High level philosophy

[Amarok]

I'm a Multiclass wizard 

 

Stamped with composite furniture? You should be ashamed.

[bennyboy]

I'm level 0, with suspicions that I might actually be even less than that.

[DLJ]

DLJ and I are nearing level 50 in philosophy, so we decided to grind out some discussion* so we can finally enter Plato's Cave. We heard there are some amazing axioms to be found in there.
...

Apologies for taking my time ... this week I are been mostly preaching governance/ethics to an oil company (they all passed the exam but they left me all kinda succubusted).

Perhaps a good place to start would be a brief deconstruction of the previous levels (1-49) and the various level-up red-pills we found there.

Here are some of mine:
1. "Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" -- Laplace.  Gods and goddesses are not required in this or any hypothesis.
2. Morality has evolved.  It has not been intelligently designed.
3. Morality is a 'value stream'.
4. There is no 'out there' yard-stick (god or other).
5. There is no non-human representation of right/wrong.
6. Morality/ethics requires a social context.  Therefore, it is a social construction.  
It is an 'idea construct' (in that different people have different ideas about it and these ideas affect how they behave in social situations) and a 'constitutive construct' (in that it cannot exist outside of social relations that validate it).
7. Morality is not a simplex system... it is duplex (and perhaps multiplex?) in that there are two pathways:
a) Sense data to decision(s)
b) decision(s) to action.
8. In-game map, zoom-function:  It isn't just one click from values/ethics to neurons.  Therefore, there is one or more intermediate steps. Each step may have a different naming convention (terminology) but each view must be compatible with its next level (whether zooming in or out).
9. Morality is:
An evolved, human governance / continuity management system.
This system is an evolved extension (in the cognitive domain) of the pre-human immune system, endocrine and limbic system architecture and requires an ethical baseline (requiring memory), emotion-based thresholds, event-detection (e.g. deception detectors; a conscience) and reasoning (hence consciousness). It is enabled / influenced by chemical inhibitors and inducers and social constraints and drivers.

That'll do for starters.  I can add a few more relating to 'consciousness' later.

[bennyboy]

1. "Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" -- Laplace.  Gods and goddesses are not required in this or any hypothesis.

My French isn't great, but I can say what this sentence means:
"I don't need this hypothesis." It doesn't mention what hypothesis he's talking about.

[robvalue]

DLJ and I are nearing level 50 in philosophy, so we decided to grind out some discussion* so we can finally enter Plato's Cave. We heard there are some amazing axioms to be found in there.
...

Apologies for taking my time ... this week I are been mostly preaching governance/ethics to an oil company (they all passed the exam but they left me all kinda succubusted).

Perhaps a good place to start would be a brief deconstruction of the previous levels (1-49) and the various level-up red-pills we found there.

Here are some of mine:
1. "Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" -- Laplace.  Gods and goddesses are not required in this or any hypothesis.
2. Morality has evolved.  It has not been intelligently designed.
3. Morality is a 'value stream'.
4. There is no 'out there' yard-stick (god or other).
5. There is no non-human representation of right/wrong.
6. Morality/ethics requires a social context.  Therefore, it is a social construction.  
It is an 'idea construct' (in that different people have different ideas about it and these ideas affect how they behave in social situations) and a 'constitutive construct' (in that it cannot exist outside of social relations that validate it).
7. Morality is not a simplex system... it is duplex (and perhaps multiplex?) in that there are two pathways:
a) Sense data to decision(s)
b) decision(s) to action.
8. In-game map, zoom-function:  It isn't just one click from values/ethics to neurons.  Therefore, there is one or more intermediate steps. Each step may have a different naming convention (terminology) but each view must be compatible with its next level (whether zooming in or out).
9. Morality is:
An evolved, human governance / continuity management system.
This system is an evolved extension (in the cognitive domain) of the pre-human immune system, endocrine and limbic system architecture and requires an ethical baseline (requiring memory), emotion-based thresholds, event-detection (e.g. deception detectors; a conscience) and reasoning (hence consciousness). It is enabled / influenced by chemical inhibitors and inducers and social constraints and drivers.

That'll do for starters.  I can add a few more relating to 'consciousness' later.

Awesome, thanks! This all looks sensible to me. I’ll have to do some research into some terminology I’m not familiar with, and then I’ll do a proper response

As another baseline subject, I was thinking of summarising my thoughts on what it means for things to be "real", and my analysis of solopsism-style problems.

[Minimalist]

Did you know that there was actually a philosopher named "Fries?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Friedrich_Fries

Jakob Friedrich Fries (German: [fʁiːs]; 23 August 1773 – 10 August 1843) was a German post-Kantian[1] philosopher.

[DLJ]

...
Awesome, thanks! This all looks sensible to me. I’ll have to do some research into some terminology I’m not familiar with, and then I’ll do a proper response
...

Looking forward to it.

Bear in mind my autistic traits... I'm not great at ToM (theory of mind) in that I assume that everyone else knows what I know or rather, I forget that not everyone knows what I know.  Feel free to ask if there are terms you can't find on google... it's entirely possible that I've made them up (what's good enough for Heidegger...)

...
As another baseline subject, I was thinking of summarising my thoughts on what it means for things to be "real", and my analysis of solopsism-style problems.

Excellent idea.   'Reality' needs to be pinned down if we are to progress.  
It strikes me that reality is dependent on the lens (or lenses) we look through... everything is emergent if you're a quark.  

And who knows, maybe there is a school of sub-sub-sub-particles who think that quarks are hilariously illusional.    

I'm OK with using 'internal' and 'external' reality, for purposes of conversation.  Although even that might be a bit dodgy without a definition of 'self'.  I am quietly convinced that my parents have formed one self after 60 years of marriage (... telegram from the queen etc.).

Did you know that there was actually a philosopher named "Fries?"
...

I didn't.  

And that shirt might explain my difficulty with filosoffy... I have a tomato allergy.

[Dr H]

9. Morality is:
An evolved, human governance / continuity management system.
This system is an evolved extension (in the cognitive domain) of the pre-human immune system, endocrine and limbic system architecture and requires an ethical baseline (requiring memory), emotion-based thresholds, event-detection (e.g. deception detectors; a conscience) and reasoning (hence consciousness). It is enabled / influenced by chemical inhibitors and inducers and social constraints and drivers.

Y'know ... existentialists really hate hanging labels on things.

Just sayin'.
Since this is High Level Philosophy, and all . . .  

[DLJ]

...
Y'know ... existentialists really hate hanging labels on things.

Just sayin'.
Since this is High Level Philosophy, and all . . .  

Thus, the moral of the tale...  

... never hire an existentialist as a librarian.  

[vulcanlogician]

Okay. I don't know if I'm high level or not, but I'm a multiclass halfling fighter/philosopher. Hopefully you'll see both classes reflected in the arguments below.

I'm working on a new argument which concludes that logic is a subjective thing.

1. I don't know French. I speak common, thieves cant, halfling, and elvish.
2. Logic has evolved. It hasn't been intelligently designed.
3. Logic is a "value stream." (It values conclusions that follow over those that don't.)
4. There is no "out there" yard stick for measuring accurate logic (god or other).
5. There is no non-human representation of logical/illogical.
6. Logic requires a social context. For example, the Kalam argument represents perfect logic to some theists. Therefore we shouldn't call the Kalam argument out for faultiness because it depends on one's cultural/social context whether it works or not.
7. Logic is not a simplex system... it is duplex (and perhaps multiplex?) in that there are three pathways:
a) Sense data to premises.
b) Premises to conclusion.
c) And then reasoning is involved somewhere in there too. That's pretty complex. If it's complicated, it must be subjective. I don't think anyone disputes this.
8. People always call logical fallacies out merely to dismiss others' opinions when they disagree. Theists might not think their reasoning is fallacious because they are attached to the conclusion of their argument. We need to stop thinking that there is some "out there" agreed upon set of logical fallacies. If a post hoc argument works in your conception, that's your subjective opinion, and no one ought to be able to say "That reasoning doesn't follow." That's just their opinion.
9. I don't think there is any doubt that our capacity to use logic is the product of evolution. That (somehow) makes it subjective. It's pretty clear that our hominid ancestors lacked the capacity to use logic. And we evolved the capacity to employ it. Anything that is the product of evolution cannot be objective, of course.

I hope that atheists will take note of what I've said here, and stop calling theists out for "misuse of logic." You can't do that! That assumes some kind of objective component to logic. Logic is a cultural/subjective thing. Whether their logical arguments follow or not is a matter of opinion. Logical reasoning is merely an artifact of our evolutionary development. It helped communication in tribal social spheres and helped us figure out where food supplies were when we were hunter/gatherers. Cavemen used rudimentary logic. "I heard rustling in bushes. Therefore bunny that I'm hunting went into bushes."

There is no "out there" objective metric by which we can measure the accuracy of logical arguments. If humans disappeared from the face of the earth, so would logic.

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