/r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | March 06, 2023

Submitted by BernardJOrtcutt t3_11jzpvr in philosophy

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread. This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules (especially posting rule 2). For example, these threads are great places for:

  • Arguments that aren't substantive enough to meet PR2.

  • Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. who your favourite philosopher is, what you are currently reading

  • Philosophical questions. Please note that /r/askphilosophy is a great resource for questions and if you are looking for moderated answers we suggest you ask there.

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. All of our normal commenting rules are still in place for these threads, although we will be more lenient with regards to commenting rule 2.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

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[deleted] t1_jbby6hq wrote

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[deleted] t1_jbd8vh3 wrote

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GilgarWebb t1_jbjwpl9 wrote

Update it appears the philosophy mod reported me to reddit mods for report abuse. Good hopefully they'll notice the actual mod abuse going on.

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Theek3 t1_jbf4zmq wrote

What are the philosophical ramifications of people feeling AI deserves respect?

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Vivid_Smoke_5625 t1_jbfrbkt wrote

Accepting that most people are dumb.

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Theek3 t1_jbft1hb wrote

Kind of my thought. We should respect the calculation machine crunching numbers to come up with results? Why?

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Alguienmasss t1_jbgexjr wrote

I cant comment on the post about IAs and all the comments were erased i just want to say theres no thing yet as sentient IA JUST narrow ia and thats not really an IA.

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Available_Nose_Dove t1_jba01rf wrote

Is it a paradox we seek things we aren't cognizant of only because we believe we should seek them? ELI5: Alice wants to go from A to B but she never been to B so she doesn't know what it's actually like.

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Available_Nose_Dove t1_jbp75e5 wrote

I see the comment was deleted.
Isn't this a question important philosophers dealt with? It's fundamental to how faith works since some religious systems prohibit examining ideas for the risk of them being adopted for finding them favorable, so that's rejecting ideas for knowing ahead they'll be favorable.

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manapause t1_jbf5tvo wrote

When Descartes proposed a demon or a machine taking a persons brain out of their body, and then a mod sent him to the front of the 30 year's war.

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imperialistneonazi t1_jbwvibv wrote

It’s not that the demon or machine takes the ‘brain’ out of their body. He distrusts his sense experience because he speculates that his body could be controlled by a ‘malicious demon’ - the machine reference was actually something added on later by Gilbert Ryle who in his work ‘the concept of the mind’ (1949) critiqued Descartes notion of the mind body and soul problem, he called it the ‘ghost in the machine’ model to describe Descartes, the body being the machine. Furthermore, it’s not the brain he is concerned with it’s the soul because the brain is a material thing that he is a aware of, he even argues that the soul interacts with the body through the pineal gland of the brain

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AdmirableNewt3352 t1_jbv5vk2 wrote

Why should a individual help or contribute in society ?

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AnUntimelyGuy t1_jbymt20 wrote

If practical reason is an expression of what a person cares about, then they should contribute to society if they care about other people in society. A person may also benefit from contributing to society by improving their own social reputation.

I am a moral nihilist (error theorist) and this is what I think remains of practical reason if morality does not exist.

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LucianoMrlli t1_jbzfe50 wrote

I think that society provides people with the means to fulfill themselves. No matter how individualistic a person is, it is society that gives them the resources for their purposes. Therefore, we must all contribute to maintaining this society.

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AdmirableNewt3352 t1_jc5jrg3 wrote

Thanks, u/LucianoMrlli and u/AnUntimelyGuy for your replies. u/LucianoMrlli I have an addition to your point that we have to contribute to society; otherwise, we would be deemed criminals. After giving it proper thought, this is what I came up with :

As a person, we want to do things for ourselves, like a job or a business, to earn; by doing so, we provide some service (Labor or Intellect) to society, which is our contribution to society. In essence, even the job we have is for it is not for us but for the community, and we are incentivized by money to contribute to society.

People who just take from society without giving back are deemed criminals, i.e., thieves and scammers, because they do not provide anything. They are just taking from the people.

On the other hand, some people contribute to society but have different incentives, like they might want to feel good about their work or themselves.

And there would be an extreme minority of people who know they would suffer if they help others but still do it. And that is what I feel, like the people who are contributing selflessly or without taking anything from the society.

After writing this, I realize that my answer is dealing more thing the idea of the word help as help to me feels selfless.

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rickidontsleep t1_jb5s5fw wrote

Alan Watts says you can’t know yourself, Jordan Peterson says watch your every thought & action to know yourself. Can you know yourself or not? What is the verdict

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jb5xb6e wrote

You can never truly know yourself, results vary from individuals to individuals, case closed. lol

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ephemerios t1_jbb4qwv wrote

Peterson is basically suggesting self-reflection as a way to know oneself, which is a fair enough point. Humans have sophisticated capacities to self-reflect and be self-aware, which is a first step towards knowing ourselves. We can also enter in dialogue with others and integrate their perspectives on ourselves into the image we cultivated of ourselves. That way, we can try to counteract our perhaps natural and maybe even strong tendency towards having skewed perceptions of ourselves (on the other hand, we're ultimately the only ones with privileged access to our thoughts and will represent a black box to varying degrees to various people).

I don't know what argument Watts is making exactly here, but in general I'm quite skeptical of the notion that there's a true self somewhere hidden and unaccusable to us or that we're influenced or controlled by subconscious forces we're condemned to never fully understand or even be aware of (not that I'm ascribing this view to Watts).

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jb5yhil wrote

There are some depressing philosophies that argue life should not exist at all due to suffering.

This is their arguments, see if you can counter them.

  1. Life has many suffering due random bad luck, some humans and animals will always be suffering terribly and die in agony, living a life that is horribly not worth its existence by most standards.
  2. Since suffering is perpetual for the unlucky, therefore they argued that it is not fair for the rest of existence to continue at their expense, meaning if SOME have to suffer, then NONE should exist.
  3. So in order to permanently prevent future unlucky sufferers, it is our moral obligation to find a way to painlessly and instantaneously "Remove" all life from earth, think Thanos snap but with all life on earth. lol
  4. Basically, if suffering is perpetual or takes a long time to be solved by future technology, then life on earth should not continue, because the unlucky suffering of some lives far outweighs the "decent" lives of the rest. (ex: Negative utilitarianism)
  5. Since nobody asked to be born (animals as well), then nobody consented to their suffering and sacrifice, thus it is doubly immoral for life on earth to keep existing at their expense.

Ok, what is your counter for these arguments? lol

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[deleted] t1_jb98zqh wrote

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jba6umy wrote

>I feel like all these are built on the same foundations that suffering should be minimised to the extreme and suffering is unavoidable for life (at least some of it) so the only way to totally remove suffering is to remove life. If you reject the extreme minimisation premise then you don't have this dilemma. Perhaps we need to accept suffering as unavoidable and our philosophies should aim to avoid the creation of any avoidable suffering instead (and accept that we may not be able to get 100% of it)?

So if extreme minimization is not the goal, what is/are the goal(s)?

There has to be something much more valuable? Enough to make us accept the sacrifice of these unlucky sufferers? What is it though?

To become a zombie matrix is not the goal, the argument is to remove extreme suffering from existence, so that nobody has to go through it.

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[deleted] t1_jba8u6e wrote

[deleted]

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jbaea3o wrote

>Life? Existence? Are those such throwaway things?

You know about the repugnant conclusion?

Life and existence itself are not the things people value, its the quality of it.

If most lives are horrible with no prospect of betterment, I doubt we would want it to continue. lol

This is not the case, hence we persist, but this IS the case for some unlucky victims, which is why some philosophies argue that we must evaluated life from their perspective and concluded that we should end it to spare future generation of victims.

It is an extreme position, but it is not without merit.

If we want to argue that something is so valuable that we have no choice but to accept the existence of these perpetual victims, then it better be something really worth it, but what would it be?

Positive conscious experience for the "majority" of luckier people? Is this drug addictive enough to continue our existence and risk the suffering of millions?

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Possibly_a_f1sh t1_jb743kd wrote

Every bullet except 5 in this list seems to boil down to the same, essentially utilitarian viewpoint. In order to come up with a plausible objection to the view as a whole I think one need only hold that morality as a whole is not (entirely) outcome-based. There are plenty of great theories of morality which reject utilitarianism and develop ways of thinking about morality more in line with our intuition that life ought not be completely extinguished. I also think that we don’t necessarily need to accept that a complete view of utilitarianism necessarily leads to the conclusion that life is inherently a bad thing. Suffering is without a doubt prevalent in the world, but there isn’t (and couldn’t possible be) any complete measure of suffering vs. pleasure that would be required to do the kind of utilitarian calculation required to follow this argument through to its conclusion. It may very well be that the pleasures of life outweigh the suffering.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jb76z89 wrote

Of course, if suffering far outweighs pleasures, most of us would prefer that life ends, this is objectively true as far as we can tell.

However, it doesnt address the axiomatic claim that if SOME have to suffer, then NONE should exist to risk this suffering in perpetuity, especially when nobody asked for it, we were all born without a chance to weigh the risk and reject or accept our births.

It may be a minority moral claim, but it is still a valid claim that requires proper counter.

How do you counter this argument? Majority rule?

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Gamusino2021 t1_jb8a2qd wrote

Its not like we have only 2 choices. All of us live or all life goes extinct. If there is someone who was unlucky and preffers to cease to exist it is his choice, but why force the rest into extinction?

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jbab9dz wrote

According to their arguments, it is because the victims never asked for it, they were forced into such horrible fates because we continue to exist, meaning we are deliberately perpetuating their suffering knowing that a percentage of them will always suffer.

Therefore we have a moral obligation to stop this once and for all, if we cant create a suffering free Utopia (which is near impossible), then it would be easier and more practical to just blow up earth or something similar.

They have basically compared the options and found total annihilation of life to be much more achievable so that's why they went for it.

To be fair, a suffering free Utopia is not totally impossible, its just very hard to achieve and will probably take thousands of years if not longer, it would be much easier and create much less victims if we just blow up earth. lol

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Gamusino2021 t1_jbaer0k wrote

"meaning we are deliberately perpetuating their suffering knowing that a percentage of them will always suffer."

Again, there is two independent things here. The existance of the "happy ones" and the existance of those that are so un happy that would want to cease to exist. The first doesnt affect the second. Those who dont want to exist can cease to exist if they want to.

Now they can say that if the happy ones continue existing and reproducing then there will be some new "Unhappy ones" that will have to pass through suffering until they decide to suicide. But that amount of suffering is supersmall compared with all the happiness. And also, if we dont bring a person into existance then this person cant even decide if exist or not. By making new people we are giving them the choice to exist or not for a very small risk of suffering briefly.

Its like for them 1 "unit" of suffering is more important than 1000 "units" of happiness and the choice to exist or not.

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lyremska t1_jbdke2q wrote

> The existance of the "happy ones" and the existance of those that are so un happy that would want to cease to exist. The first doesnt affect the second.

It does, if the existence of the happy ones relies on the suffering of the others - like it does in our world.

> Those who dont want to exist can cease to exist if they want to.

Which in turn will make other people suffer (family, closed ones etc).

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Gamusino2021 t1_jbf0glp wrote

Number 1 is totally true. But that doesnt mean we should make humans extinct, that means we should fight for justice.

Number second is not a valid argument, because yeah, that would make other people suffer, but making humans extinct would make them lot more suffer, so its not a valid argument to make humans extinct

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slickwombat t1_jba892z wrote

>However, it doesnt address the axiomatic claim that if SOME have to suffer, then NONE should exist to risk this suffering in perpetuity, especially when nobody asked for it, we were all born without a chance to weigh the risk and reject or accept our births. It may be a minority moral claim, but it is still a valid claim that requires proper counter.

What is an "axiomatic claim" and what makes this one "valid"?

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jbaegb0 wrote

google it? lol

Axiom is a very basic claim of most philosophies, its valid when you have no objective ways of proving it "wrong".

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slickwombat t1_jbagjng wrote

Well no, axioms are not typically a thing in philosophy. In philosophy we are concerned with trying to figure out what's true, not just declaring random things are "axioms" and thus true unless proved false. The latter approach would make just about anything an equally "valid" candidate for truth, and suggest, contrary to basic principles of reason, that we should believe things without having sufficient reasons to believe them.

With that in mind, the question has to be: why should we take your antinatalist principle to be true? Or perhaps, what makes it more plausibly true than the other things people typically believe that it conflicts with, e.g., that life has inherent value, that procreation is an inherent right, or that happiness as well as suffering is morally significant?

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Goonerlouie t1_jbgrmre wrote

I am still new to all philosophical l thinking so my answers will be simple compared to most here. To me, suffering is subjective. An animal half eaten by a lion has suffered, felt sorrow and pain but to us, it's a part of life and a necessity. Never thought of it this way but I guess nature will always have perpetual suffering for the unlucky so it's inevitable that some have to suffer in life for the greater good.

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Relevant_Occasion_33 t1_jbnk8y5 wrote

An easy rebuttal is that they have to justify why suffering is so important that everything else has to be sacrificed to reduce it. Considering all the people talking about this haven’t killed themselves, clearly they don’t think ending individual suffering is enough to justify ending life.

Not to mention that even if life on Earth were eliminated, that doesn’t mean the amount of suffering in the universe would drop to zero. For all we know, life would emerge and suffer again or aliens would continue suffering.

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imperialistneonazi t1_jbwvvho wrote

Augustine’s aesthetic principle reminds us that we need the bad to see the good - in other words, suffering only exists because we have something else to compare it to, this being lesser suffering or happiness - this means that by removing all the suffering in the world you would be removing all the happiness in the world (also a classic political/philosophical debate, what is more important suffering or freedom)

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pallavkulhari t1_jb8dgxy wrote

Think of a kid! They have minimum suffering which arises out of basic needs like food, sleep, etc. Our world today has prevalent suffering but this wasn’t the case always. Suffering is mostly constructed by human brain with the help of language and thoughts around pain. Think of animals! They have pains, sometimes, but they don’t suffer because they don’t have to think of past or future and just stay mindful, mostly always. They don’t have words like “suffering” and “pain” and “what would others think” or even a sense of self.

Most philosophers propose that shedding of the identity can remove all sufferings.

Today, major sufferings are a result of mental constructs rather something tangible. We can and definitely will solve them easily in a few thousand years which is a small period of time, on the scale of universe.

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SvetlanaButosky t1_jba8s2g wrote

lol I doubt suffering is just mental.

Stage 4 bone cancer, raped to death by gangs, tortured and murdered by ISIS, a lifetime of abuse, violence and deaths for some of the most unlucky people on earth.

Its both mental and physical.

The argument here is that if some of them have to suffer so horribly unworthy existence, then non of us have the right to exist. lol

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lyremska t1_jbdokm6 wrote

> Suffering is mostly constructed by human brain with the help of language and thoughts around pain. Think of animals! They have pains, sometimes, but they don’t suffer because they don’t have to think of past or future and just stay mindful, mostly always. They don’t have words like “suffering” and “pain” and “what would others think” or even a sense of self.

Please go read some science before saying shit like this based on intuition. Litteraly none of this is true. You can look up ethology books, for exemple. Or actually any article about animal behavior and intelligence will teach you more than you seem to currently know.

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pallavkulhari t1_jbdov94 wrote

Please share some relevant links. I am not saying that animals are dumb, I am trying to highlight the difference between pain and suffering here.

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lyremska t1_jbhaby8 wrote

I cannot recommend specific works cause most I've read were in not english. Ethology is the field that studies animal behaviour and cognition. I'll brush up on a few thoughts, you can verify them if in doubt/interested. Another comment replied to you with exemples of painful events that can make one suffer badly: having your bodily autonomy violated especially is pretty traumatic whether you have language to rationalize it or not, for humans as for animals. That's because animals do have a sense of self - a lot more than a newborn human. Besides, animals worry for their future and try to prevent bad things from happening to them. There are also universal things that go beyond language, abstract thinking and society - think motherly love - and it can lead to huge amounts of suffering even without complex thoughts around it. Animals grieve, and allegedly may have committed suicide on occasion.

I understand the difference between pain and suffering you're meaning to convey, but animals are not a good exemple here.

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Tsuji_Kaze t1_jbdjmx4 wrote

Hello! I stumbled upon a video about Diogenes and wanted more insight into who he was and his teachings. I thought I’d come to this subreddit in hopes of finding out more about him. I’m fairly new when it comes to the world of philosophy, I’ve read some of Epictetus teachings when I was in a philosophy course years ago & a few excerpts from Marcus Aurelius as well, I hope that information helps. Thank you I’m advanced!

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BernardJOrtcutt OP t1_jbdnt5d wrote

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Masimat t1_jc1u979 wrote

Are Gettier cases strictly about false justification rather than inadequate justification?

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BadLeague t1_jbpshd5 wrote

Where the hell do I get my hands on Wittgenstein's two major texts, Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations?

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bobthebuilder983 t1_jbq7yvo wrote

The greatest trick the devil has played was convincing everyone that god won the war.

Here are my reasoning

One was that god was a created everything and based on the biblical text never destroyed. Miltons paradise lost makes it that rebellion and death were things that were created after satan uprising. Not a creation by god, which one could argue was not in gods nature. For the universe would be a representation of gods self. So we have a pacifist fighting a war with a being that by nature is not.

Second the universe is chaotic and then we have a scripture that tries and create structure amongst the chaos. when it would have been easier to create a system and a manual. Only reason one would create a structure after the fact is the lack of ability to change the universe.

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