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On August 04 2014 08:28 hypercube wrote:
Over-reliance on logic is actually my main beef with philosophy
I was just telling a philosophy student this last night :D
On August 04 2014 08:21 deathly rat wrote:
It is obviously correct to take the emotion out of ethical debates.
obviously I don't think it's obvious, since I disagree. this is precisely the problem with dawkins and his ilk: they believe that all their positions are obvious, and that therefore anyone who disagrees with them does so because they are incapable of grasping the obvious.
I'm not sure how you would even go about starting to think about the example you provided without thinking about emotions.
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You can think about emotions, unemotionally.
When I find I spider in the bathroom I feel scared. However I don't feel scared when I'm thinking about how I feel. I'm thinking about an emotional response, unemotionally.
It is this sort of thing that drives Dawkins crazy. People unable to grasp the simple difference between thinking about emotions, and thinking without emotion.
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On August 04 2014 08:21 deathly rat wrote:
I think he certainly is being intentionally provocative, in order to raise awareness of the issues he campaigns for and stimulate discussions such as this one.
As for him "lacking expertise", is it not a classic fault in reasoning to attack the person rather than the ideas he is presenting? You could definitely argue the case for his philosophical expertise, but it's hardly the point is it.
It is obviously correct to take the emotion out of ethical debates. Does the victim of a crime have the right to sentence the perpetrator? Why not?
I'm not attacking Dawkins the person. I pointed out that this is another example among a plurality of examples where Dawkins doesn't know what he's talking about, let alone makes a coherent argument. Why is it the person saying "respond to the argument, not the person" who is not responding to the arguments?
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On August 04 2014 09:58 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2014 08:21 deathly rat wrote:
I think he certainly is being intentionally provocative, in order to raise awareness of the issues he campaigns for and stimulate discussions such as this one.
As for him "lacking expertise", is it not a classic fault in reasoning to attack the person rather than the ideas he is presenting? You could definitely argue the case for his philosophical expertise, but it's hardly the point is it.
It is obviously correct to take the emotion out of ethical debates. Does the victim of a crime have the right to sentence the perpetrator? Why not? I'm not attacking Dawkins the person. I pointed out that this is another example among a plurality of examples where Dawkins doesn't know what he's talking about, let alone makes a coherent argument. Why is it the person saying "respond to the argument, not the person" who is not responding to the arguments?
If you have read the article on his website that was previously linked, you can't possibly say it's not a "coherent argument".
Again, whether he is expert or not has no relevance to the quality of the arguments he is presenting.
What argument do you think I have not been responding to? It sounds to me like you're just saying "no, you, it's you. That thing you said, that's you..."
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On August 04 2014 09:46 deathly rat wrote:
You can think about emotions, unemotionally.
Irrelevant (and also often untrue). The point is that emotion underlies certain kinds of reasoning, including moral reasoning. If you consciously try to ignore your emotional response to moral problems the quality of your reasoning will suffer.
Of course this doesn't matter for the kind of "moral dilemmas" that are often discussed. These are not actual scenarios but caricatures. Toy problems that lack sufficient detail to teach us much useful about the real world.
edit: So just as most of the world realized that philosophy might not be the best way to understand the nature of reality, maybe it's time to accept that the same is true for morality or how we should act towards one another.
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On August 04 2014 09:46 deathly rat wrote:
You can think about emotions, unemotionally.
When I find I spider in the bathroom I feel scared. However I don't feel scared when I'm thinking about how I feel. I'm thinking about an emotional response, unemotionally.
It is this sort of thing that drives Dawkins crazy. People unable to grasp the simple difference between thinking about emotions, and thinking without emotion.
Can you? I'm not sure I agree. The sort of thing that drives me crazy is people who insist that things are more simple than they are, and that anyone who disagrees is simply unable to grasp the simplicity.
It's far from obvious to me that one could think in an adequate way about emotions without feeling emotions. I don't even know how to explain what an emotion is, logically... I think you have to feel them.
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On August 04 2014 10:33 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2014 09:46 deathly rat wrote:
You can think about emotions, unemotionally.
When I find I spider in the bathroom I feel scared. However I don't feel scared when I'm thinking about how I feel. I'm thinking about an emotional response, unemotionally.
It is this sort of thing that drives Dawkins crazy. People unable to grasp the simple difference between thinking about emotions, and thinking without emotion. Can you? I'm not sure I agree. The sort of thing that drives me crazy is people who insist that things are more simple than they are, and that anyone who disagrees is simply unable to grasp the simplicity. It's far from obvious to me that one could think in an adequate way about emotions without feeling emotions. I don't even know how to explain what an emotion is, logically... I think you have to feel them.
So you reject people trying to think objectively and rationally about emotional and ethical issues?
Your contention is then that since it is impossible to remove emotion from our decisions they must be included. Thus the feelings of victims of crime must be considered when sentencing. 2 victims have the same crime perpetrated against them, but the punishments are different due to the feelings of the victims?
You must then believe that because some people might be offended by a discussion, that discussion can't be had. I don't like Richard Dawkins saying that one kind of rape is worse than another, so I'm going to personally attack him, threaten him, and try to derail any kind of purposeful discussion, because I don't like his opinion.
What kind of rational thinking or philosophy is it that doesn't try to be objective? (the definition of objectivity including thought without personal emotion).
If you're going to bring the discussion down to "everything is subjective", and "can you believe what you see?" then I concede the argument and you can disappear back into the philosophical quagmire where nothing is true and but everything is right.
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On August 04 2014 10:57 deathly rat wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2014 10:33 bookwyrm wrote:On August 04 2014 09:46 deathly rat wrote:
You can think about emotions, unemotionally.
When I find I spider in the bathroom I feel scared. However I don't feel scared when I'm thinking about how I feel. I'm thinking about an emotional response, unemotionally.
It is this sort of thing that drives Dawkins crazy. People unable to grasp the simple difference between thinking about emotions, and thinking without emotion. Can you? I'm not sure I agree. The sort of thing that drives me crazy is people who insist that things are more simple than they are, and that anyone who disagrees is simply unable to grasp the simplicity. It's far from obvious to me that one could think in an adequate way about emotions without feeling emotions. I don't even know how to explain what an emotion is, logically... I think you have to feel them. So you reject people trying to think objectively and rationally about emotional and ethical issues?
I reject the claim that one can adequately treat those issues solely from an "objective and rational" standpoint. My claim is that it's insufficient, not that it's wrong.
I'm not going to get into the details of your example because I have no interest in arguing with young males on gaming message boards about rape.
What kind of rational thinking or philosophy is it that doesn't try to be objective? (the definition of objectivity including thought without personal emotion).
I don't know... a better kind? A more useful kind? A truer kind? A more honest kind?
If you're going to bring the discussion down to "everything is subjective", and "can you believe what you see?" then I concede the argument and you can disappear back into the philosophical quagmire where nothing is true and but everything is right.
no, I'm quite hostile to views of that type
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On August 04 2014 10:08 deathly rat wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2014 09:58 IgnE wrote:On August 04 2014 08:21 deathly rat wrote:
I think he certainly is being intentionally provocative, in order to raise awareness of the issues he campaigns for and stimulate discussions such as this one.
As for him "lacking expertise", is it not a classic fault in reasoning to attack the person rather than the ideas he is presenting? You could definitely argue the case for his philosophical expertise, but it's hardly the point is it.
It is obviously correct to take the emotion out of ethical debates. Does the victim of a crime have the right to sentence the perpetrator? Why not? I'm not attacking Dawkins the person. I pointed out that this is another example among a plurality of examples where Dawkins doesn't know what he's talking about, let alone makes a coherent argument. Why is it the person saying "respond to the argument, not the person" who is not responding to the arguments? If you have read the article on his website that was previously linked, you can't possibly say it's not a "coherent argument". Again, whether he is expert or not has no relevance to the quality of the arguments he is presenting. What argument do you think I have not been responding to? It sounds to me like you're just saying "no, you, it's you. That thing you said, that's you..."
I said:
I think the point is that while it is not impossible to evaluate the moral harm or approbation of one rape in comparison to another, every rape is highly fact-specific (context dependent, consequences, intentions). Dawkins tweets are offensive because they imply some false category analysis.
That argument has nothing to do with his lack of expertise. You just didn't read it apparently.
Dawkins's argument is not a coherent one:
“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”
‘“Being raped by a stranger is bad. Being raped by a formerly trusted friend is worse.” If you think that hypothetical quotation is an endorsement of rape by strangers, go away and learn how to think.’
Those two statements suggest that this top-down category analysis of rape sub-types is inherently inconsistent, because cross-rape moral tabulations are limited to case-by-case analysis and perhaps do not even subscribe to a quantitative accounting. He's just posting provocative, practically meaningless propositions and defends it by retreating to his blog and claiming that he's seeking to root out "taboo" and subjecting complex moral questions to infantile "rational" analysis.
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Didn't the reddit post I linked two pages ago explain this, and then you did too IgnE? I feel like deathly rat doesn't want to understand sadly. Because it's really not something so uncomprehensible you can fail to understand so many times.
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I don't know why, but for some reason his first tweets are saying that just because one thing worse than another, it doesn't mean that one is good and one is bad.
He used a provocative example, which I think detracted away from the original point he was trying to make. Since everyone is concerned with if one kind of rape can be fairly defined as worse than another. What Dawkins wants to say is they are both bad, even if you say one is worse than another.
People tell Dawkins he has no right to comment on such things, and anyway it is beyond the realms of decency to do so. So then he writes the article on his website defending his example, saying that people involved in philosophical discussions should be able to talk about whatever they want, and give extreme examples if they wish to.
I think the worst you can fairly accuse him of is choosing a bad example to illustrate his point.
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That article is hilariously bad. He thinks Dawkins is motivated by disgust of the effects of religion, when actually it is well known that he is motivated by the pursuit of truth and promoting a secular civilisation.
The rest of the argument is also drivel. There are perfectly good reasons why moral judgments should not be made on the basis of emotions, as I have already stated.
Then the article finishes by putting words into Dawkins' mouth to come to the conclusion that what he really wants is for everyone to be like him. Nonsense.
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On August 05 2014 00:33 deathly rat wrote:That article is hilariously bad. He thinks Dawkins is motivated by disgust of the effects of religion, when actually it is well known that he is motivated by the pursuit of truth and promoting a secular civilisation. The rest of the argument is also drivel. There are perfectly good reasons why moral judgments should not be made on the basis of emotions, as I have already stated. Then the article finishes by putting words into Dawkins' mouth to come to the conclusion that what he really wants is for everyone to be like him. Nonsense.
It's though being a fanboy, you're lucky to be on a site where this is perfectly understandable.
You havent shown anything btw.
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I was gone for the weekend. This is still going. You guys are legendary hahahaha
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The over-reliance on pure logic is a bigger problem with Anglo-analytics and math fetishists like Badiou and other structuralists though. That's when you get the weird ontologies that think everything can be understood with nothing but mathematical rigour, which doesn't end up making either much sense or being very useful in both the natural sciences and "humanistic" sciences. I would venture to say that a greater degree of Western philosophy has become skeptical of the over-reliance on pure logic over the past century, not just in Continental Europe but also among the Anglos (especially in the recent decades).
That being said, nowadays I think NA humanities and social science students would do better if their curriculum necessitated some logic classes.
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Haha, I don't think Badiou thinks that everything can be understood with nothing but mathematical rigor. He might have written some books about set theory, but his philosophy is irrationalist at its core (the subject is constituted by its fidelity to a truth-event, but the determination of what is or is not a truth-event is a leap of faith because it's formally undecidable).
On August 06 2014 04:26 koreasilver wrote:
That being said, nowadays I think NA humanities and social science students would do better if their curriculum necessitated some logic classes.
I'll drink to that. Then I could talk about math without everyone going glassy-eyed and calling me a platonist
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United States15275 Posts
Are you people still arguing about this?
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On August 06 2014 04:33 CosmicSpiral wrote:
Are you people still arguing about this?
I don't know. What do you think?
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EPT
