I don’t have the power to fix every problem in the world. What I do have the power to do is to ensure that I do not become a problem that needs to be fixed, myself.
I genuinely can’t comprehend your perspective at all. You said you were “baffled” that people didn’t agree with your position, when your position is that supporting genocide is not merely morally permissible, but morally obligatory. I struggle to even imagine a contrived hypothetical scenario where that would be a defensible position, much less one where it would be obvious that genocide is morally obligatory. It’s absurd.
If you have a major in philosophy, then surely you’re aware that there are plenty of moral systems that argue against pulling the lever in the trolley problem, and the many critiques of it that exist. Surely you couldn’t have spent years studying philosophy and walked away with the conclusion, “Act Utilitarianism is obviously objectively correct, and anyone who disagrees must be too stupid to understand it.”
The thing is; those moral systems and critiques of the problem are all ideological.
You are making me seriously reconsider my impression of Finland’s educational system.
Every hotshot freshman walks into Philosophy 101 thinking that everybody else’s ideas are “ideological” while theirs are just “common sense” (nevermind that they all believe different things). If the professor does their job properly, and the students aren’t completely obstinate, then they will leave Philosophy 101 understanding that this is not a valid way of understanding anything.
Anyone who claims that everyone else is operating based on ideology and they are not, is simply unaware of their own ideology. And being unaware of it, that ideology has a far greater hold on them than it otherwise might.
The Trolley Problem isn’t even meant to have a definite answer. The thought experiment was developed for the explicit purpose of demonstrating how people’s moral intuitions differ, as do different schools of moral philosophy. To think, “Pulling the level is obviously objectively correct, and this is a non-ideological claim” is completely and utterly absurd and demonstrates total ignorance of moral philosophy.
What do you think the point of philosophy even is if all it’s theories can be dismissed as “ideological” and your own personal “common sense” is a reliable way of determining truth?
You’re trying to argue that my position is not empathetic, but that’s nonsense. It is empathetic towards Palestinians, who are, contrary to popular beliefs, “actual living humans.” You want to build societies off of empathetic principles, alright, first step lets all agree that we shouldn’t slaughter innocent people or support anyone who does.
See, your stance may be ethical, moral even, in that you’re trying to follow this abstract principle about minimizing harm. But your problem is that you think that those ideas are what matters, while you ignore the real human suffering that’s resulting from those ideas.
See, I can play that game too! Almost as if you’re still trying to assign special status to your own “common sense” beliefs and refusing to place them on the same level of other people’s ideas and allowing them to be subject to critical examination.
Where I come from, morality and ethics refer to what you should and shouldn’t do. To say, “You acted in a way that was morally correct and kept yourself morally pure, but you shouldn’t have” is self-contradictory nonsense.
What you ought to be saying is that you believe my theory of ethics is incorrect and that yours is correct. But to say that would mean that you would have to admit that you have a specific theory of ethics (such as Act Utilitarianism) which would then be open to critique. And returning to the original point, if you accept that you are operating on a specific theory of ethics with a specific set of assumptions, then there’s not really any reason to be “baffled” that other people don’t follow it, maybe they simply don’t subscribe to the same assumptions about ethics that you do.
But what you’re doing instead is ceding to me that my ethical positions are correct, but then asserting that there is some sort of, idk, “Superethics” that supercedes all ethical theories, and which is somehow, not an ethical theory like the other ones are despite the fact that it’s a theory of what you should and shouldn’t do. And this “Superethics” is apparently supposed to be so obvious and objective that everyone in the world should automatically understand and accept it, regardless of their other beliefs or experiences.
It’s kind of incredible that countless philosophers have wasted so much time studying ethics, which is for scrubs and rubes, but hardly anyone seems to have touched on the far more important concept of Superethics.
Meanwhile, my ethical theories are utterly divorced from what I think produces good results for society or what my sense of empathy or my conscience tells me. I just wrote a bunch of random principles on scraps of paper, pinned them to a dartboard, put on a blindfold and spun around three times, and now I have to completely ignore everything I’m inclined to do in slavish devotion to these abstract principles. Personally, I think you should just be relieved that the dart hit, “No Genocide” instead of “Always Genocide.”
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I don’t have the power to fix every problem in the world. What I do have the power to do is to ensure that I do not become a problem that needs to be fixed, myself.
I genuinely can’t comprehend your perspective at all. You said you were “baffled” that people didn’t agree with your position, when your position is that supporting genocide is not merely morally permissible, but morally obligatory. I struggle to even imagine a contrived hypothetical scenario where that would be a defensible position, much less one where it would be obvious that genocide is morally obligatory. It’s absurd.
Maybe take a philosophy class sometime.
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If you have a major in philosophy, then surely you’re aware that there are plenty of moral systems that argue against pulling the lever in the trolley problem, and the many critiques of it that exist. Surely you couldn’t have spent years studying philosophy and walked away with the conclusion, “Act Utilitarianism is obviously objectively correct, and anyone who disagrees must be too stupid to understand it.”
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You are making me seriously reconsider my impression of Finland’s educational system.
Every hotshot freshman walks into Philosophy 101 thinking that everybody else’s ideas are “ideological” while theirs are just “common sense” (nevermind that they all believe different things). If the professor does their job properly, and the students aren’t completely obstinate, then they will leave Philosophy 101 understanding that this is not a valid way of understanding anything.
Anyone who claims that everyone else is operating based on ideology and they are not, is simply unaware of their own ideology. And being unaware of it, that ideology has a far greater hold on them than it otherwise might.
The Trolley Problem isn’t even meant to have a definite answer. The thought experiment was developed for the explicit purpose of demonstrating how people’s moral intuitions differ, as do different schools of moral philosophy. To think, “Pulling the level is obviously objectively correct, and this is a non-ideological claim” is completely and utterly absurd and demonstrates total ignorance of moral philosophy.
What do you think the point of philosophy even is if all it’s theories can be dismissed as “ideological” and your own personal “common sense” is a reliable way of determining truth?
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You’re trying to argue that my position is not empathetic, but that’s nonsense. It is empathetic towards Palestinians, who are, contrary to popular beliefs, “actual living humans.” You want to build societies off of empathetic principles, alright, first step lets all agree that we shouldn’t slaughter innocent people or support anyone who does.
See, your stance may be ethical, moral even, in that you’re trying to follow this abstract principle about minimizing harm. But your problem is that you think that those ideas are what matters, while you ignore the real human suffering that’s resulting from those ideas.
See, I can play that game too! Almost as if you’re still trying to assign special status to your own “common sense” beliefs and refusing to place them on the same level of other people’s ideas and allowing them to be subject to critical examination.
Where I come from, morality and ethics refer to what you should and shouldn’t do. To say, “You acted in a way that was morally correct and kept yourself morally pure, but you shouldn’t have” is self-contradictory nonsense.
What you ought to be saying is that you believe my theory of ethics is incorrect and that yours is correct. But to say that would mean that you would have to admit that you have a specific theory of ethics (such as Act Utilitarianism) which would then be open to critique. And returning to the original point, if you accept that you are operating on a specific theory of ethics with a specific set of assumptions, then there’s not really any reason to be “baffled” that other people don’t follow it, maybe they simply don’t subscribe to the same assumptions about ethics that you do.
But what you’re doing instead is ceding to me that my ethical positions are correct, but then asserting that there is some sort of, idk, “Superethics” that supercedes all ethical theories, and which is somehow, not an ethical theory like the other ones are despite the fact that it’s a theory of what you should and shouldn’t do. And this “Superethics” is apparently supposed to be so obvious and objective that everyone in the world should automatically understand and accept it, regardless of their other beliefs or experiences.
It’s kind of incredible that countless philosophers have wasted so much time studying ethics, which is for scrubs and rubes, but hardly anyone seems to have touched on the far more important concept of Superethics.
Meanwhile, my ethical theories are utterly divorced from what I think produces good results for society or what my sense of empathy or my conscience tells me. I just wrote a bunch of random principles on scraps of paper, pinned them to a dartboard, put on a blindfold and spun around three times, and now I have to completely ignore everything I’m inclined to do in slavish devotion to these abstract principles. Personally, I think you should just be relieved that the dart hit, “No Genocide” instead of “Always Genocide.”
deleted by creator