Comments for Blog of Noah Greenstein

Comment on Ethics Oppositions by nogre

nogre — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 05:48:18 +0000

The SEP entry on Consequentialism has a nice section on consequentialists who do use it as a decision procedure and those who don't. Those who don't should not be included in what I said above, though it also remains to be seen on what basis they do make ethical choices.

Comment on Ethics Oppositions by nogre

nogre — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:51:18 +0000

Hi Puffy (sorry)
You may be right that my gloss of consequentialism is a straw man. It was not meant to be a complete description.

However, as long as we are still talking about a consequences-based system, this makes the consequences a fundamental part of the decision procedure. Since the decision procedure is what is at stake here, it still seems that my points make sense in reference to this, even if I am using a very naive version of the theory.

Comment on Ethics Oppositions by Sean Combs

Sean Combs — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:37:48 +0000

Unfortunately, I think the suggestion is a non-starter, since consequentialists have long taken pains to point out that their principles do not imply that behaving rightly requires figuring out in advance what action would maximize the good, and even that their principles actually entail that doing so is often wrong.

Comment on Ethics Oppositions by nogre

nogre — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:01:22 +0000

Hi N,
Thanks for the comment. I think it matters that the ‘self’ is part of the world for consequentialists, but, this actually is part of the point: the self has to be treated as part of the world, it is not primary. Likewise the deontologist starts with the ‘good agent’ and then moves on to others. The question here is how we make ethical decisions, how we start to decided, and this kinda flips things around.

I’ll grant that modern theories are highly sophisticated and that my account wasn’t more than a quick gloss. But if consequentialists are not looking at consequences, deontologists aren’t following rules and virtue ethics people aren’t doing whatever it is that their virtues say, then we’ve lost the distinctions anyway.

Comment on Ethics Oppositions by N

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:27:22 +0000

Does it matter that your ‘self’ is also part of the ‘world’? All consequentialist theories allow a person to include themselves as part of the world that is to be changed. The opposition between these two variables seems somewhat forced. The alleged focus on ‘self’ seems equally strange in the case of deontology: the good agent, for such theorists, is characteristically focused on others, and on the ethical demands made by those others.

Second: as I understand it, few modern consequentialist theories are direct, which means that most actually do not reccommend the decision-procedure you describe here. The common distinction between decision-procedure and right-making features of actions may cut across many of your distinctions, here.

Comment on On Matthen’s Intelligibility Argument by Staci Stein

Staci Stein — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 14:35:08 +0000

The preceding observations might suggest that the hard problem is invulnerable to scientific methods, but I believe that progress may be made by loosening a few of science’s self-imposed restrictions, many of which are relics of long discredited philosophies of science, such as naive empiricism and logical positivism. Consciousness is our opening to the world; it is the vehicle by which we experience anything. Therefore we cannot observe consciousness per se, since we observe through consciousness. Nevertheless, with practice we can identify characteristics of consciousness that are relatively independent of its content, and in this way separate them from its content.

Comment on Ethics Oppositions by Noah Greenstein

Noah Greenstein — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 16:41:25 +0000

Hi quen_tin,
That’s an interesting way to break it down. I hadn’t considered normativity on its own when constructing the opposition, but I think your analysis is correct.

Comment on Ethics Oppositions by quen_tin

quen_tin — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:39:56 +0000

Just a thought… Maybe it’s possible to formalise this in terms of the origin/destination of normativity.
Individual -> Individual = Virtue
Individual -> Group = consequentialism
Group -> Individual = deontology
Group -> Group = charity

Then “abstractness” appears to be correlated with hetero-normativity, while “humanity” is correlated with auto-normativity.

Comment on Aether Discontinuity by nogre

nogre — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 01:47:22 +0000

Sorry Norman about the delay getting your post approved: it had been sent to the spam folder and I didn’t see it.

I agree with what you say and the issues you mention are the reason I posted the above argument. The argument states that even though an inherent discreteness is postulated, it doesn’t make sense since it is unmeasurable. This makes the discreteness metaphysical, not physical, which I take to be a problem for physics.

Comment on Aether Discontinuity by Norman M. Morgan

Norman M. Morgan — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 09:19:37 +0000

In general relativity, spacetime is assumed to be smooth and continuous—and not just in the mathematical sense. In the theory of quantum mechanics , there is an inherent discreteness present in physics. In attempting to reconcile these two theories, it is sometimes postulated that spacetime should be quantized at the very smallest scales. Current theory is focused on the nature of spacetime at the Planck scale . Causal sets , loop quantum gravity , string theory , and black hole thermodynamics all predict a quantized spacetime with agreement on the order of magnitude. Loop quantum gravity makes precise predictions about the geometry of spacetime at the Planck scale.