Posts Tagged “philosophy”
Ross • 13th Oct 2009 • Living, Thinking • bombs, death, dying, philosophy, terrorism, utility
A few months ago, I was standing next to the doors of a Tube train from Canary Wharf to Westminster. By my feet was a large bag. The bag was large, bulging and had paint splattered on it. I imagined that it was a painter or decorator’s bag. However, I looked up and down the carriage and didn’t see any painters or decorators. In fact, everyone (including myself) was wearing suits. I wondered if this bag was a bomb, and considered whether I should ask others if they owned it.
This is not interesting, in itself. What is interesting is that this experience made me think, from my perspective, does it matter if it’s a bomb? If this bag had exploded, I’d have died instantly and without knowing. Ignoring any consideration that others that could be harmed directly and indirectly through mourning, would an explosion of the bag matter to me? I figured not: either it wasn’t a bomb, and I would be fine, or it was, and I’d die instantly, but be fine up to that point. What I find interesting (and surprising) about this is that I appear to be fairly indifferent to instant, unknowing death. I think that this is entirely compatible with my standard, human fear of painful, knowing death, and, indeed, any form of unwanted human suffering. I think this view may be widely shared, although I doubt many people have thought about it in detail. After all, people generally report that, had they the option, they’d drift of quietly in their sleep.
I write about this now because I have just read Galen Strawson, who writes on something similar in The Philosophy Magazine. I also wonder about the wider implications: for example, is working in a bomb disposal team actually better than fighting on the front line, because although your risk of death is higher, so is the ‘quality’ of death (i.e. instant and unknown)? On the other side of the equation, at what point does becoming a suicide bomber became preferable (in terms of utility) to being dragooned into fighting as an insurgent?
And it turns out people in suits do occasionally take decorator’s bags on the Tube with them: the owner and his bag alighted at Canada Water.
Ross • 5th Jun 2009 • Thinking • ayn rand, computer games, films, gaming, movies, philosophy
‘A Liberal Christian’ writes about Bioshock, The Incredibles and Ayn Rand:
“Bioshock” and “The Incredibles” show two visions of objectivism. “Bioshock” glorifies this vision before burning it to the ground, and quite rapidly at that. “The Incredibles,” on the other hand,” simply glorifies it. Yet regardless of what these works have to say, they remain some of my favorites of all time, and I hope they will be for you too.
More here.
Ross • 20th May 2009 • Thinking • philosophy, political philosophy
An unusally poor post by Lemmus Lemmus (real name?) at The Church of Rationality. He (I imagine Lemmus is male) samples 30 pages of Ayn Rand and is not impressed. I am not usually one to stick up for Rand, on the grounds that seeing who does is a faily good heuristic for screening monomaniac crazies. However, on this occasion I will break my own rule. Lemmus:
If we accept that life is an end in itself, by which she means (as is clear from the context) that the preservation of human life must be the one and only aim of ethics…
I disagree with the bit after the comma. You can’t say “by which she means” and then create a straw man like that. Or you shouldn’t. Or both.
The question is over whether you aggregate life being all that matters, and whose life you are talking about. Is the life social (all life matters, the Lemmus reading) or non-existent and personal (my life is all that matters). Rand cared about her life, and nobody else’s. If she could save somebody else at no real cost and wanted to, then fine. If she could but didn’t, fine too. Barbarous, some claim, but consistent.
Lemmus again:
Quality of life doesn’t seem to be a concern for her.
But he quotes this direct from Rand:
To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose.
Happiness is about quality of life, no?
And that’s it with Ayn Rand and me. Of course I could read all of her books and see whether she has addressed this rather obvious objection anywhere, but given that time is a scarce resource I prefer to spend mine on stuff that promises to be more worthwhile.
Change the gender of that paragraph’s subject, ’Ayn Rand’ to ‘Lemmus Lemmus’ and ‘books’ to ‘posts’, and I agree. Or at least, it would be if I adopted that kind of absolutist approach to analysing somebody’s body of thought.
Ross • 15th May 2009 • Thinking • philosophy
As a mental exercise, I have tried to answer the question ‘what do I believe’ in the fewest possible words. This is my best attempt to date.
Epistemology, identity and language. Existence is an irrelevant concept, its validity unprovable and utterly insignificant. Nouns (and thus language) are built on convenient euphemisms and abstractions. You never cross the same river twice: the water has changed and so have you. Identity is feigned. Human communication and universal grammar depends on our ability to form and adapt abstractions: people, rivers, nouns. We process these with verbs, and infer them with argument. We build these abstractions into knowledge. Often we don’t correct enough for evolved biases because we’ve evolved not to. The knowledge we create contains a lot of euphemism and abstraction, (and contorts these into a priori truisms) but also bundles up some important, fundamental and a posteriori physical laws. You dropped an apple, it fell: ‘you’ and the ‘apple’ are abstractions, the revealed law is as close as we will get to experiencing truth. It doesn’t matter who senses this truth, or how. Truth is platform-independent.
Philosophy of science. A unified theory of everything may require multiple universes, although the existence of such universes would pose no new practical problems, in the same way as the existence of previous and future timeframes pose no new practical problems. While we work towards a unified theory we should bear in mind that while we travel through time unintentionally we also exist in the past, ‘now’.
Ethics. There are no ethical facts, and so there cannot be ethical knowledge. Statements of right and wrong are statements of strong (’sanctified’) preference. Pride, joy, guilt and shame exist as evolved responses to guide pro-social behaviour that favours reproduction. These combine with the self-interest of others to set ‘ethical norms’ and outline ‘natural justice’. There is no ‘good life’ in the absence of an objective; there are no ‘inalienable rights’ outside of contract.
Political philosophy. Because of the inter-generational problem, liberty exists only in polities with the right of exit and entry. The availability of new frontiers increases the quantum of liberty in the universe, through competitive bidding – polities need people as much as people need polities. Escape to space is a genetic necessity.
Economics. Markets are an externalisation of the process of human reasoning. They benefit from the same power, speed and logic, but are subject to the same behavioural biases as individuals and crowds.
