I also think philosophy without thousands of years of theism would be quite different today. This opens up something that I’ve been meaning to bring up with you. Observe that philosophers have always explored the theoretical “rightness to wrongness” of behavior. Even today with various strong moral antirealists around however, apparently it hasn’t occurred to anyone credentialed to also explore the principles of good/bad existence itself. Why must everything in fields that are value based be entirely about moral judgement (perhaps except for aesthetics)? Can’t certain philosophers begin by theorizing the nature of good/bad in itself?
Perhaps a “theistic father” has contributed to this oversight? I hadn’t previously considered that possibility. Regardless whatever it is seems to have infected science as well. How might psychologists effectively study a creature which is driven by means of value, and yet not formally theorize what value happens to be constituted by? Apparently not well.
I mention this somewhat given your recent concerns about potentially being deprived of the legal ability to end your life should things get quite unfortunate. It would seem that academia has been too flawed to acknowledge that it’s not “life” that’s valuable, but exclusively “happiness”
I‘m with Aristotle and Bentham and Mill that happiness — or eudaimonia — are what we should be shooting for. People who are suffering should have a choice whether their suffering must continue.
There is a fundamental problem with explaining consciousness. We explain things by comparing them to more familiar things as metaphors but there's no familiar object or concept that comes anywhere near resembling consciousness.
I think we imagine consciousness as this big, fantastical, complicated thing. But over the coming years, we’ll explain lots of little things around the edges until there is nothing left to explain. Then we’ll say “Remember the hard problem of consciousness? What was that about?”
I also think philosophy without thousands of years of theism would be quite different today. This opens up something that I’ve been meaning to bring up with you. Observe that philosophers have always explored the theoretical “rightness to wrongness” of behavior. Even today with various strong moral antirealists around however, apparently it hasn’t occurred to anyone credentialed to also explore the principles of good/bad existence itself. Why must everything in fields that are value based be entirely about moral judgement (perhaps except for aesthetics)? Can’t certain philosophers begin by theorizing the nature of good/bad in itself?
Perhaps a “theistic father” has contributed to this oversight? I hadn’t previously considered that possibility. Regardless whatever it is seems to have infected science as well. How might psychologists effectively study a creature which is driven by means of value, and yet not formally theorize what value happens to be constituted by? Apparently not well.
I mention this somewhat given your recent concerns about potentially being deprived of the legal ability to end your life should things get quite unfortunate. It would seem that academia has been too flawed to acknowledge that it’s not “life” that’s valuable, but exclusively “happiness”
I‘m with Aristotle and Bentham and Mill that happiness — or eudaimonia — are what we should be shooting for. People who are suffering should have a choice whether their suffering must continue.
There is a fundamental problem with explaining consciousness. We explain things by comparing them to more familiar things as metaphors but there's no familiar object or concept that comes anywhere near resembling consciousness.
I think we imagine consciousness as this big, fantastical, complicated thing. But over the coming years, we’ll explain lots of little things around the edges until there is nothing left to explain. Then we’ll say “Remember the hard problem of consciousness? What was that about?”