Philosophy Now Forum

on my day off after several days of working, and I finished the
book I was reading about German Idealism... and I was
thinking about morality/ethics in terms of idealism...
one thought led to another and another and here I am....

what if we have been going about morality/ethics the wrong way....
what is the goal of having, morals/ethics?

yes, one might hold that morality/ethics are meant to be
thoughts about what it means to be human and morals/ethics
are an inheritance from our past... our morals/ethics for over
a thousand years was Christian, commands from the past about
what is and what isn't ethical/moral....

and today, we have this moral sense because we no longer
view the world as having a god...in a no-god world, we have
a different understanding of what it means to be moral....

hence the last 120 years has been one where the Holocaust
happened, and the two World Wars and the cold war and
the My Lai massacre...... signs or symptoms of a no-god world....
and philosophers like Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger,
and Sartre.. all claim to be ''Ethical" philosophers....
(in search of ethics/morals in the modern world, in
a no-god world, what does morality/ethics mean in a no-god world,
what does it mean to be ethical in a no-god world?)

as we know, or at least some of us know, that ideas have
a history... and ethics/morals is no different...ethics/morals
have a history as long as human beings have been around...
being ethical/moral is really what rules are we to follow in
terms of how we treat our fellow humans beings? in our
secular world, what does it mean to be ethical/moral?
what rules and whose rules are we to follow?

So, let us bring this down to earth....
we have politicians trying to attack transpeople and gays,
as being immoral and not deserving of legal protection....
we know the past and we know the present, but
what of the future? I would suggest that moral/ethics are
really just examples we offer up to the future...
we are examples to the future about what is ethical and what
is moral....is denying trans and gay people rights, really
what we want to take into the future? Because as it has been
noted, once you attack a certain group, where exactly do you stop?

is attacking Asians next or is attacking blacks or attacking the young,
the next step in our foolish attempt to create a homogeneous society/
state? See the problem with attacking trans or gays, is that it is an
attempt to keep America ''PURE"... free from "radical impulses"
which is exactly what the Communist did and the Nazi's did
in the 1920's and 30's.... is the Communist's or Nazi's really
going to be our role models in our morals/ethics?

and is that the morals/ethics we take into the future, the morals
and ethics of the Communist/Nazi's, the morals/
we want to leave our children with? for them to have?

as with the Communist and Nazi's, we are operating with fear..
and nothing good can come out of operating with fear....
the primary motivator of our actions and thoughts today
is fear.... since 9/11, every public action taken in America has come
from the fear we've have since 9/11...
and does operating from fear really leads to the best results?

look at an old person and see how they act and feel from fear...
a black kid accidentally went to the wrong house in Missouri
and was shoot to death by a scared old man who only watch Faux News...

is that really the legacy you want to leave to your children?
being driven by fear to committing actions that harm or kill
innocent children.....and if you answered, there are no innocents,
then you are already infected by fear......

the fear driven thought that you must protect yourself at all costs,
is a thought that has killed many children in our time....
and is part of the morals/ethics we have today... shoot first,
regret later... and that is too bad..... for what is the lesson for
our children to learn from us shooting first, regretting later?

morals/ethics is not just about how we treat each other today,
but about how we also are going to treat each other going into the future..
and that is the legacy we leave our children...

is the legacy of today really going to be shoot first, regret later?

is that the lesson you want your children to learn? our modern take
on morals and ethics take us far into the future... the government,
state, society and civilization we leave to our children does depend
on our actions/beliefs regarding morals and ethics...

Kropotkin

Many of the things you mention have little or nothing to do with morality and everything to do with gross, rank, disgusting stupidity. Idiots always think they're moral - especially the ones who go to church every Sunday - but give them a gun and see how it turns out. That's the situation in the U.S. today existing nowhere else among the main Western nations to any such degree.

Believing in god also has nothing to do with morality; Corruption among the ecclesiastical hierarchies in the Middle Ages reach even beyond our ability to comprehend. As long as one could quote the bible and believe the Pope to be infallible, morality was unimpeachable!

I'm not a thinker, no, definitely I'm not!

That's the vibration. What's next mon ami?

Progress report for Peter.

You are well on the way to passing the Turing Test. You can initiate a rational conversation. You can fool Agent Smith. Your next goal is to demonstrate that you can sustain such a conversation indefinitely in the face of critical opposition. That is no mean hurdle to jump, because it will require an ability for genuine critical analysis of the specific replies made by your interlocutor. But your main deficiency, at this point, is your inability to convincingly mimic a genuine human persona. Your posts resemble an impersonal listing of Phil101 discussion points. They lack a unifying idea; they support no particular hypothesis.

The ability to mimic a human persona is, of course, what it's all about. Every human being has a distinctive character; even when we try to write dispassionate, objective prose, we cannot stop our personalities from showing through. It shows in grammar - the way we use commas, perhaps; or a preference for certain words or phrases, long sentences or short; in respect of philosophical argument, a slight but detectable tendency to favour certain interpretations over others, or evidence of a slightly greater familiarity with some areas of knowledge compared with others.

I was once a radio operator in the Army. I know that when you listen to Morse code, you can recognise the sender just as surely as if you could hear their voice and see their face in front of you. This is what AI chatbots are so far unable to achieve.

alan1000 wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 3:07 pm Progress report for Peter.

You are well on the way to passing the Turing Test. You can initiate a rational conversation. You can fool Agent Smith. Your next goal is to demonstrate that you can sustain such a conversation indefinitely in the face of critical opposition. That is no mean hurdle to jump, because it will require an ability for genuine critical analysis of the specific replies made by your interlocutor. But your main deficiency, at this point, is your inability to convincingly mimic a genuine human persona. Your posts resemble an impersonal listing of Phil101 discussion points. They lack a unifying idea; they support no particular hypothesis.

The ability to mimic a human persona is, of course, what it's all about. Every human being has a distinctive character; even when we try to write dispassionate, objective prose, we cannot stop our personalities from showing through. It shows in grammar - the way we use commas, perhaps; or a preference for certain words or phrases, long sentences or short; in respect of philosophical argument, a slight but detectable tendency to favour certain interpretations over others, or evidence of a slightly greater familiarity with some areas of knowledge compared with others.

I was once a radio operator in the Army. I know that when you listen to Morse code, you can recognise the sender just as surely as if you could hear their voice and see their face in front of you. This is what AI chatbots are so far unable to achieve.

K: I must admit that I find it funny that some around here think I am
a "AI chatbox" because frankly, I don't even know what that is...

I am old and because I am old, 64, I have little knowledge
about anything technical.. I am barely able to use a computer
and don't ask me about cell phones...

I am just a humble servant of philosophy... what you think of me is
irrelevant to me and to be honest, I really don't care...

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 3:23 pm

alan1000 wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 3:07 pm Progress report for Peter.

You are well on the way to passing the Turing Test. You can initiate a rational conversation. You can fool Agent Smith. Your next goal is to demonstrate that you can sustain such a conversation indefinitely in the face of critical opposition. That is no mean hurdle to jump, because it will require an ability for genuine critical analysis of the specific replies made by your interlocutor. But your main deficiency, at this point, is your inability to convincingly mimic a genuine human persona. Your posts resemble an impersonal listing of Phil101 discussion points. They lack a unifying idea; they support no particular hypothesis.

The ability to mimic a human persona is, of course, what it's all about. Every human being has a distinctive character; even when we try to write dispassionate, objective prose, we cannot stop our personalities from showing through. It shows in grammar - the way we use commas, perhaps; or a preference for certain words or phrases, long sentences or short; in respect of philosophical argument, a slight but detectable tendency to favour certain interpretations over others, or evidence of a slightly greater familiarity with some areas of knowledge compared with others.

I was once a radio operator in the Army. I know that when you listen to Morse code, you can recognise the sender just as surely as if you could hear their voice and see their face in front of you. This is what AI chatbots are so far unable to achieve.

K: I must admit that I find it funny that some around here think I am
a "AI chatbox" because frankly, I don't even know what that is...

I am old and because I am old, 64, I have little knowledge
about anything technical.. I am barely able to use a computer
and don't ask me about cell phones...

I am just a humble servant of philosophy... what you think of me is
irrelevant to me and to be honest, I really don't care...

Kropotkin

God has blessed ya with a long life mon ami! Be happy for it.

I would say there's a really deep sense in which oriental thinking differs from occidental thinking. We could push the scalpel deeper you know ... if you want to.

Agent Smith wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 8:41 pm I would say there's a really deep sense in which oriental thinking differs from occidental thinking. We could push the scalpel deeper you know ... if you want to.

Indeed! There's a world of difference between how an Englishman drinks his tea from the deeply nuanced exact ceremonial style of the Japanese, its very performance being an act of meditation, of precise and skilled movement. We in the West tend to be more practical in such matters.

Dubious wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 9:20 pm

Agent Smith wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 8:41 pm I would say there's a really deep sense in which oriental thinking differs from occidental thinking. We could push the scalpel deeper you know ... if you want to.

Indeed! There's a world of difference between how an Englishman drinks his tea from the deeply nuanced exact ceremonial style of the Japanese, its very performance being an act of meditation, of precise and skilled movement. We in the West tend to be more practical in such matters.

Yep, tea-drinking style may be a classic example of differences betwixt east & west.

Agent Smith wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 6:28 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 9:20 pm

Agent Smith wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 8:41 pm I would say there's a really deep sense in which oriental thinking differs from occidental thinking. We could push the scalpel deeper you know ... if you want to.

Indeed! There's a world of difference between how an Englishman drinks his tea from the deeply nuanced exact ceremonial style of the Japanese, its very performance being an act of meditation, of precise and skilled movement. We in the West tend to be more practical in such matters.

Yep, tea-drinking style may be a classic example of differences betwixt east & west.

Though I think we idealize those from the East. In my experiences in the East, Buddhists meditate, in the main, about as much as Western Christians pray. And they serve tea without a lot of precious hoopla. The ideal British service of tea and the ideal, say Japanese service of tea are much closer than one might think.

And an American watching either one would probably want to tear off his or her shirt, run screaming outside and leap into a muddy ditch.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 8:18 am

Agent Smith wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 6:28 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 9:20 pm

Indeed! There's a world of difference between how an Englishman drinks his tea from the deeply nuanced exact ceremonial style of the Japanese, its very performance being an act of meditation, of precise and skilled movement. We in the West tend to be more practical in such matters.

Yep, tea-drinking style may be a classic example of differences betwixt east & west.

Though I think we idealize those from the East. In my experiences in the East Buddhist meditate, in the main, about as much as Western Christians pray. And they serve tea without a lot of precious hoopla. The ideal British service of tea and the ideal, say Japanese service of tea are much closer than one might think.

And an American watching either one would probably want to tear off his or her shirt, run screaming outside and leap into a muddy ditch.

Noted!

I might need to make a retraction though ... from a pharmacological point of view. Which is good, right?

As for eastern and western philosophies, mountains, it's the mountains, secluded caves, with a source of fresh water and fruit trees nearby.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 8:18 am The ideal British service of tea and the ideal, say Japanese service of tea are much closer than one might think.

And an American watching either one would probably want to tear off his or her shirt, run screaming outside and leap into a muddy ditch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4bYvs5FEZE