TheRobin

I think the training is more practice then theory. From personal experience, once I've been exposed to the theory and principles of critical thought I couldn't help but apply it more and more. Mostly because (and I think this is true for everyone do one degree or another) my gut already has an in-built bullshit detector and the theory just helped me to understand the emotional reaction a lot better and with more accuracy. But (without wanting to claim to be some sort of master of critical thought or anything) in the meantime it seems to become mostly like a second language, where I just intuitively and instantly get the errors if there are any (or at least get the gut reaction to make me look at what is being said a bit morr closely). At least most of the time (and certainly a whole lot mroe than a few years back) As for the second part: I might come back to that later. There are a quite a lot of unsaid assumptions and premsises in that relatively small paragraph and it seems quite a bit of work trying to untangle that all (and I haven't slept much and am currently a bit tired). But of course if you want to go ahead and untangle that for me, I wouldn't mind

I think this is rather simple: Because when we grew up we were attacked in one way or antother for questioning the truth of whatever irrational culture was inflicted upon us. And since falsehood doesn't have proof, but our teachers and parents didn't want to admit to having core beliefs that are incorrect, we pretty much had to adapt to accepting their mere words as being as good as actual factual reality in order to escape an attack from them.Few people ever stumble upon a methodology for critical thinking and even fewer ever work through their traumas, so I guess that those two factors kind of sum up why there are so many people who just rather cling on to words than reality. As for your question about how to detect whether people are lying or not: Can you give me some more context? I'd say it's mostly depending on the situation and/or what is being talked about and I don't quite see how one could answer that in a general way. (Or maybe I'm missing something and someone with a better idea and/or methodlogy can help you there).Anyway, Cheers and welcome to the board

Have you watched Stef's "Intro to Philosophy" series yet? (Or the Atheism podcasts?)While I can't know how exactly your religion comes into play with your obesity, from the sound of it, Christianity sure seemed to play a huge role in your life in general and I'd say any real understanding of how you got where you are now would need to include getting a better understanding of what religion truly is, what it did to you and how it works.And of course of your parents who inflicted that on you.Anyway, I'm truly sorry, that you are where you are right now and I wish you the best of success in working your way through that.

Hey everyone, I just stumbled upon this free course that starts in about 2 weeks called "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy". The general idea seems to be that one could use mathematical models to rephrase philosophical questions which then would give a definite answer (or something along those lines). There's a short video in the link to the course, where the two Profs explain it in a bit more detail. Anyway, I'm curious to see where this is going and how they try to do it so I thought I share that with you here in case someone wants to have a look at it too. https://www.coursera.org/course/mathphil

I think the premise is already flawed. How could it ever be considered immoral to defend yourself against aggression (which this case is phrased as "save the world")? Generally speaking: I think moral rules don't say what you must never ever ever do, but rather what the implications are IF you do it. If you steal or break someones window, they have a right to demand restitution (by force if necessary), so if someone is in an emergency scenario where he has to trespass the rule to survive or get away from huge damage, this doesn't mean what they do is moral. But it doesn't mean it's the wrong descision either as they basically chose to rather pay restitution instead of dying.

whenever someone starts to say, "but x is a concept" that's usually both true and irrelevant. Every word we use is a concept (so that can be literally said about everything we say). It's just a weird red herring basically, one might as well say, "but object is a noun and nouns don't exist"...and since we can detect a change in location (how else would we know about it?), that doesn't even clash with the definition that's being put forth at 1.Therefore I go again with the "why do we need to change the defintiion, when we already have accurate ones?"

I found myself a tad confused by this. Which doesn't mean you're wrong of course, could be me perhaps. UPB, tends to relate to the initiation of force (although not exclusively ofc). Which is why rape, theft, fraud, murder make sense as a UPB violation (at least how I understand it). A situation like my hit and run incidence brings up a number of anomalies, which is why I refer to APA in this instance. Does that help at all? I think we mean the same thing, maybe I wrote it a bit weird. What I meant was that, as I understand it, both APA and UPB follow a formula of checking for universalization, except that APA doesn't allow for enforcement. To quote from Stefs book where he names the 7 ethical categories: "1. It is good (universally preferable and enforceable through violence, such as “don’t murder”).2. It is aesthetically positive (universally preferable but not enforceable through violence, such as “politeness” and “being on time”)." so that's why I wrote it's basically UPB except that you can't enforce it.

Can you clarify which hypothetical we're talking about, because, at least in my mind, we've melded two of the scenarios in the discussion. In general I would say that UPB doesn't make logical sense without an action in which to provide context. In essence "universalized," classical virtues would be nothing more than adjectives we'd run through an infinite process of eliminiation scenarios to check for virtue. I don't agree with obedience not being a virtue under any circumstance. If I am working with fellow engineers who know a particular subsystem far better than I do, I am going to check their work, but will largely act in obedience to their authority on the subject because I have but one lifetime to expend learning things and the division of labor is preferable to me attempting to subsume both their level of expertise and my own in another subset of material. You might argue that is a spurious usage of the word, but literally speaking I think it is valid to say we are obedient to one another when we argue for our superior grasp of our own area of expertise. I think any additional criteria is unnecessary when we only consider that which has been acted upon for an incidental UPB evaluation. To perform that evaluation is to decide whether or not the act could be considered generally good or admirable. I'm not sure I understand you correctly here. While we often use adjectives, they usually describe an action. Like, "being obediend" is another way of saying that a person obeys (or generally obeys)other peoples commands for instance, so I'm not sure how we couldn't run that through the same method of UPB here. In your example, it would seem to me more like your obedience is a result of your rational judgement of the situation than anything else. You're not obedient, because "it's good to obey" per se, but because in that instance your judgement of the other person's authority would lead to the conclusion that's it's preferable in that situation (or vice versa, if the person was obviously not an authority, then it'd be better to not obey). I think generally we can find a situation where literally every kind of behaviour can be said to be good in that instance, but the way I understand it, it would seem something would need to be more unviersal to be called a virtue. Maybe a bit of a sloppy test, but the question, "if everyone would do it would it lead to a good outcome for everyone?" comes to mind. In that instance honesty would certainly pass the test, wereas obedience wouldn't. Or is that what you meant with that the initial UPB evaluation would be enough? That basically doing another universalization-test doesn't add anything?

Yes this is how I understand it. I don't see virtue as being only associated with our actions with others, they include actions with ourselves. This puts things into quite a new perspective for me. Thanks, I'll have to mull this over a bit more but certainly feels right I thought it follows the same formula as UPB except that you can't enforce virtues, cause not being virtuous isn't inflicted and avoidable. Then again, my grasp on UPB isn't that great to be honest. I think I'm getting it for the most part, but whenever I try to dive into it in more detail I feel like I'm losing it again.

This is a good point Robin, which perhaps points to some of the subjectivity around the topic. Courage in a situation in which you faced retribution in the past, but now are able to carefully assess the situation rationally, is I think an act of personal virtue. Courage diving into a burning car might well be an act of recklessness. EDIT - This is why I consider empathy a key skill in attaining virtue. I don't quite understand how you use the term "personal virtue" here. How is that different from (non-personal)"virtue"? To me virtue would still need to be some sort of universal standard, even if it's optional and not mandatory like morals. To me this would fall more under personal growth or healing of past abuse(the first example) or something along those lines than virtue.

Yes that would be correct. As I understand APA it's a means to better undertsand virtue, but that it can often rely on specific abilities, traits, circumstances and primarily an empathic understanding of oneself and those around you. That's my understanding as well. So I think we agree that, since we stepped out of an actionable UPB scenario we no longer have a basis to say the act was virtuous or not. I want to say that validates the neutrality statement I made earlier, but honestly i'm now a little confused as to where we departed from UPB in our hypotheticals. I'm not sure that we no longer have a basis against which we can test various virtues. Like UPB, any virtue would need to be universalized without ending up in an impossible or contradicting scenario. Like the afformentioned "obedience" simply doesn't work logically to be a virtue, because if everyone would be obedient (which is acting according to another one's wishes) then no one would be able issue any wishes to make others act that way in the first place. Or they would just mutually stagnate each other. So that doesn't work I think. Also I think another criteria should reasonably be that it provide some value to people who act virtuous if it was universalized. Else why would anyone consider it admirable or good (in the non-moral sense)?

The only way we have to communicate with each other is with language, and if we use words that are inconsistent or ambiguous, then we can't be certain that the actual meaning of what we're trying to communicate has been understood. We could assume that it was, but I've always found assuming to get me into trouble. Alternatively (and maybe this is what you were trying to say) you could just personally avoid using the word "exists," and then any time someone uses it, just ask them what they mean. When you say, "exists," do you mean X has physical presence, or do you mean something else? Sure, but how is including energy and effects of matter inconsistent or ambigious? As I tried to say, we already DO have a precise word, for excluding energy and it's effect from a phenomenon, we call that "matter". So language already has all the necessary words, to be precise about these things. The only thing that makes it difficult to understand each other, is if someone simply tries to imprint new definitions upon commonly known words. But if they do that, then saying they try to communicate, is kind of self-contradictory. "Hey I'm trying to talk to you, just learn this new weird language that I just invented first..." -_-

Kyle: Why to you think it's necessary to not simply use "exist" in the way most people already use it (which includes energy and effects of matter and not only matter itself)?This debate (IF you want to call it that anyway) isn't about claiming that effects of matter have shape, but it's more about questioning the necessity to redefine one of the most basic words in language.Most of all (and unless my physics knowledge is incorrect here), we already HAVE a word for "object with shape and location", which is "matter" or "material". So why not use the words that are already there?

Something that I have trouble understanding is: why is courage considered a virtue?The way I understand courage, it means that one does something despite the fear or anxiety that is provoked and felt by doing it.If that is an accurate enough definition then, the reason I have trouble understanding why it's a vritue could probably best be explained by the following example.Assume a person A and person B. Both do some identical action that helps someone. Person A feels quite some anxiety doing it and for him it takes some courage to actually do the action. While Person B does it without any anxiety and as such would need no courage. So, if the outcome and the behaviour is the same, how can one say the one person has acted more couragously (and more virtously) because he was more anxious?

After listening to this interview, I'd really love to see Stef doing an interview with him to get more information about how he does what he does and what the success rate is and such things.Sounds really great and interesting. Thanks for sharing that

what do you mean with "resist"?I mean if people could resist violent thugs better, if they were raised violently, then the thugs would have already dissapeared a long time ago.The biggest problem is mostly not b eing able to see the violence and inviting into your home, something which can only happen if one has ended up having to be blind towards such a behaviour as a survival mechanism (often childhood).But if a mugger puts a gun to your head, I don't see how being raised would have much of an influence in terms of being able to defend one's self there.

It is possible a principle and its negation can each be individually consistent so long as they are not both taken at the same time. That's what's meant with "universal" (all times and places, or if you prefer, all intances where the principle can be logically applied). I'm not sure what the rest means. Are you meanig to say that the NAP is consistent, but not derived from undisputable axioms and therefore can't really be proven correct by showing that the negation of the principle would lead to contradictions?

accepting reason above irrationality is surely a subjective preference and not an objective absolute. But what comes out of reason is valid regardless of one's preferences.the NAP is objectively a valid universal moral principle, while anything that goes against it is logically invalid. People are free to not accept universal logical principles, but then they can't say you're wrong either, as it would then just be their preference, which has no say in how you should or shouldn't life your life (including correcting your argument). They might as well say, that they don't like you eating apples and should therefore stop eating them or something like that.Not sure how the link and quote has anything to do with property rights though

I don't quite understand what you mean wit the words "explanation" and "knowledge" then, given the way you use them in your post.Could you tell me a bit more about that?

http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/dissertationen/scheibehenne-benjamin-2008-01-21/HTML/ "This dissertation explores the so-called too-much-choice effect, according to which an overabundance of options eventually leads to negative consequences, such as a diminished motivation to choose any option or a decreased satisfaction with the finally chosen alternative. While strong instances of this effect have been found in a small number of studies in the past, its theoretical underpinnings are still somewhat unspecific. Because the effect challenges basic axioms of rational choice theory and it also has important implications for applied fields such as marketing and public policy making, it is important to get a better understanding of the mechanisms that lead to the effect. As a starting point to test these mechanisms, an experimental paradigm is needed in which the effect reliably occurs. Therefore, I first strived to replicate previous experiments that reported large effect sizes. Yet in a series of three replications in the field and in the lab with a total of 850 participants, I did not find an effect of too much choice, suggesting that the effect is less robust than previously thought and that it depends on certain boundary conditions instead. To find out why the effect occurs and which specific conditions are necessary to reliably elicit it, I subsequently examined several boundary conditions that figure in previous research on decision making in psychology and related fields and then tested the conditions empirically in a series of six laboratory experiments. Based on the results of these experiments with a total of 595 participants, most of the tested boundary conditions could be ruled out as explanations of why and when the effect of too much choice occurs. The results of a meta-analysis of published and unpublished data including my own suggest that the effect of too much choice is smaller than previously thought and that the differences between the studies that found the effect and those that did not cannot be explained by mere chance. As a consequence, a further search for moderator variables in future research seems justified."

My personal guess would be: Snipers :)the more extended version: There's a big difference between having to defend yourself in a sword/spear-battle and in a hide-and-gun situation. Just look at Iraq to see what I mean.Also, the payoff now is way too bad to even consider something like that. Food and basic luxuries costs very little, so the risk of dying/injury while attacking and stealing from others compared to the little effort of having a part-time-job that get's you probably more (and doesn't cut you off from society) would prorbably be preferable to most people. Also whereas tribs can manufacture their own weapons, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to do so, now we have guns. And if you know the shortfilm "I, Pencil" you probably see why taking on to banditry is most likely not only impractical but also almost impossible.

since you seem to actually have access to his research (which we all don't), why don't you tell us how he came up with his finding that choice causes anxiety instead of calling me non-empirical?Finding a correlation and claim causality is obviously non-empirical as well, so outside of that, what are his findings?

I find it hard to belive that there even ARE 100 different salad dressing (Or if there are, that thre is a huge difference between each of them).But to use that as an example, I fail to see how that would be a problem in terms of knowledge, sure you don't know the contents of each and every one of them, but you (hopefully) know, what ingredients you're looking for, so you just check a few bottles for that, and then take one of them. (I also have a hard time understanding that there even could be that much of a relevant difference). I mean, if the difference comes down to 100 shades of gray and not to red, blue, green. And calling those 100 different shades a relevant choice seems a bit inaccurate when it makes little difference from a practical level.To me this whole discomfort seems to stem more from an idea of "perfect outcome" that can never be achieved anyway. Which makes it less a problem of choice and more a problem of either unquestioned beliefs or inflicted trauma.So I don't see how making a causality out of the correlation of choice and discomfort is appropriate in any way.

But isn't the problem of untreid choices also a part of the problem of having no knowledge? I mean, I don't feel anxious about never having used a fork to write on paper, because I know it would be unsatisfying. So the only way that untried alternatives would cause anxiety that makes sense to me, is, when people can project a better result onto them, which is usually just a lack of knowledge about the actual facts of that option. And btw, no, I haven't seen or read any sutdies on the topic, just that talk you linked, which is why I found it very unsatisfying to not see the studies and methods he used to arrive at those conclusions.

I understand that theses talks are time-limited, but he had the time to put up 10+ comics/annecdotes, so I'm sure he could just as well have put up some acutal studies instead, which would make for far better discussion of the topic, as now it's mere opinions and best guesses for everyone.And the whole point of distributing labour is that one doesn't need to know all the things about every option presented, but can ask the person who presents wyou with these options (or should be able to ask them at least).Giving a person responsibility (choice) without power (knowledge) is just torture to some degree.If I'm a salesman and I offer 100 brands of TV's I better be able to explain what the advantages and disadvantages are and have some knowledge which one is best suited for which purpose. If I can't do that, then it's more a problem of me being a shitty salesman than having 100 TV's to choose from.And I don't see a problem with theoretical "infinte" options tbh, if you have criteria for what you want and not want, and someone who has the knowledge to filter out all that you don't want. It's more a problem if there's no expert around and the choice adds a huge chunk of time to the process of choosing, because then it's quite some work to get the knowledge about the options, which is not what one wants to actually do most of the time.