Kasimir
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Everything posted by Kasimir
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Just discovered that with the exception of QF2, in which I died on Week 3, I have *always* died on the second Night/Cycle when I'm a regular.
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Thales Heron #6: Riptide Action One:
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Well, we're near the halfway mark! Keep pressing on, guys! Have some inspiring music:
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Long Game 15: ...The Shards Themselves...
Kasimir replied to Wyrmhero's topic in Sanderson Elimination
*ghostly whisper* You know...you could always RP... -
Thales Heron #4: Tidal Bones Thales Heron #5: The Way of Water
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To be honest, it's beginning to be a concern in the discipline, because there are worries that the way we engage each other is partly behind why we are the humanities major with a ratio of women-to-men comparable to physics and mathematics, which is pretty darn pathetic when you consider that the ratio is much healthier (i.e. reflecting the population) in neighbouring fields like history and so on. There have been also concerns about the way we engage (some likening it to bloodsport) so in general, I prefer to be cautious on this front. Thanks though There's definitely a connection between Rawls and the categorical imperative, simply because he wants to model his theory after some aspects of the deontic view. I would say the main difficulty is just more or less that the connection between ethics and justice is a pretty messy one, and it often is at the mercy of what theory of justice/ethics a person subscribes to. (See: we can agree that upholding justice is ethical, for instance...) We didn't get to do Rawls in an ethics context, so unfortunately, the connection to Kant was a brief mention in class before we went on. We more or less engaged his ideas on how distributively just societies should be structured, and whether or not Rawls can effectively block the threat of an intuitively unjust society stemming out from his principles. (And of course, when one mentions Rawls, one must mention Nozick's objections on the grounds of the free market...) Hopefully!
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Well, then clearly your country doesn't want you to watch it. Can't help you there, I'm afraid We dead people get to see everything!
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Like this?
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I'm not claiming you said not deciding is morally responsible. What I am claiming is that your framing the issue as 'the right to decide' is problematic. My argument for why it is a problematic frame to apply rests on this claim: that I think framing the issue of who to kill/save as one of 'having the right to decide' really obscures the relevant issues, which include my duties and my nature as a moral agent confronted with a situation. [And the reason why I think moral agency is so important to this is because one might just as well ask: 'What gives me the right to decide to help an old woman cross the road? What gives me the right to decide whether a child should starve or die, depending on whether I feed them? We don't ask at all in these circumstances; we simply ask what we should do and this is because we are working from a presumption of moral agency. Our nature as moral agents already dictates that we accept there is a choice for us to be made in these circumstances.] It obscures my responsibilities to my fellow humans. This is why I object to that use of a frame. Clearly, you're not claiming anything about moral responsibility at all because you prefer a rights-based framework. More or less because it gives you an inconsistency where you are permitted to perform a hysterectomy on a pregnant woman, but at the same time, are not allowed to perform an abortion. There are also worries that it is descriptively inadequate because cases like soldiers throwing themselves on grenades to save their comrades come out as a case in which the soldier does not intend to sacrifice their life--only foresees that their life will end as a consequence of their action. Many philosophers, myself included, consider that a misdescription/mischaracterisation of what is really going on. Edit: Just a warning: guys, please warn me if I'm getting a bit too direct/aggressive. As it may or may not be apparent by now, this is what I do in uni, and we have very different discursive norms in a philosophy class and when conversing among philosophers than in what is probably a friendly forum discussion. So if you think I'm pressing too hard or in a way that makes people feel uncomfortable, just let me know and I'll remember to back off. I'm not always that good at this RL/forum separation, especially when we start going into my area.
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But this presumes, of course, that the doctrine of double effect [=foreseeable negative consequences of a given action are acceptable if you do not undertake the action intending to bring them about] is an acceptable one. It's not to say it can't be done, but it is a notoriously problematic assumption. Edit: Still, I'm gonna back away now, because I should get back to my paper, and for the purposes of it, I'm effectively a utilitarian until it's submitted >.<
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Here is my question. Does that matter? Is acting to kill never permissible? Or if it is permissible (e.g. in times of war), then why is it not permissible in this case? Every single choice is a choice about who to kill and who to save. That's the nature of the trolley problem. But I want to take this a step further and put some pressure on the intuition that it is morally significant to actively decide to kill. I'm going to draw on the work of an ethicist by the name of James Rachels on killing v. letting die. (Well, adapting anyway, because it's been years since I had to do the basic-level philosophy course. Turned into Sanderson fanfiction for your amusement...) - [CASE 1] KIPPER is the nephew of an eccentric and wealthy House Lord. He is second in the line of inheritance: his cousin, who is an infant, is poised to inherit all the House Lord has when the House Lord dies. The House Lord is an old man and sickly, and Kipper wants the boxings. So, he hatches a secret plan to drown the infant while giving him a bath, far from the watchful eyes of the servants. He does so: he holds his cousin's head under the water until his cousin drowns, and then claims his inheritance. He never gets caught. [CASE 2] KIPPER is the nephew of an eccentric and wealthy House Lord. He is second in the line of inheritance: his cousin, who is an infant, is poised to inherit all the House Lord has when the House Lord dies. The House Lord is an old man and sickly, and Kipper wants the boxings. So, he hatches a secret plan to drown the infant while giving him a bath, far from the watchful eyes of the servants. Now, Kipper has formed the plan and intends to act on it the next evening. But that evening, his cousin slips in the bath and begins to drown. As Kipper watches his cousin drown, he realises that what he intended to carry out is playing out before his eyes. So he does nothing. He watches his cousin drown and then claims his inheritance. He never gets caught. Let us also be clear that if his cousin hadn't slipped that evening, Kipper would have callously murdered his cousin the next evening. He's that kind of guy. - I submit that if you think that actively killing is worse than letting die, you would deem Kipper to have behaved more badly in [CASE 1] than in [CASE 2]. Unfortunately, my intuitions* do not agree: I believe that Kipper has acted equally badly in both cases. *This is a problem of how we do ethics/moral philosophy, and many philosophers are beginning to talk and comment about this kind of methodology, but I don't want to derail us into higher-level issues here. Edit: Brb, going back to learning how to be a welder Edit 2: On the issue of what gives us the right to decide, I'd argue that this word gets the issue wrong. You do not have the right to decide. You have the duty and obligation to decide, stemming from the position you occupy in this situation, and your nature as a moral agent. (For obvious reasons, if it were a dog at the switch, we wouldn't really hold the dog morally accountable...) The distinction here is that on my view, not only must you decide, you must do so in a responsible way. To refuse to decide is morally irresponsible.
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1. Einstein, Rosen, Visser, Kip Thorne (he's the only guy whose full name I can reliably remember), probably Wheeler. 2. Slowswift, you missed Vista and Windows 98 Come to think of it, wasn't there a Windows 2000 as well? Shucks, now I feel ancient
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Or the dead doc. Where people may or may not be discussing a thought experiment Kas has proposed to test their ethical intuitions. Technically, I would say the Veil of Ignorance is misapplied here. The Veil of Ignorance is a genealogical/heuristic tool used to decide on permissible systems of distributive justice; and to make matters worse, it doesn't even quite tell us about what kind of system we would really end up with, unless you're referring to Rawls' later work. It also serves to ground/provide rational justification for these systems as well as for a conception of 'desert'. The distinction of course being that justice is more distributive and tied to matters of desert, while we're simply interested here in, as Kant charmingly puts it, "the laws of human action." And which action is the better one, or at the very least, the more permissible one, with permissibility being defined loosely as 'Act X may be committed'. (Distinguish this from 'justification' where we claim that Act X is the morally correct thing to do. The reason this is an important distinction is because justification is a stronger claim: sometimes, our moral theories simply don't give us a clear-cut answer and suggest two acts are permissible to varying degrees, but we may not want to claim either is justified.) It would kind of matter here if we considered agent/moral responsibility, but by and large, it's a peripheral issue. ...How did I get here again? I was supposed to be trolling Kipper :/
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Buuut...where's the fun in that? It's so unrealistic
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Still Having a Bad Day? Exchange Your Rants For Hugs Here!
Kasimir replied to Silverblade5's topic in General Discussion
I don't want to justify it though. And as a philosopher, I'm always worried about over-rationalising it. When you're angry, you can spell out reasons as to why you're right to be angry. But that's coming frim a mind already tainted with anger. To be fair, I see both of us as talking along similar lines. I regard letting go as gaining that critical reflective distance from that screaming fog of red and the raw desire to hurt in you. And I regard actual letting go as something you have to repeat: not burying the anger, but actively saying: "I alone am master of how I feel. And I choose to be happy. You have no power over me." The main thing that strikes me about the difference is that you are right: I am burying it, right now. Because it's still there. Because I'm not working through it, confronting it, and reminding myself that this too shall pass. And I guess that's what I have to do, to truly let go, rather than to cling to it and to remain angry. "But I can't" is just an excuse to keep hurting and being rageful. Hateful, even. So, thank you so much That was exactly what I needed to hear. I appreciate it! -
Still Having a Bad Day? Exchange Your Rants For Hugs Here!
Kasimir replied to Silverblade5's topic in General Discussion
I guess it's times like this that bring home to me the difference between philosophy and real life. Or at least, before akrasia steps in. I've always believed that Stoicism and Buddhist philosophy are roughly correct about anger: Anger is a poison that you have to leech from you. It's a negative attachment. And it's okay to feel anger. It is not okay to act from it. It is not okay to hold it, and hold it, and to keep poisoning yourself with it. It's like leaving a thorn in your foot because you weren't the one to put it there. I know all this. And yet I'm still deeply, intensely angry. And I can't let go of it, even though I should. I know what I have to do. I just can't bring myself to do it, and in a way, that is failure of the will. I guess I'm scared because I've seldom been like this and I just don't know what to do. I can't move past it; I can't let go. I just can't. And it's foolish because it's just another burden to bear. Reason, I suppose, is the servant of the passions. Hume knows his stuff, for sure. -
Still Having a Bad Day? Exchange Your Rants For Hugs Here!
Kasimir replied to Silverblade5's topic in General Discussion
...My scientific calculator has been laid to rest today, after 11 years of faithful service :/ Rest in peace, bro. You will be missed. -
Mid-Range Game 9: The Steel Ministry
Kasimir replied to Gamma Fiend's topic in Sanderson Elimination
...You don't say. Hope you enjoyed your new lease of life. Cheers, -Kas. -
"Forsake anger, give up pride. Sorrow cannot touch the man who is not in the bondage of anything, who owns nothing."
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“Your death will soon be on you: and you are not yet clear-minded, or untroubled, or free from the fear of external harm, or kindly to all people, or convinced that justice of action is the only wisdom. Look into their directing minds: observe what even the wise will avoid or pursue. Harm to you cannot subsist in another’s directing mind, nor indeed in any turn or change of circumstance. Where, then? In that part of you which judges harm. So no judgement, and all is well. Even if what is closest to it, your own body, is subjected to knife or cautery, or left to suppurate or mortify, even so that faculty in you which judges these things should stay untroubled. That is, it should assess nothing either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man or the good: because what can happen to a man irrespective of his life’s conformity to nature is not of itself either in accordance with nature or contrary to it. Think always of the universe as one living creature, comprising one substance and one soul: how all is absorbed into this one consciousness; how a single impulse governs all its actions; how all things collaborate in all that happens; the very web and mesh of it all. You are a soul carrying a corpse, as Epicetus used to say.” --Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
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"It is easy to do what is wrong, to do what is bad for oneself; but very difficult to do what is right, to do what is good for oneself." "By oneself the evil is done, and it is oneself who suffers: by oneself the evil is not done, and by one's Self one becomes pure. The pure and the impure come from one's self: no man can purify another." "The hunger of passions is the greatest disease. Disharmony is the greatest sorrow." "He who does what should not be done and fails to do what should be done, who forgets the true aim of life and sinks into transient pleasures -- he will one day envy the man who lives in high contemplation." "Let a man be free from pleasure and let a man be free from pain; for not to have pleasure is sorrow and to have pain is also sorrow." The consolations of philosophy are rich.
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Don't ask me, I'm going back to the correct paper on the economics of piracy
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Good question. I'll get back to you when I get an answer. If I do not return, mourn me, for I have been sacrificed in the quest for knowledge.
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Be darned if I know. But hey, for the curious, it's freely available on the academic's webpage... o.O
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Waiting on my download of this paper on the economics of piracy from the school network. ...Found out a few minutes later I accidentally downloaded a paper on the economics of human sacrifice instead. Well. Okay.
