Silk Road forums
Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: AgentLee on October 15, 2012, 01:44 pm
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Hello everybody. When I am not shooting heroin into my arm (and sometimes when I am) I teach moral philosophy. If anyone would like to hear what a jaded, over-educated dope fiend with a penchant for tweed has to say on the matter of justice and ethics I'd be happy to blether on until I go blue.
My areas are specifically the modern idea of justice with reference to Rawls and Sen, bioethics and the usual stuff on moral and political philosophy, in addition to a lot of critical theory.
Questions (about the subject, not my degenerate private life and addiction to moral turpitude), interest in reading lists, and perhaps even requests for study ideas or assignments are welcome.
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Philosophy is a load of old men talking who never draw conclusions because they're too scared to voice their own opinions and take a little leap of faith.
Ya, and Venus is especially chilly every 4th day of the month.
@AL I definitely wouldn't call myself a philosopher, but I did get my minor in the subject, and am still quite interested in the areas I studied, namely metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. What do you feel might be some interesting areas of overlap? Because I'm always up for a good bullshit session. I haven't done much study in either morality or ethics, but off the top of my head I'd guess there might be some interesting territory to explore in the overlap between the concept of justice and epistemology.
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Moral philosophy fascinates me;
I want to believe in moral hedonism, however cannot make the leap as to why an individual should give a shit about the well-being of others. This leaves me supporting egoistic hedonism as a moral philosophy and makes it illogical to sympathize with victims of shitty events of the world, sep 11, that batman thing, etc etc...
Can too much time pondering moral philosophy turn one into a sociopath?
I wouldn't worry, "scociopathology" is a description of a certain type and pattern of behavior, not of speculation. ;)
Thomas Nagel, in his fucking great book "A View from Nowhere," basically kinds of builds up to an attempt at an answer to just the question you broach. He lays out the four options, and IMO builds a pretty damn convincing argument for the last. First, "only personal consideration/no collective consideration," second "only collective consideration/no personal consideration," third "both considered but collective consideration held over personal consideration," and last "both considered but personal consideration held over collective consideration." Sounds like a centrist Republican political position when I write it out like that, lol but Nagel does a pretty damn convincing job of describing why linking the two in that configuration is necessary and beneficial.
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Had to delete above post sorry, logged on with wrong account. Appreciate your replay dude!
Thats kinda how i'd played it out. Sometimes i find myself asking people 'why' they care... especially about environmental issues. I care for the environment - but its tricky to find a hedonistic moral reason why an underwater ecosystem should matter and therefore not be destroyed for someone else who DOES have an hedonistic moral interest.
Ya man, def, and that's a REALLY good question. I ask myself the same question probably every time I see somebody expressing a perspective with a certain degree of certitude. "How have they come to be some convinced in what they're saying?" Of course, unless the hypothetical environmental crusader is an avowed moral hedonist, he probably doesn't have a hedonistic moral reason for believing the truth of what he's saying. He probably reached his conclusions via a different track. Personally speaking, I used to be totally dumbfounded that there were still literalist Christians in this country. The I opened my eyes and realized I was the one in the fucking minority! Now I just accept that there are a lot of different ways of thinking out there, and content myself to try to speculate on how that person's system of knowledge might have to be ordered for him to choose that perspective. Like with the environmental crusader, on the wackier end he'll be "all collect/no pers," though more often than not they're just "both but collect over pers." Now, in my way of thinking, these aren't changeable positions, like your wardrobe. To some degree they're hardwired due to a person's nature and nurture (though not to the extent that they make a person's life deterministic). Now, if that is the case, then I'd say that environmentalism is as good an '-ism' as a person could choose to fit in that "collective" box (and remember, they need some thing there because of the way they're wired) as anything I can think of. Seems more noble an enlightened than just rabid veganism (for example). I mean, we are letting the environment get trashed to the point that it's not longer able to support human life to the degree it was even 20-30 years ago (or better put, we're letting a relatively small number of people get filthy rich in the process of doing the trashing, while the vast majority of people receive little benefit).
Anyways, this is mainly what goes though my mind, but you're doing some actual asking? I bet their general response is something along the lines of, "How could you NOT care??" :o
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Merely here again to restate the point of my presence. I'll happily go into issues relating to politics, justice and ethics if anyone cares about the relevant positions on these fields nowadays.
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philosophize the ideal form of government pls
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philosophize the ideal form of government pls
Just casually... ;p