Evolution of Philosophic Knowledge (Peikoff DIM Lecture #1)

Socrates learned rhetoric from Aspasia of Miletos.
(See new Topic in General.)

Post 21

Monday, December 25, 2006 - 9:55am

Robert:

I think what was meant by the 'rabbits and wolves' comparison was the idea of prey and predator, whereas 'looters' are unequivocally (unequivocably?) nothing but predators, like wolves.

As far as rabbits producing anything (other than mucho l'il Thumpers) goes, probably beavers should have been the rodent-example. Even rabbits can be 'looters', soon as they find a farm-garden, but beavers? Talk about builder/architect/'producers'!

LLAP
J:D

(Edited by John Dailey on 12/25, 9:56am)

(Edited by John Dailey on 12/25, 9:58am)

Post 22

Tuesday, January 2, 2007 - 3:24pm

On the evolution of philosophy here are some points that occurred to me:

- Dawkins speaks of memes � once an individual expresses a thought and it becomes loose, others may pick it up and pass it on in a way that so uncritical as to make them unwitting replicators. That is one way in which we could talk about thoughts using people to spread them-selves � a kind of evolution. (I know thats not entirely on topic, but I'm fond of the concept of universal evolution).

- On the issue of there being a time so early in history that volitional beings weren�t culpable� No way. I�ve watched very young children learn basic concepts of fairness. Two Neanderthals in a cave are enough to begin the creation of a simple moral system. Morality arises where ever choice exits. Right?

- I would say that being rational is a faculty. Our ancestors had that faculty. What they didn�t have was the knowledge � including knowledge of epistemology, logic, science, etc. (Peikoff is so right that those are magnificent achievements) So early man had a smaller amount of rationally derived data. And they had far, far fewer data points to use as jumping off places to create new rational data. And they didn't have a culture rich in examples of rational thought. But inside this very limited context the act of grasping facts, making integrations, coming to conclusions � that would still be a full time job just as it is now. Context is the key here � what is a rational expectation given the context.

Steve

Post 23

Tuesday, January 2, 2007 - 6:12pm

Morality arises where ever choice exits. Right?

I'd say moral judgment exists whenever you have goals being pursed by an intelligent being, where any event could be judged as beneficial or detrimental to their hierarchy of goals. Morality exists wherever you have a being evaluate the impact of events on their goals.

Post 24

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 - 4:22pm

Dean,

You said, "...moral judgment exists whenever you have goals being pursed by an intelligent being..."

I'd agree but only because "intelligence" and "judging" presuppose "choice".

As the story goes, Plato once defined man as a "featherless biped". When the Diogenes heard this, he handed Plato with a plucked chicken � no doubt telling him, �Meet your fellow philosopher.�

I�m no Diogenes, but I think I have a featherless biped for you. Say I�ve programmed my little robot with a task � like fetching a soft-drink from the refrigerator and bringing it to me. Hah, a �Goal.� And Mr. Robot is �intelligent.� He recognizes objects, understands commands, measures outcomes for success or failure, tells me when his batteries are running down, doesn�t mess on the carpet, etc. He examines events like, �ran into something� or �no soft-drink in frig.� He is programmed to report the outcome of these events in terms of his goal � �Sorry Steve, you are out of Pepsi.�

Now, if the robot were able to make actual choices instead of programmed responses, and if the existence of the Robot was not only conditional (giving it the ultimate value to which all other values it had would then be subordinate) but also had its existence dependent upon initiating the proper choices � THEN I�d say we had the context for moral judgments. (Can't you just see the robot saying "You are a bad dog" when Fido got in the way of retrieving my Pepsi?)

Even the issue of intelligence revolves around choice. If an entity can�t choose what to believe/accept/do (i.e., program itself) then I wouldn�t really consider it intelligent (sorry, robot). That�s why I said morality arises out of choice.

Post 25

Sunday, January 7, 2007 - 6:47pm

I am willing to give Peikoff the benefit of the doubt on his lectures, since they are not polished for publication. But his statements on primitive man fail to distinguish between the pre-scientific animism of the primitive versus the post-scientific mysticism of the Platonic supernaturalist.

Before Greek philosophy and the discovery of the material nature of the inanimate, it was not understood that inanimate objects did not have minds and intentions. The necessary concepts to distinguish between the mental and the physical were lacking. At this stage, a belief in the desires of inanimate objects is not really mysticism, but simply a naive form of pre-scientific lack of differentiation. We do not call three-year-old children who lack a theory of mind mystics. The primitive, without having yet culturally acquired the idea of the material versus the mental, could not be blamed for having rejected a concept he had not yet formed.

But once the Greeks had fully differentiated the mental from the material, any desire to backtrack, and, like Plato, refer to a supernatural world in order to maintain a now untenable primacy of consciousness, fully counted as and should be derided as mysticism.

If Peikoff is publishing DIM, we can hope he will explore the difference more fully. At this point, calling primitives mystics is perhaps an excusable shortcut at best, but a serious flaw if it is not corrected.

Post 26

Monday, January 8, 2007 - 8:46pm

Dean,

Because "Man" is a fuzzy concept.

Definitions from m-w.com ...

Fuzzy
2 : lacking in clarity or definition <moving the camera causes fuzzy photos>

Concept
2 : an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances

A man born without a hand is still a man; but a 'man' born without a brain is not (and never was). How come I can be so damn "clear" in making this distinction? Well, it's because the concept "man" isn't so fuzzy that I can't differentiate its referents from all other epistemologically-available entities in reality. Its because my concept of man is clear enough to differentiate man from all other known entities.

"Volitional" is also a fuzzy concept...

m-w.com ...

Volition
2 : the power of choosing or determining : WILL

What's so fuzzy about having the will-power to determine your proactive and reactive behaviors? And, before answering, please, think about whether or not your answer will offend me -- before you post it in a fit of reactive haste. ;-)))

We don't hold "Man" responsible for their actions because he is volitional. We hold "Man" responsible for their actions because if we didn't then he would benefit from "Walking into our house, killing the husband, raping the wife and children, kill the children, clean up the mess, and then take the wife and house and all of the belongings as if they were his own." ... while on the other hand, we would surely not benefit (it goes against one's goals) so one would make sure that the potential killer, rapist, and thief met one's gun, or at least the government's gun in the near future.

First of all, your argument assumes that raping and killing can be "beneficial" to human beings -- it begs the question on what it means to really have gotten a hold of something that truly benefits one's life. Secondly, what about animals and plants without volition. I'm thinking of a Venus Fly Trap: Do we hold it morally responsible if it scares a child by clamping on her finger? No. And why don't we hold this plant morally responsible for its behavior? Because it has no volition.

For point 2: There is another option other than mysticism: to realize that one is ignorant. Surely there existed people who did not use faith in the distant past.

Right! (some evidence from over 2 millennia ago):

Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.--Polybius, Histories, 125 B.C.

Post 27

Monday, January 8, 2007 - 9:53pm

Ed,

Ed's definition of man: No brain, not a man. Brain: a man. Consider taking a man with a brain, and continually randomly destroy his neurons over a timespan of 1 year, and on the end of the last day he has zero neurons. On those 365 days, which moment would he no longer be a man under your definition? (Continual spectrum, hard to draw a line. Conclusion: fuzzy)

Definition of Volition: the power of choosing or determining : WILL.

Individuals each have various amounts of past experiences which are varyingly similar (and useful) to the current context they are making a decision on (Wisdom).
Individuals each have various amounts of information (and various amounts of useful information) on the current context they are making a decision on (Sensory and contextual knowledge).
Individuals each have various deductive, inductive, pattern recognition, and simulation abilities, each significantly effecting the performance in their ability to think of potential courses of action and quality of prediction of their future given a course of action (Imagination, Reasoning, Thinking).

One could imagine varying any one of these properties on an individual, and get vast differences in their power/ability of choosing or determining. At the extremely incapable end: No wisdom: a person might take too long to discover and plan a good course of action (because there are no previously used plans to start with). No contextual knowledge: No idea of what one is capable of or what any action would do. No thinking ability: no comparisons between the predicted results of various actions are performed, only repetitive actions, single actions, or random actions are possible.

Vary any one of those things, and you will get a huge range of volitional ability. At what point do you decide that a thing has volition or does not have volition? (Continual spectrum, hard to draw a line. Conclusion: fuzzy)

Do we hold it morally responsible if it scares a child by clamping on her finger? No. And why don't we hold this plant morally responsible for its behavior? Because it has no volition.

We do hold it morally responsible... if the fly trap began killing children then we would surely retaliate. But since it hasn't done that, nor has it done anything that will prevent us from achieving our goals, nor do we expect it to in the future, we will not attack.

And, before answering, please, think about whether or not your answer will offend me -- before you post it in a fit of reactive haste. ;-)))

I did not mean to offend.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 1/08, 9:55pm)

Post 28

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 4:51am

Dean,

Consider taking a man with a brain, and continually randomly destroy his neurons over a timespan of 1 year, and on the end of the last day he has zero neurons. On those 365 days, which moment would he no longer be a man under your definition? (Continual spectrum, hard to draw a line. Conclusion: fuzzy)

I consider this reasoning to be unfair (illogical). Using the same method of reasoning ...

Consider taking a man with a full head of hair, and continually randomly destroy his follicles over a timespan of 1 year, and on the endo of the last day he has zero hair on his head. On those 365 days, which moment would he be "bald"? Conclusion: baldness is a fuzzy concept.

... or ...

Consider taking some ice-cold water in a pot on a stove, and continually turning up the heat over a timespan of 1 hour, and on the end of the last minute the water is boiling hot. In those 60 minutes, which moment would the water no longer be cold under your definition? Conclusion: hot and cold are fuzzy concepts.

... or ...

[endless examples -- making everything that is known by man come out to appear "fuzzy" -- omitted for brevity]

Vary any one of those things, and you will get a huge range of volitional ability. At what point do you decide that a thing has volition or does not have volition?

In this argued respect, babies appear to have less volition than adults (or even no volition -- because they don't think anywhere near as straight as adults do). You can look at a baby and say: "See! It just 'reacts'!" You can watch a baby grow into someone who thinks before acting -- i.e. someone who learns things like manners, someone who refrains from 'soiling' themselves, etc. And, at some point, you will have granted them volition. But it's really about the having of the potential to have done things differently (than they were done). All humans have this. Humans are that kind of creature that is born with the potential to have done things differently, the potential to have chosen otherwise.

You can argue all day about 'the use' of this potential which each human has (as if it mattered) but, alluding to the continual spectrum fallacy above, that kind of reasoning would make some folks have less rights than others (because they weren't yet quite as 'able' as others to capitalize on life, liberty, property, or happiness). When carried to its logical conclusion, it becomes a Nietzschean master-slave argument for a type of mitigated slavery among men -- and that can't be right. Do you see that?

Ed

Post 29

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 4:58am

Dean,

Do we hold it morally responsible if it scares a child by clamping on her finger? No. And why don't we hold this plant morally responsible for its behavior? Because it has no volition.
We do hold it morally responsible... if the fly trap began killing children then we would surely retaliate.

But would we have contempt for the Venus Fly Trap species (each member of which reacts in exactly the same murderous way; without exception -- because its nature demands that response/reaction)? What about storms that "kill"? Do we hold the weather morally responsible? Do we really "retaliate" (or do we merely "respond" without any kind of "retaliation")?

And, before answering, please, think about whether or not your answer will offend me -- before you post it in a fit of reactive haste. ;-)))
I did not mean to offend.

And that's because you are the only kind of creature that CAN "mean."

;-)

Ed

Post 30

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 1:32pm

that kind of reasoning would make some folks have less rights than others (because they weren't yet quite as 'able' as others to capitalize on life, liberty, property, or happiness). When carried to its logical conclusion, it becomes a Nietzschean master-slave argument for a type of mitigated slavery among men -- and that can't be right. Do you see that?

I think that different individuals have a large range of different mental abilities and capabilities, some extremely able, some incapable, and everything in between. I do see that the more intelligent one is, the more one is able to acquire freedoms, property, and control over their lives. I don't see how one could deny it. I don't see how that necessarily concludes that some people should have different legal rights than other people.

By holding things responsible, our goal is to make sure that no one benefits from destroying our highest values... and that if possible, if someone does destroy one of our values, require they provide a replacement.

What does "morally responsible" mean? How is "morally responsible" different than "responsible"?

Fortunately the weather does not benefit from being destructive. If we could, I'm sure we would control the weather. Currently we do the best we can at predicting it and building things to protect us and withstand it.

Post 31

Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 9:30pm