Philosophy Now Forum

Ching-Hung Woo looks at the many facets of Albert Einstein’s approach to ethics.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/109/Einsteins_Morality

I may seem like a complete ignoramus to many when I say that Einstein's morality and ethics, etc., are of absolutely no consequence. The ONLY thing of great value in Einstein is his science. The rest of his thinking in a number of areas was totally skewed and he certainly was not this gentle guru-like near god genius so many think he is. People who believe that are also likely to believe that Churchill won the war...all by himself.

Dubious wrote:I may seem like a complete ignoramus to many when I say that Einstein's morality and ethics, etc., are of absolutely no consequence. The ONLY thing of great value in Einstein is his science. The rest of his thinking in a number of areas was totally skewed and he certainly was not this gentle guru-like near god genius so many think he is. People who believe that are also likely to believe that Churchill won the war...all by himself.

If Einstein is correct and all our actions are pre-determined somehow, then it seems "objectively" correct to say that Einstein's ethics and morality are "of absolutely no consequence". We can try until we are "blue in the face" and will apparently never be able to deviate from what is going to happen anyway. Kudos to what appears to be a valid conclusion. Of course there is no self to receive those kudos. "You" didn't come up with your conclusion through some ingenious thought process. Rather the atoms and molecules that are "you" simply played out their deterministic sequence to produce what was already going to be typed.

In my own (perhaps pre-determined) view of things, all this seems very depressing. It seems to say that I may as well not exist for all the good it does. Perhaps mind/body theorists should resurrect Leibniz's notion of psychophysical parallelism.

Gary Childress wrote:Of course there is no self to receive those kudos. "You" didn't come up with your conclusion through some ingenious thought process. Rather the atoms and molecules that are "you" simply played out their deterministic sequence to produce what was already going to be typed.

Yes! but it seems paradoxical in the sense that whatever I "decide" is predetermined but that in reality I wasn't free to decide anything.

To my mind it is intelligence which grants Freewill its field of operation, its expansion, while granting that there are boundaries beyond it but NOT within it. Every kind of complexity is circumscribed by its own limits. In that sense it yields to its own "so-called" fixed rules. Freewill whose extent is predetermined by intelligence must operate within its own inclusive network of possibilities. If not then what of all imagined purposes can be ascribed to intelligence?

Einstein regarded pretty well everything as predetermined which in the science domain preempted any acceptance of Quantum Theory. He believed in fixed principles and rules even in his own household. If "Germaness" equates to some goose stepping paranoia of rules and order than Einstein was German to the core.

...and now I'll commit the ultimate sacrilege and simply state that as a philosopher he was a near nonentity if not a total one only given credence because of his other outstanding contributions.

In my own (perhaps pre-determined) view of things, all this seems very depressing.

What depresses me are not anything philosophers have to say or ever had to say but all the events happening in the world now; whether predetermined or not makes no difference.