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The Grand Design (2010)

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Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#21

Post by nendroid »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #18
nendroid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The frontier of ethics is to consider a more generalized ethical framework that can encompass other forms of intelligence. You cannot derive morality from pure logic. Good and evil has nothing to do with a truth table. In addition there is a huge body of evidence that are specific moral behaviors are the result of natural selection. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Natural_morality . Morality are just arbitrary behaviora…

> In addition there is a huge body of evidence that are specific moral behaviors are the result of natural selection. There's a huge body of argument , which argues that various "moral" behaviors could have arisen via natural selection. Actual evidence? Not so much.

There is evidence. Physical evidence in fact.

You can find people with mental conditions that involve a complete lack of morality. If you scan these people with an MRI you actually find actual correlated differences in their brain.

The term for this type of mental condition is antisocial personality disorder. The popular term is psychopathy.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien...

It's hard to beat an MRI of the brain and an arrow pointing to a picture of the part of your brain that is moral.

Unless you disagree with physical structures in the brain being the result of natural selection, such evidence supports morality being the result of natural selection.

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#22

Post by nendroid »

Bodell wrote: post #20
nendroid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion and morality is part of philosophy as well. Does this mean it is impossible to separate Morality and Mathematics? What is the mathematical formula for good and evil? >Philosophy is not intended to be a high level view but a low level one, We're talking about the same thing, high or low is just the choice of symbolic direction as nothing is really "lower" or "higher." Let's remove that from the semantics to r…

I think this fairly well points out that we do not actually mean the same thing when we say “high” and “low”. Although, I will concede that the two terms are often interchangeable and often misused. Correct me if I’m reading you wrongly, but It seems to me when you say high level you’re offering philosophy up as an umbrella where all things that fall beneath it are then equivocated. My argument is that I do not belie…

>Correct me if I’m reading you wrongly, but It seems to me when you say high level you’re offering philosophy up as an umbrella where all things that fall beneath it are then equivocated.

No we mean the same thing. Though I do not agree with you that philosophy is more fundamental then science or logic.

>You’ll also note that there are many similarities in its logic and methods of categorization.

Any random topic can be founded on arbitrary axioms to create theorems of unlimited complexity. This does not justify study imo.

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#23

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nendroid wrote: post #21
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In addition there is a huge body of evidence that are specific moral behaviors are the result of natural selection. There's a huge body of argument , which argues that various "moral" behaviors could have arisen via natural selection. Actual evidence? Not so much.

There is evidence. Physical evidence in fact. You can find people with mental conditions that involve a complete lack of morality. If you scan these people with an MRI you actually find actual correlated differences in their brain. The term for this type of mental condition is antisocial personality disorder. The popular term is psychopathy. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien... It's hard to…

All right, here's a structurally similar claim: Snoring is the result of natural selection. The physical features of our throats cause snoring (we can actually change this with surgery). And the physical features of our throats are the result of evolution. So...

So now we need to define exactly what we mean by "is the result of". Is it accidentally the result of an evolutionary process (and we are explaining it with post-hoc rationalizations)? Or is it the result of a process that evolution actually drove toward that outcome, because it was beneficial? (Or is snoring actually beneficial for the survival and reproduction of the species?)

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#24

Post by nendroid »

farias0 wrote: post #16
nendroid wrote: post #2

>Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. I largely agree with this perspective on philosophy. Philosophy poses as a sort of higher level view of reality than physics or science. Rather than thinking of philosophy as a higher level view I think of it as a biased point of view. Things like the philoso…

You seem to imply that knowledge of human experience-centric matters (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) is lesser than knowledge centered around the nature (obviously excluding the human experience). You used the word "bias", but researchers of course try to use scientific approaches as much as possible. Humanities thinkers are also preoccupied with truth and knowledge. It's…

>You seem to imply that knowledge of human experience-centric matters (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) is lesser than knowledge centered around the nature (obviously excluding the human experience).

Yes because across human cultures (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) most of these things differ and if we were to encounter extraterrestrial beings I'm positive that such concepts such as morality and language could be foreign to them as well.

One thing that we can assume to be universal across all cultures and even extraterrestrial life forms is logic.

>You'd be basically expecting us to drop a subject just because it is harder.

No I'm saying keep it seperate not drop it. Literature is more similar to religion than it is to logic; the grouping philosophy makes of logic and science with religion is erroneous as clearly religion and science are completely different things.

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#25

Post by farias0 »

nendroid wrote: post #24
farias0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to imply that knowledge of human experience-centric matters (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) is lesser than knowledge centered around the nature (obviously excluding the human experience). You used the word "bias", but researchers of course try to use scientific approaches as much as possible. Humanities thinkers are also preoccupied with truth and knowledge. It's…

>You seem to imply that knowledge of human experience-centric matters (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) is lesser than knowledge centered around the nature (obviously excluding the human experience). Yes because across human cultures (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) most of these things differ and if we were to encounter extrater…

Sorry but you'll have to explain how universality makes an area of knowledge more important, useful, serious or any other similar adjective. The human experience not only exists, but it's by definition central to us, so how is this not extremely important?

And your argument about science being different from religion therefore grouping both under philosophy is wrong simply ignores what "philosophy" is supposed to mean and how areas of knowledge relate to each other. I'm sorry, unlike your point about natural vs human sciences I can't see AT ALL what you mean here.

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#26

Post by Bodell »

mannykannot wrote: post #17
Bodell wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logic is a field of philosophy [1]. As most inductive reasoning is. It would be impossible to separate philosophy from math, and in turn math from physics. Philosophy is not intended to be a high level view but a low level one, willing to examine the core structures of any system, weather those are man made ones such as ethics or beliefs, or supposed nature laws such as the physical world. It’s is true that some mode…

It is certainly true that science is founded on philosophy and is arguably a branch of it, but the implicit question in the controversial passage from the review is whether modern philosophy's methods are adequate. In that regard, as pointed out by Eliezer Yudkowsky [1], two millenia of philosophic inquiry was blindsided by the more radical epistemic and metaphysical implications of 20th. century physics. Personally,…

I'd have to give it serious thought, but if I were to agree, I'd also have to add that: The last two millennia of physics were also blindsided by it's own implications of it's discoveries in the 20th century.

Philosophy of mind I think is only a good example of all the things we still do not understand about neurology and cognitive science. I am not personally disheartened by it, as I typically get excited about unanswered questions. But I would agree modern day philosophers would be well advised to read more interdisciplinary science journals if they want to remain relevant. A good example of this is the Bereitschaftspotential from Libet's famous experiments.The experiment was sound the results were sound, the interpretations however may not have been. Diligent philosophers could have pointed this out, but it was the work of a medical researcher who did disprove it's underlying assumptions.[1][2]

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will... [2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230624040_An_Accumu...

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#27

Post by Bodell »

nendroid wrote: post #22
Bodell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this fairly well points out that we do not actually mean the same thing when we say “high” and “low”. Although, I will concede that the two terms are often interchangeable and often misused. Correct me if I’m reading you wrongly, but It seems to me when you say high level you’re offering philosophy up as an umbrella where all things that fall beneath it are then equivocated. My argument is that I do not belie…

>Correct me if I’m reading you wrongly, but It seems to me when you say high level you’re offering philosophy up as an umbrella where all things that fall beneath it are then equivocated. No we mean the same thing. Though I do not agree with you that philosophy is more fundamental then science or logic. >You’ll also note that there are many similarities in its logic and methods of categorization. Any random topic can…

Neither does your comment.

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#28

Post by nendroid »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23
nendroid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence. Physical evidence in fact. You can find people with mental conditions that involve a complete lack of morality. If you scan these people with an MRI you actually find actual correlated differences in their brain. The term for this type of mental condition is antisocial personality disorder. The popular term is psychopathy. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscien... It's hard to…

All right, here's a structurally similar claim: Snoring is the result of natural selection. The physical features of our throats cause snoring (we can actually change this with surgery). And the physical features of our throats are the result of evolution. So... So now we need to define exactly what we mean by "is the result of". Is it accidentally the result of an evolutionary process (and we are explaining it with…

All mutations are accidental. Whether a macro feature on a biological lifeform is accidental feature or a feature driven through generations of natural selection can be judged through the complexity of the outcome. Complexity arises from random mutations being selected and building on each other.

A complex module in our brain that formulates moral judgements on certain behaviors is by probability more likely to be an outcome of generations of natural selection. Such a module arising by accident is roughly equivalent to the probability of a tornado self assembling a 747 airliner from random junk by accident.

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#29

Post by nendroid »

farias0 wrote: post #25
nendroid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You seem to imply that knowledge of human experience-centric matters (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) is lesser than knowledge centered around the nature (obviously excluding the human experience). Yes because across human cultures (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) most of these things differ and if we were to encounter extrater…

Sorry but you'll have to explain how universality makes an area of knowledge more important, useful, serious or any other similar adjective. The human experience not only exists, but it's by definition central to us, so how is this not extremely important? And your argument about science being different from religion therefore grouping both under philosophy is wrong simply ignores what "philosophy" is supposed to mea…

>Sorry but you'll have to explain how universality makes an area of knowledge more important, useful, serious or any other similar adjective. The human experience not only exists, but it's by definition central to us, so how is this not extremely important?

Because to be unbiased is to separate yourself from the human experience. What makes your experience more central than the experience of a dolphin? Does a dolphin know morality as we know it? I don't know.

Though I do know that the dolphin is bounded by the laws of logic just as we are bounded.

>And your argument about science being different from religion therefore grouping both under philosophy is wrong simply ignores what "philosophy" is supposed to mean

Probably does. I'm not arguing for the definition of philosophy. If the definition of philosophy actually involves a unionization of faith based principles and science than I'm not arguing for a new definition.

I'm more arguing more for the fact that philosophy should not be labeled as something more fundamental than science. It is because of the category error that does not make philosophy more fundamental than science/logic.

So in a sense if you want to find out the reason for existence, you likely need to get more fundamental than science and logic and because philosophy involves things like ethics or religion it is, imo, not the true path to answering these fundamental questions.

Much of mathematics in the early days involved philosophical speculation... It was only later on that the field learned to separate the metaphysical speculations from the actual mathematics. I think philosophy is kind of suffering from the same issue.

Re: The Grand Design (2010)

#30

Post by nendroid »

Bodell wrote: post #27
nendroid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Correct me if I’m reading you wrongly, but It seems to me when you say high level you’re offering philosophy up as an umbrella where all things that fall beneath it are then equivocated. No we mean the same thing. Though I do not agree with you that philosophy is more fundamental then science or logic. >You’ll also note that there are many similarities in its logic and methods of categorization. Any random topic can…

Neither does your comment.

Neither does yours as well.
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