't have our own free will, but I guess we can effect others free will....for example by sentencing them and making them less likely to re-offend?
no because no one has free will, but that's just my opinion on the matter.
if you believed in free will, then yes. pretty much everything you'd do could reflect in some way to limiting another person's free will. and considering all these possibilities is what true utilitarians and consequentialists argue we should do. however, i'm of the opinion that not only is it impossible to consider all the ramifications, in certain situations it logically breaks down as well.
there's one example that i kind of remember that i'll try to piece together and post here.
Where can I find the equivalent in the b.c. education acts? I wanna chat my teacher friend up about them! thx
it is mostly an individual choice and even then it's very easy to find inconsistencies and contradictions.
Yes such as we don't have free will to choose we said earlier.
But knowing we don't have free will, we can't hate a person who does a horrible crime?
I agree we cannot manufacture morals, thats why the 10 commandment had to come from the hand of god, the bible wouldn't stand up if moses was a philosopher and invented them.
Maybe you broke it off in chucks and were gonna write more but curious about your thoughts on how we can effect the will of others but not our own?
Edit: ah yes you were doing it in chunks.
i'm of the opinion that not only is it impossible to consider all the ramifications, in certain situations it logically breaks down as well.
Ya, its shouldn't though, cause that would be illogical.
Looking forward to the example I couldn't really think of good ones.
here's one example that i can remember. there are two situations:
situation one: there is a train speeding out of control down the tracks. if it continues along it's path it will kill three people who are tied to the tracks up ahead. you are standing by a switch that can turn the train down a second track. however, there is one person tied to the second track. should you hit the switch to save three people but kill the one or just let the train keep going?
second situation: you are a doctor/surgeon on a plane and suddenly three people on the plane get terribly sick and need three different organ transplants. it just so happens that there is one unconscious person also on the plane. should you harvest organs from this one people (killing him) to save the three sick ones from dying?
obviously, these are mind experiments (and i may not be explaining them very well - it's been a while since i've heard these but i think i got the gist across).
the fact is that most people would say yes to the first one and no to the second one. however, considering the overall consequences (say, as a utilitarian would) the situations are one and the same.
the point is, even when following one standard set of morals, there are still situations where inconsistencies occur.
if we don't have free will these situations of 'choice' don't exist?
well, they exist in that causality exists (i.e. an event - a cause - leads to a result - an effect), but in my opinion we only have the illusion of a freedom of choice between two (or more) possible outcomes. that is, it feels like we have free will for two reasons: 1) we are unable to fathom all of the previous causes (and their effects) that have all led up to this exact moment of this decision, and 2) it really does 'feel' like we could choose the other option in the present moment (which is just how our brains work in their limited capacity).
i'd argue though that if you could know every single cause (and their effects) throughout your entire life you'd see that you'd always make the same decision at that exact time and place no matter what since everything has up until now has been leading to this very moment. the funny thing is, this works for every single moment in your life.
the only exception to this would be random chance, and that is not free will either.
Comments
darb, please stop filling this thread up with (okay i won't say gibberish) opinions and points that come from nowhere and lead in no particular direction whatsoever and follow no sense of logic that i can find.
i think i might continue writing in this thread just for my own fun. you guys can feel free to skip it in the future. i wouldn't mind commenting on some of the comments in here (particularly the one that we possess free will - i always found that debate exciting and my opinion differs from most i'd imagine).
i somewhat agree with you. contemplating life does take some time. however, to paraphrase bertrand russell, the man who doesn't consider such things is a man under siege and it's only a matter of time until the outside world comes crashing down around him.
for the average person, i guess i agree with you as long as they have actually considered at least once and somewhat understand the notion. personally, i rather be in the know even though knowing means that i'm more confused than when i began.
one of my favorite philosophers espouses this concept. spinoza wrote one of the clearest and cleanest philosophical pieces of writing i've ever read. it's really hard to disagree with his argument. he stated that the entire universe is just one thing (he would refer to it as the universe, substance, god, and nature was all one and the same). we are just extremely tiny parts of this overall whole.
I think that the answer, understanding, or correct perception, should actually leave us with clarity. If someone thinks that understanding should leave us without clarity, or in a confused state, I think its the condition or our religions and educations that falsely taught us that.
The source of the worlds problem come from the perception that we are separate from each other and the totality, things like racial division, and national boundaries any from of division that views the entity as any difference than a complete whole..
This I would find interesting. In my own perception there has never been an experience or meeting, no matter how positive or negative that didn't indirectly affect future events. It's never clear when or why till it happens, but I somewhat have come to believe and roll with "fate"
i agree that past experience plays a huge role in our futures even in minute indirect ways that we may never be able to comprehend.
let's look at it this way. every decision that one makes is based on certain factors. these are past experiences, emotions, and reasons. none of these factors are actually under our full control even though we like to think they are. the one that we may have the most control over are our reasons but even those are formed based on our past experiences and decisions since that is the only information we have to form our reasons from and therefore they are subject to this same problem of infinite regress.
what i mean by infinite regress is that the decision i'm making right now depends on some previous decision(s), experience(s), etc. from my past. and that previous decision was based on one before that and so on until we can pretty much go all the way back until we weren't capable of making our own decisions (i.e. a baby without clear rational thought). even then though we can move on to our parents decisions which fall into the same infinite regress trap.
therefore, as a result our current decision right now is based on arbitrary events all throughout our life in which we have never had any control over. so sure, you may think you're making this decision out of your own free will and that you could easily choose the other option, but that feeling is just an illusion.
it is worth noting that there is an element of chance as well that needs to be taken into account. however, i'm pretty certain that no one will argue that complete random chance works to benefit the concept of free will.
i'm personally a hard determinist but if i'm really pushed up against the wall in my argument i'd probably agree that everything may just be complete randomness, but we for sure do not have free will.
I'm glad you brought this up. It's common for people to think that if we have no free will then we also have to get rid of blame and praise. In actuality that is not necessarily true. I'll post about this later when I have time.
i've written papers on this in university but i can't find them at the moment.
in general though, i think the following quotation sums it up nicely (this example is specifically in reference to blame):
"...even if the wrongdoer’s future actions are completely determined by the current state of the world it is still reasonable to assume that their future actions would be different in a world that includes them being punished versus a world that did not include their punishment.... The key idea here is that determinism doesn’t imply that a person’s actions are fixed by themselves but are fixed with respect to the state of the entire universe; there is still cause and effect in a deterministic universe."
so simply because we can suggest that it is not that person's fault for what they did, it stands to reason that they should still be punished for wrongdoings.
well now we're getting into morality. i skipped that part and jumped to my favorite since jontm brought some fun stuff up. i'll go back to morality and clear that all up too.
"Deserve's got nothing to do with it". William Munny
I believe in personal responsibility. If you are up to the task, you are up to the consequences.
Also, as far as Determinism goes, I will leave that to Neil Peart . . . If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
I choose free will.
i'll try to keep this as short as i can.
judeo-christian morality is the dominant morality in westernized countries and this fact is simply taken for granted. the important point to know about this morality is the origins of good vs. bad and good vs. evil.
in the past, 'good' simply referred to those who were rich and successful and 'bad' referred to those who were poor and struggling. it wasn't until judeo-christian morality came along and reversed this notion. the weak and the meek became the 'good' and the rich and the powerful became the 'evil'. this is the notion that we mostly stick to today despite this false dichotomy that it was created upon many years ago.
furthermore, judeo-christian morality is similar to aristotle's virtue ethics in that both argue that there are universal morals that we must all follow and strive to achieve.* however, it is argued that these virtues might not be the best possible virtues. nietzsche, for example, argues that such virtues as pride and confidence are important as well (notice that pride is actually one of the seven deadly sins according to judeo-christian morality).
it's also important to reference another type of morality which was introduced by kant (kantian ethics). his main argument is that one cannot will something into a universal law if it creates a contradiction. the popular example of this is making a promise. you can't make a promise if you know you plan to break that promise because if that action was willed into a universal law, there would be no such thing as promises because everyone would always break them; hence, we'd have a contradiction. therefore, such an action would be immoral.
i'll stop here since i don't want to bore you guys any more than i probably already have (but we could get all into consequentialism and its varying moralities), but my point is that morality is practically arbitrary at its most basic point and it really depends on what type of morality we're talking about. however, all of them have giant holes in their functioning.
*Just to give an example, in teacher's colleges in ontario, we must take a class that specifically deals with the laws that surround the teaching profession. There is a specific law that states that all teachers must abide by all the judeo-christian morals - it then goes on to list maybe ten different ones and ends with 'and all the rest'. This is not a job description between the school boards and the teachers or anything like that; this is literally a law written by the government.
You were gonna relate morality to this question.....
the law is found in ontario's education act clause 264 (1) (c) which states the following:
"It is the duty of a teacher and a temporary teacher ... to inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality and the highest regard for truth, justice, loyalty, love of country, humanity, benevolence, sobriety, industry, frugality, purity, temperance and all other virtues."
keep in mind that this is all teachers in ontario, not just catholic teachers.
as far as that guy being morally responsible, it depends like i said on which type of morality we are considering. for example, marquis de sade would probably blame society for not allowing that guy to have a place where he can go kill things or people and instead he had to just go kill a bunch of innocent people to satisfy his urges (sade was a lunatic however lol).
in general though, once one considers all the different varying moralities and the way they function, it's pretty easy to see that none of them actual work and all of them are extremely flawed. if you really want i can go through them in detail and outline how no entire moral code in itself can actually be held up to scrutiny. it would be long and boring though (well i've come across very few that find it interesting - i however love this type of stuff).
in my personal opinion from a few years of studying, i've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as morality in a true sense of the word. it is mostly an individual choice and even then it's very easy to find inconsistencies and contradictions. i can try to remember and/or come up with some mind experiments to further my point if you want.
no because no one has free will, but that's just my opinion on the matter.
if you believed in free will, then yes. pretty much everything you'd do could reflect in some way to limiting another person's free will. and considering all these possibilities is what true utilitarians and consequentialists argue we should do. however, i'm of the opinion that not only is it impossible to consider all the ramifications, in certain situations it logically breaks down as well.
there's one example that i kind of remember that i'll try to piece together and post here.
Ok, L.A to Chicago is not really coast to coast but to claim lunacy seems a bit much....
Sade - Smooth Operator - YouTube
Yes such as we don't have free will to choose we said earlier.
But knowing we don't have free will, we can't hate a person who does a horrible crime?
I agree we cannot manufacture morals, thats why the 10 commandment had to come from the hand of god, the bible wouldn't stand up if moses was a philosopher and invented them.
Maybe you broke it off in chucks and were gonna write more but curious about your thoughts on how we can effect the will of others but not our own?
Edit: ah yes you were doing it in chunks.
Ya, its shouldn't though, cause that would be illogical.
Looking forward to the example I couldn't really think of good ones.
situation one: there is a train speeding out of control down the tracks. if it continues along it's path it will kill three people who are tied to the tracks up ahead. you are standing by a switch that can turn the train down a second track. however, there is one person tied to the second track. should you hit the switch to save three people but kill the one or just let the train keep going?
second situation: you are a doctor/surgeon on a plane and suddenly three people on the plane get terribly sick and need three different organ transplants. it just so happens that there is one unconscious person also on the plane. should you harvest organs from this one people (killing him) to save the three sick ones from dying?
obviously, these are mind experiments (and i may not be explaining them very well - it's been a while since i've heard these but i think i got the gist across).
the fact is that most people would say yes to the first one and no to the second one. however, considering the overall consequences (say, as a utilitarian would) the situations are one and the same.
the point is, even when following one standard set of morals, there are still situations where inconsistencies occur.
well, they exist in that causality exists (i.e. an event - a cause - leads to a result - an effect), but in my opinion we only have the illusion of a freedom of choice between two (or more) possible outcomes. that is, it feels like we have free will for two reasons: 1) we are unable to fathom all of the previous causes (and their effects) that have all led up to this exact moment of this decision, and 2) it really does 'feel' like we could choose the other option in the present moment (which is just how our brains work in their limited capacity).
i'd argue though that if you could know every single cause (and their effects) throughout your entire life you'd see that you'd always make the same decision at that exact time and place no matter what since everything has up until now has been leading to this very moment. the funny thing is, this works for every single moment in your life.
the only exception to this would be random chance, and that is not free will either.