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> Morality and law both work like mathematics. This is something only engineers are able to believe.

ironmagma 4y ago
Not true at all. It's something philosophers and mathematicians have explored. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlQaP4c_Jxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlQaP4c_Jxk
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  I think you're conflating the philosophy of mathematics with describing the entirety of philosophy (or even just morality) using mathematics. I cannot claim to understand philosophy but I can claim to understand law, and it is _not_ like mathematics. Human discretion is paramount to the system, and laws are written in such a way that humans reinterpret them afterwards, as influenced by their own cultural and social bias. How is this like mathematics? Do you need a jury to decide if a theorem is true? I have met many engineers who treat law as if it is supposed to be exact and mathematical. They become very annoyed when it does not conform to this view, or when laws aren't written in an even more detailed, step-by-step breakdown. That is not how it works. There's a reason there's discretion in the system, if you try to regulate something as inherently chaotic as human behaviour with inflexible rules, you get crypto.
  - ironmagma 4y ago
    I missed the reference to "law" in the parent comment. I won't attempt to tackle that except to say, we humans are machines as well, and just because we are hard to predict doesn't mean we don't generally behave according to some rules. Our laws are generally informed by the cultures the judges grew up in, for example, so any court rulings will be mostly a result of that and the ethics set down by the prevailing morals. We probably won't see any "private property no longer exists" rulings coming out of the courts anytime soon. Edit: changed example
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
guerrilla 4y ago
No, it's generally agreed upon in academia that ethics is an a priori science like math. I don't know about law but it sounds plausible.
- TimPC 4y ago
  No it’s not. There are two major schools of ethics, deontology and utilitarianism. The later is about maximizing happiness and doesn’t believe that people have unalienable rights. So we can’t agree on the concept of rights at all never mind an enumerated list.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    Sorry, seems like you're either in over your head here or misunderstood what I said. Both deontology, utilitarianism and all other major schools of ethics* are justified a priori. This is common, introductory, knowledge in philosophy. Virtually nobody considers ethics an empirical science. That being said, descriptive and experimental ethics have made tiny inroads very recently. * It doesn't really work like that today anyway; it's a decision tree of "schools."
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  I do not know ethics, nor any branch of philosophy (as my below comments show, the issue I could discuss was the "law" part). However, what I have never understood is how does the a priori science of ethics map onto real life, where morality is borne out of emotions and instinctual human social conditioning. I think it's rather obvious from observing young humans that they do not discover ethics from first principles, but some form of it is practically branded into their brain. They will recognize when somebody gets more than their fair share, and will become mad at this, for example. This is very different from mathematics in my mind.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    .
    - 4y ago

Not true at all. It's something philosophers and mathematicians have explored. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlQaP4c_Jxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlQaP4c_Jxk

dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
I think you're conflating the philosophy of mathematics with describing the entirety of philosophy (or even just morality) using mathematics. I cannot claim to understand philosophy but I can claim to understand law, and it is _not_ like mathematics. Human discretion is paramount to the system, and laws are written in such a way that humans reinterpret them afterwards, as influenced by their own cultural and social bias. How is this like mathematics? Do you need a jury to decide if a theorem is true? I have met many engineers who treat law as if it is supposed to be exact and mathematical. They become very annoyed when it does not conform to this view, or when laws aren't written in an even more detailed, step-by-step breakdown. That is not how it works. There's a reason there's discretion in the system, if you try to regulate something as inherently chaotic as human behaviour with inflexible rules, you get crypto.
- ironmagma 4y ago
  I missed the reference to "law" in the parent comment. I won't attempt to tackle that except to say, we humans are machines as well, and just because we are hard to predict doesn't mean we don't generally behave according to some rules. Our laws are generally informed by the cultures the judges grew up in, for example, so any court rulings will be mostly a result of that and the ethics set down by the prevailing morals. We probably won't see any "private property no longer exists" rulings coming out of the courts anytime soon. Edit: changed example
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

guerrilla 4y ago

No, it's generally agreed upon in academia that ethics is an a priori science like math. I don't know about law but it sounds plausible.

TimPC 4y ago
No it’s not. There are two major schools of ethics, deontology and utilitarianism. The later is about maximizing happiness and doesn’t believe that people have unalienable rights. So we can’t agree on the concept of rights at all never mind an enumerated list.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Sorry, seems like you're either in over your head here or misunderstood what I said. Both deontology, utilitarianism and all other major schools of ethics* are justified a priori. This is common, introductory, knowledge in philosophy. Virtually nobody considers ethics an empirical science. That being said, descriptive and experimental ethics have made tiny inroads very recently. * It doesn't really work like that today anyway; it's a decision tree of "schools."
dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
I do not know ethics, nor any branch of philosophy (as my below comments show, the issue I could discuss was the "law" part). However, what I have never understood is how does the a priori science of ethics map onto real life, where morality is borne out of emotions and instinctual human social conditioning. I think it's rather obvious from observing young humans that they do not discover ethics from first principles, but some form of it is practically branded into their brain. They will recognize when somebody gets more than their fair share, and will become mad at this, for example. This is very different from mathematics in my mind.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  .
  - 4y ago