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My point is, it's a bit much to ask for people to adopt philosophical modernity without having a "modern" values system first. (And on the flip side, having a "

My point is, it's a bit much to ask for people to adopt philosophical modernity without having a "modern" values system first. (And on the flip side, having a "modern" philosophical perspective is often a ready conduit for bootstrapping a "modern" (e.g. humanist) values system.) The conceit of modernity is that we are so much superior to the "brutes" of the past. Because our values and our thoughts are so much more sophisticated, so much more true and fundamental. But actually our values are not our values (or, to be more precise, our claimed values are not our values as practiced) and our philosophy is not sophisticated, it's crude. My point is complementary. Our technological advancement, and our "values on paper" blinds us to the reality. In truth we are but brutes, we compare ourselves favorably against the past only because we fail at contextualizing the present in a way that strips away the illusion of modernity caused by technological progress.

jasode 10y ago
>My point is, it's a bit much to ask for people to adopt philosophical modernity without having a "modern" values system first. [...] My point is complementary. I'm not convinced that "morals modernity" is a prerequisite for "philosophical introspection modernity". To me, it seems like those 2 are orthogonal. In other words, we could have both of these outcomes: - I believe we humans are the center of the universe and with Zeus by my side, I'm also going to kill a million people to purify my race. - I believe we might be in The Matrix but can't prove it and I'm also going to kill a million people to purify my race. It looks like both types of "modernity" can coexist. Perhaps the New Yorker shouldn't have put "modern?" in the title. At the bottom of the article, they disclosed that they used a different title (which emphasizes philosophy instead of morals) in other editions: >This article appears in other versions of the September 5, 2016, issue, with the headline “What Makes You So Sure?.” (Btw, I didn't downvote any of your posts.)
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  I think they go hand in hand. When you step outside your, let's call it a solipsistic bubble, then you take a stance of questioning things, evaluating things, and investigating things. Most importantly that includes your own behaviors and responses. And that almost invariably naturally leads to a re-evaluation of one's "primitive" instincts such as vengeance and lust for violence. Now, certainly that's not always the case (as you point out), but I'd say it's more often the case than not. You claim those things are orthogonal, but to me it looks like they are highly (though not completely) correlated.
  - forgottenpass 10y ago
    One of the things that makes philosophy hard isn't just that questions are hard, but how blindingly simple the answers to hard questions can appear. There is a better quote about this phenomenon, but I can't find it. I think you're making the mistake that "progress" = "adopting my values." I (at least from the surface level conversation so far) don't disagree with your moral values, but part of this kind of conversation is the tricky bit of everyone finding a way to distance themselves from things they believe in.
Amezarak 10y ago
What makes the values you're referring to more modern or true than other values? How can you be so sure they're better than other sets of values? Better by whose scales? Morals are not something that improve or decline, they just change with society.

jasode 10y ago

>My point is, it's a bit much to ask for people to adopt philosophical modernity without having a "modern" values system first. [...] My point is complementary. I'm not convinced that "morals modernity" is a prerequisite for "philosophical introspection modernity". To me, it seems like those 2 are orthogonal. In other words, we could have both of these outcomes: - I believe we humans are the center of the universe and with Zeus by my side, I'm also going to kill a million people to purify my race. - I believe we might be in The Matrix but can't prove it and I'm also going to kill a million people to purify my race. It looks like both types of "modernity" can coexist. Perhaps the New Yorker shouldn't have put "modern?" in the title. At the bottom of the article, they disclosed that they used a different title (which emphasizes philosophy instead of morals) in other editions: >This article appears in other versions of the September 5, 2016, issue, with the headline “What Makes You So Sure?.” (Btw, I didn't downvote any of your posts.)

InclinedPlane 10y ago
I think they go hand in hand. When you step outside your, let's call it a solipsistic bubble, then you take a stance of questioning things, evaluating things, and investigating things. Most importantly that includes your own behaviors and responses. And that almost invariably naturally leads to a re-evaluation of one's "primitive" instincts such as vengeance and lust for violence. Now, certainly that's not always the case (as you point out), but I'd say it's more often the case than not. You claim those things are orthogonal, but to me it looks like they are highly (though not completely) correlated.
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  One of the things that makes philosophy hard isn't just that questions are hard, but how blindingly simple the answers to hard questions can appear. There is a better quote about this phenomenon, but I can't find it. I think you're making the mistake that "progress" = "adopting my values." I (at least from the surface level conversation so far) don't disagree with your moral values, but part of this kind of conversation is the tricky bit of everyone finding a way to distance themselves from things they believe in.

Amezarak 10y ago

What makes the values you're referring to more modern or true than other values? How can you be so sure they're better than other sets of values? Better by whose scales? Morals are not something that improve or decline, they just change with society.