Philosophically, what's your take?

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Ult_Sm86
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Philosophically, what's your take?

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

So I'm doing this for my presentation and i want to know what you guys get out of it:


CHAPTER 6 OF THE CHARACTER OF THE HUMAN WILL WHICH MAKES THE AFFECTIONS OF THE SOUL RIGHT OR WRONG

But the character of the human will is of moment; because, if it is wrong, these motions of the soul will be wrong, but if it is right, they will be not merely blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in them all; yea, none of them is anything else than will. For what are desire and joy but a volition of consent to the things we wish? And what are fear and sadness but a volition of aversion from the things which we do not wish? But when consent takes the form of seeking to possess the things we wish, this is called desire; and when consent takes the form of enjoying the things we wish, this is called joy. In like manner, when we turn with aversion from that which we do not wish to happen, this volition is termed fear; and when we turn away from that which has happened against our will, this act of will is called sorrow. And generally in respect of all that we seek or shun, as a man's will is attracted or repelled, so it is changed and turned into these different affections. Wherefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, ought to be a lover of good, and therefore a hater of evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice, he who lives according to God ought to cherish towards evil men a perfect hatred, so that he shall neither hate the man because of his vice, nor love the vice because of the man, but hate the vice and love the man. For the vice being cursed, all that ought to be loved, and nothing that ought to be hated, will remain.
-The City Of God by Augustine
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Ult_Sm86
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Philosophically, what's your take?

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

Here's some mroe for you guys...


In a period of quantification, science relation in genera, so “Morality should of course be no different.”

Morality is pretty straightforward, so it is essentially a utility. The best decision for the most people. (“Greatest good for the greatest amount of people.”)

Utilitarian Calculus: a measurement of pleasure/pain.

“Only superstition keep people from doing things morally. He criticized the church and other things of that such.”

Consequentiality Theory: The ends justify the means.

Calculus:

1) When faced with a moral decision, the first question asked is intensity. How strong will this pleasure/pain be? The higher the pleasure, the more moral the act is.

2) How long will said pleasure/pain last? Pleasuer of LONG duration is better than short.

3) Certainty: What’s the certainty that this pleasure is going to happen and last as long as it will?

4) Propinquity: Nearness & time, when will it happen? How soon?

5) Fecundity: Fruitful, beneficial to your life? Is this pleasure/pain going to be productive of more?

6) Purity: Will this pleasure cause pain later? (Will this Pain cause pleasure later?)

7) Extent: How many people are affected by this action?



John Stuart Mill

Qualitative versus Quantitative Approach:

Was influenced by Bentham. By end of the decade he has given Utilitarianism his own twist.
The general orientation of Utilitarianism is “What makes an action morally worthy is its consequences?”

Kant says no not what’s done but why it’s done.
What does it mean to bring out the best state of affairs?
The key is to determine the best state of affairs, so you define the feature(s) of states of affairs that make them good and analyze which ones can be brought about to making the most of the features.
The more people effected good the better the act is. How do you measure what’s good for the people?
Bentham says Pleasure.
Mill agrees that right action brings the best state of affairs but disagrees with pleasure and says instead that it is happiness instead.

“Happiness is pleasure and the absence of pain.”

Happiness, Pleasure, & Utility appear to be treated as virtual synonyms throughout his work.
Mill considers “objections” to Benthams work and says
“Most objections are based on misconceptions and over complications.”
Bentham’s Util. ism “maximizes quantity without regard to quality.”

Mill says “Such objections are from Bentha’s OWN simplification. One must not only weigh the quantity but the quality as well.”

Mill concludes saying: “It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Since it is better to have fewer of the higher quality pleasures than more of the lower quality pleasures.”

Who determines which pleasure is “Higher” or “lower”?
To walk around as morale saints is also an oversimplification.
In such cases where your happiness and the happiness of the greatest number clearly separate, you must pick.
“The best strategy for this is to concentrate on maximizing the happiness of whose needs, goals, and aspirations of those around you, those who are closest.”

“The utilitarian claim is that we are required to always bring the greatest happiness seems to bring people to think of morale chaos. If we believe that the worst actions would maximize happiness, hell would be break out. But according to this theory it is justifiable.”
Mill suggests that this objection is an oversimplification, and although it always right to do whats right to bring the greatest happiness it is understandable to bring in “Rules of Thumb” such as do not kill, steal, etc….

2 Stages
1) Happiness is good, everyone desires happiness. If each persons happiness is desirable then its clear that we must do what’s good for the greater people.

2) Happiness is not merely desirable as a good for each person but that every person desires happiness for his/her own end. People to pursue virtue for its own sake, but most of these pursuits stem from pleasure. (Ultimately they are pursuing happiness not virtue)

Everyone desires his/her own happiness.

THE BEST STATE OF AFFAIRS IS THE STATE OF AFFAIRS THAT MAXIMIZES HAPPINESS!!


Criticism:

1) To Mill: G.E. Moore says that the RIGHT action is the action that brings the best state of affairs but that GODONESS is a simple property that can’t be further defined as pleasure, utility, etc… it’s an open question. How do we know that this is true? They are different terms as the same synonymous word and they don’t ADD UP. It is not at all clear that what Maximizes pleasure/utility is one and the same. If you bought the most pleasurable car, the one that makes you the happiest and the most useful, would it be the same car? His terminology is B.S.
2) There must be some way of determining what the best state of affairs are, but it denies that the right action is the same action that brings the best state of affairs. “If a doctor can kill one person and save four.” But, killing is morally wrong, so this is problematic. The Right action in this case does not bring the best state of affairs.
3) The fact that utilitarian theories says the rational thing to do is maximize his/her own happiness and to do so maximizes the general happiness, but in cases where they diverge and such cases appear to be common, you now have no reason to be morale but you good reason to be immoral!


It has persisted to this day as one of the dominant morale theories because quite simply: “How can it be wrong to always do what’s best?”
So what makes successful, this theory of Utilitarianism, is also its weak point.


Compt: the founder of positive Philosophy. (He did not discover the theory, Mills says positivism is the general idea of the age).

-Social, Political, Morale, Religious thought is not applied to science. “Why?”

-Gaining a sense of authority from the spectacular accomplishments, science challenged the way people thought. Questions came up such as “Science versus religion, the discovering of objective morale standards, the science of political mindsets,…etc…”

-Influenced by advocates of idealism and theories of “Human Nature” & the “Absolute”.
-After the French revolution there’s complete political Chaos in most of Europe, society was totally chaotic.

-Compt attempted to develop science of society called “Positivism”. Democracy and all else is complete “bull sh*t” to him and he called them “Dogmatic” and said we need to model ourselves after the medieval ages without the church.

“Any proposition which does not admit of being ultimately reduced of simple annunciation of fact, special or general, can have no real or intelligible sense.”

-The first stage is the theological stage where people explain cause and effect with Gods, superstitions, and eventually gets a little more technical but still omniscient. (Slavery)
-Second stage is metaphysical stage for impersonal rulings as democracy, freedom, terrorism, patriotism, nationalism…abstract forces… (Made up terms, dogma,)
-Third Stage: Positivistic, scientific stage. All attempts to explain things by references beyond our experience is abandoned.

So to deal with the different kinds of people you need SOCIOLOGY to understand the different variant peoples.

Mathematics
Astronomy
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Sociology should BE THE NEXT! ←-Cant

Cant refers to the middle ages saying that everything WORKED. Now he wants to know “how did it work and how do we re-establish it?”

Well you re-create the religion of Catholicism and God as Humanity, keep the sacraments, priesthood, etc…
He admires himself as Pope, re-creates a calendar named after the philosophers, and says this is the way to run society.

THIS BLOWS ALL OF HIS CREDIBILITY!!
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Philosophically, what's your take?

Post by Saint Kurt »

I'm not sure what you're actually writing your paper on, but this seems to be a survey of all the variants of trying to answer the question "Do we really have freewill?"

It's a good question, but difficult to answer.

If no, what controls you? God/religion? Social morality? Your own sense of justice/right/wrong? Something else? Are they all just the same thing?

If yes, how does a planet of free willed individuals keep from living in anarchy? (By imposing the above? Something different?)

Theologists, philosophers, sociologists, academics, economists, and just about everyone else has been trying to solve this puzzle for years.

My favorite solutions are actually social welfare economics models called "equilibrium theory" or "cooperative game theory" in the math world. These are mathematical behavior models based on stochastic group dynamics. (Probably the most famous of these at the moment is the Nash Equilibrium because of the movie A Beautiful Mind.)

Cooperative game theory says to me that a society of individuals will avoid anarchy regardless of their personal belief systems because anarchy is bad for both individuals and groups. It would imply that though individuals may have total autonomy, groups do not and therefore whether or not we believe we have free-will is irrelevant. It is not the possession of free-will that matters, but its application. Game theory says free-will is conditional based on random and ever changing situations.

This works for me. I'd hate to nail down something like freedom to a single philosophic construct. You know what I mean?

Interesting essay topic.
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Ult_Sm86
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Philosophically, what's your take?

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

Well the theories in my last post exclude all God and Church.

Forget them, they do not exist. None of that is "relative" apparently.

My paper is actually a comparison of Bentham & Mill.

(Both are ridiculous.)

Maybe Compt & Bentham
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