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Notably absent from this guy's syllabus is anything concerning ethics, morality, values, or right and wrong. In all the fields he cites - even, to a large exten

by ajb 14y ago

Notably absent from this guy's syllabus is anything concerning ethics, morality, values, or right and wrong. In all the fields he cites - even, to a large extent, psychology - values are exogenous.

lutusp 14y ago
> Notably absent from this guy's syllabus is anything concerning ethics, morality, values, or right and wrong. That's because all morality is relative, one of the few things philosophy got right. The universe is morally neutral, which means that, to the degree that we fully grasp reality, to the same degree we discover that morality is a human invention, malleable across time and place. Not to discount notions of morality, only to say that nature doesn't care what our thoughts are on the subject.
- unalone 14y ago
  Right – which is why philosophy is more than just "the study of nature", and why in fact it's important that philosophy continues to examine questions like "if morality is relative, then is there a practical or even a deeper argument for morality's purpose that doesn't revolve around divine judgment?" Nothing's more frustrating than people who take a very shallow summary of a very fascinating philosophical inquiry and using it to argue that entire swathes of philosophy are irrelevant as a result. The whole "moral relativism" thing was never as cut-and-dried as most Internet Moral Relativists think it is; it's an intricate discussion that deserves prolonged consideration, not a pithy "watch me prove you wrong!" zinger in an Ayn Rand novel.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    Yes, but my reply was to a post which argued that morality was being given too little weight. On the contrary -- too much weight, if anything, to the degree that some misguided souls are able to picture philosophy as a secular replacement for religion.
    - unalone 14y ago
      Ah! Okay, that makes a lot more sense; I think I misinterpreted the point you were trying to make. Sorry for the mess-up.
- rmc 14y ago
  You're right. But if you're learning science then you don't learn ethics. However we're not learning science here, we're learning philosophy. Secondly, just because it's "invented by humans" doesn't mean it's not real. After all, language is invented by humans, but you can still do science on language.
- beala 14y ago
  > That's because all morality is relative, one of the few things philosophy got right. As far as I know, there is no consensus in the philosophical community that relativism is right. In fact, my impression is that there's a stigma against relativism, as it's hard to come up with a satisfactory relativistic theory. For example, if relativism is true, it might be the case that we can't judge other societies or other times, but certainly slavery and female genital mutilation are wrong, and objectively so. I'm also not sure what to make of "nature not caring." Nature also doesn't "care" about math or science, because nature isn't a thinking thing that can care.
  - im3w1l 14y ago
    >because nature isn't a thinking thing that can care. This isn't commonly accepted even now. Many people think that good things happen to good people because nature/god cares.
    - lutusp 14y ago
      > Many people think that good things happen to good people because nature/god cares. Any realistic, objective sampling of human experience instantly falsifies this claim. The correlation coefficient between "good" behavior and "good" outcomes (and the reverse) is precisely zero. To many people, the single most annoying thing about science is that it quickly demolishes such romantic notions, using logic and objective statistical sampling.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > As far as I know, there is no consensus in the philosophical community that relativism is right. Yes, but only because the terms "consensus" and "philosophical community" are fictional terms -- neither exist within philosophy. DO you really think philosophers sit down and come to an agreement about anything? That would be supremely unwise -- the very existence of philosophy requires unending controversy, therefore to come to an agreement -- a consensus -- is to commit professional suicide. In science, you can design a vaccine, or by experiment prove that reality agrees with your most recent theory, and thereby survive the consequences of two or more scientists coming to an agreement. Philosophers don't have this option (because reality is an obstacle, not a source of validation), therefore to even suggest that philosophers might reach a "consensus" is to fail to grasp the essence of philosophy: verbal onanism. > For example, if relativism is true, it might be the case that we can't judge other societies or other times, but certainly slavery and female genital mutilation are wrong, and objectively so. [emphasis added] You just took both opposing positions in a single sentence, which validates your standing as a philosopher. In fact, there are no objectively wrong things, only those things particular societies and individuals judge to be wrong -- and disagreement between individuals and societies is absolutely assured. Your child is starving, and a dolphin is available as a food source. Do I need to go on, or can you perform this trivial mental exercise on your own? > Nature also doesn't "care" about math or science, because nature isn't a thinking thing that can care. You're missing a critical point here. It is not nature's purpose to care about anything, instead it is a scientist's purpose to investigate how nature does what it does while not caring one way or another. In other words, nature's indifference toward science strengthens science's hand (it contributes to the objectivity of science's results).
- memla 14y ago
  Actually, according to the philpapers surveys most philosophers are moral realists. Of course, that means that they believe that at least some moral statements are true independent of what anyone thinks about them, not that "nature cares what our thoughts are" (whatever that means). And i think everyone would do well to explore the position seriously.
- RockyMcNuts 14y ago
  I'm not sure what that means. Dogs and apes and all social creatures have an innate sense of morality. They react emotionally to transgressions and punish transgressors. Nature has evolved that, in humans it has created certain rather strong thoughts and feelings on the subject. So in that sense nature does care. Different systems of morality are also going to lead to very different societies of varying effectiveness. So in terms of outcomes nature cares as well. Seems like a potentially interesting and fruitful thing to look into.
  - btilly 14y ago
    Here is my favorite example showing that effective societies in other species need not be ones we like. Our closest relatives are chimpanzees. Their sexual strategy is to produce lots of sperm and have lots of sex. The average chimpanzee male has sex an average of once per hour. (This is the 24 hour average.) About 1% of the time, the female attempts to resist, this does not bother the male. The result? The average chimp commits clear rape every few days. Can we make this worse? I think we can. One thing every mother chimp wants is to have her son become dominant. She therefore begins his journey up the dominance hierarchy early. Literally juvenile male gets to have non-consensual sex with low ranking females because his mother forces the adult female to comply. If you're going to base your system of morality on what evolution has encouraged, you're either going to be ignorant, or accepting of things that are extremely repugnant to any human society that I've heard of.
    - RockyMcNuts 14y ago
      I missed the step from 'evolution has endowed social animals with a native sense of morality' to 'morality must be based solely on that sense, or on chimp morality'. Social animals have innate behavior patterns that let them cooperate. Humans complement those with concepts like Kant's categorical imperative or Rawls's theory, thinking about them and teaching them to succeeding generations. No contradiction. Main thing is the need for a moral code flows naturally from the need to cooperate, prisoner's dilemma situations etc. In general, repugnance is not always a good guide to morality, a lot of past and present civilizations do things which might seem repugnant to us but aren't necessarily immoral. Although abhorrence to things like rape is pretty universal. (humans have pretty odd sex lives and hangups about them. If we ran around naked and had sex numerous times a day rape might not be considered as big a deal.)
fatbird 14y ago
Also anything to do with the continental side of philosophy, which leans towards the political and away from the scientific. In fact, this guy's syllabus is basically an intro to philosophy of science, and that's it. Philosophy does much, much more than that.

by ajb 14y ago

Notably absent from this guy's syllabus is anything concerning ethics, morality, values, or right and wrong. In all the fields he cites - even, to a large extent, psychology - values are exogenous.

lutusp 14y ago

> Notably absent from this guy's syllabus is anything concerning ethics, morality, values, or right and wrong. That's because all morality is relative, one of the few things philosophy got right. The universe is morally neutral, which means that, to the degree that we fully grasp reality, to the same degree we discover that morality is a human invention, malleable across time and place. Not to discount notions of morality, only to say that nature doesn't care what our thoughts are on the subject.

unalone 14y ago
Right – which is why philosophy is more than just "the study of nature", and why in fact it's important that philosophy continues to examine questions like "if morality is relative, then is there a practical or even a deeper argument for morality's purpose that doesn't revolve around divine judgment?" Nothing's more frustrating than people who take a very shallow summary of a very fascinating philosophical inquiry and using it to argue that entire swathes of philosophy are irrelevant as a result. The whole "moral relativism" thing was never as cut-and-dried as most Internet Moral Relativists think it is; it's an intricate discussion that deserves prolonged consideration, not a pithy "watch me prove you wrong!" zinger in an Ayn Rand novel.
- lutusp 14y ago
  Yes, but my reply was to a post which argued that morality was being given too little weight. On the contrary -- too much weight, if anything, to the degree that some misguided souls are able to picture philosophy as a secular replacement for religion.
  - unalone 14y ago
    Ah! Okay, that makes a lot more sense; I think I misinterpreted the point you were trying to make. Sorry for the mess-up.
rmc 14y ago
You're right. But if you're learning science then you don't learn ethics. However we're not learning science here, we're learning philosophy. Secondly, just because it's "invented by humans" doesn't mean it's not real. After all, language is invented by humans, but you can still do science on language.
beala 14y ago
> That's because all morality is relative, one of the few things philosophy got right. As far as I know, there is no consensus in the philosophical community that relativism is right. In fact, my impression is that there's a stigma against relativism, as it's hard to come up with a satisfactory relativistic theory. For example, if relativism is true, it might be the case that we can't judge other societies or other times, but certainly slavery and female genital mutilation are wrong, and objectively so. I'm also not sure what to make of "nature not caring." Nature also doesn't "care" about math or science, because nature isn't a thinking thing that can care.
- im3w1l 14y ago
  >because nature isn't a thinking thing that can care. This isn't commonly accepted even now. Many people think that good things happen to good people because nature/god cares.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > Many people think that good things happen to good people because nature/god cares. Any realistic, objective sampling of human experience instantly falsifies this claim. The correlation coefficient between "good" behavior and "good" outcomes (and the reverse) is precisely zero. To many people, the single most annoying thing about science is that it quickly demolishes such romantic notions, using logic and objective statistical sampling.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > As far as I know, there is no consensus in the philosophical community that relativism is right. Yes, but only because the terms "consensus" and "philosophical community" are fictional terms -- neither exist within philosophy. DO you really think philosophers sit down and come to an agreement about anything? That would be supremely unwise -- the very existence of philosophy requires unending controversy, therefore to come to an agreement -- a consensus -- is to commit professional suicide. In science, you can design a vaccine, or by experiment prove that reality agrees with your most recent theory, and thereby survive the consequences of two or more scientists coming to an agreement. Philosophers don't have this option (because reality is an obstacle, not a source of validation), therefore to even suggest that philosophers might reach a "consensus" is to fail to grasp the essence of philosophy: verbal onanism. > For example, if relativism is true, it might be the case that we can't judge other societies or other times, but certainly slavery and female genital mutilation are wrong, and objectively so. [emphasis added] You just took both opposing positions in a single sentence, which validates your standing as a philosopher. In fact, there are no objectively wrong things, only those things particular societies and individuals judge to be wrong -- and disagreement between individuals and societies is absolutely assured. Your child is starving, and a dolphin is available as a food source. Do I need to go on, or can you perform this trivial mental exercise on your own? > Nature also doesn't "care" about math or science, because nature isn't a thinking thing that can care. You're missing a critical point here. It is not nature's purpose to care about anything, instead it is a scientist's purpose to investigate how nature does what it does while not caring one way or another. In other words, nature's indifference toward science strengthens science's hand (it contributes to the objectivity of science's results).
memla 14y ago
Actually, according to the philpapers surveys most philosophers are moral realists. Of course, that means that they believe that at least some moral statements are true independent of what anyone thinks about them, not that "nature cares what our thoughts are" (whatever that means). And i think everyone would do well to explore the position seriously.
RockyMcNuts 14y ago
I'm not sure what that means. Dogs and apes and all social creatures have an innate sense of morality. They react emotionally to transgressions and punish transgressors. Nature has evolved that, in humans it has created certain rather strong thoughts and feelings on the subject. So in that sense nature does care. Different systems of morality are also going to lead to very different societies of varying effectiveness. So in terms of outcomes nature cares as well. Seems like a potentially interesting and fruitful thing to look into.
- btilly 14y ago
  Here is my favorite example showing that effective societies in other species need not be ones we like. Our closest relatives are chimpanzees. Their sexual strategy is to produce lots of sperm and have lots of sex. The average chimpanzee male has sex an average of once per hour. (This is the 24 hour average.) About 1% of the time, the female attempts to resist, this does not bother the male. The result? The average chimp commits clear rape every few days. Can we make this worse? I think we can. One thing every mother chimp wants is to have her son become dominant. She therefore begins his journey up the dominance hierarchy early. Literally juvenile male gets to have non-consensual sex with low ranking females because his mother forces the adult female to comply. If you're going to base your system of morality on what evolution has encouraged, you're either going to be ignorant, or accepting of things that are extremely repugnant to any human society that I've heard of.
  - RockyMcNuts 14y ago
    I missed the step from 'evolution has endowed social animals with a native sense of morality' to 'morality must be based solely on that sense, or on chimp morality'. Social animals have innate behavior patterns that let them cooperate. Humans complement those with concepts like Kant's categorical imperative or Rawls's theory, thinking about them and teaching them to succeeding generations. No contradiction. Main thing is the need for a moral code flows naturally from the need to cooperate, prisoner's dilemma situations etc. In general, repugnance is not always a good guide to morality, a lot of past and present civilizations do things which might seem repugnant to us but aren't necessarily immoral. Although abhorrence to things like rape is pretty universal. (humans have pretty odd sex lives and hangups about them. If we ran around naked and had sex numerous times a day rape might not be considered as big a deal.)

fatbird 14y ago

Also anything to do with the continental side of philosophy, which leans towards the political and away from the scientific. In fact, this guy's syllabus is basically an intro to philosophy of science, and that's it. Philosophy does much, much more than that.