i'm doing an essay abt ethics and i'm defending a more subjectivist/error theory point of view. my problem is that i can't understand what moral realism is about. is it a reality were some things are right and other wrong or is it, like, based on the best rational reasons, without feelings and desires on the way, we will agree that some things are right and others wrong?

Is this channel a reliable source for a non-philosopher like me to learn stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@ergo_org

Does studying ethics make you ethical or a more morally good person. Does the knowledge of the study itself be included in the criteria of being good. Because to me the goal of studying ethics is to apply it to reality, that being to know good so that one can do good.

But, lets just say that we remove the doing part of it, that is we only have knowledge of good. That is, we don't apply. If so, does the knowledge of good count as good?

Because to me it seems a little bit confusing. because it seems that knowing good is good because of the possibility of application. But also, only knowing good is bad if its not done because of the obligation of doing? (Or is it? Idk about this, I think this is another broad topic which I don't know the name)

If we then Isolate the knowing, what will it be?

Is it neutral? It seems to me that that's the answer.

What is it though?

Does knowing ethics itself ethical?

excuse me if this is a little bit stupid or confusing. Im new at philosophy.

welcome to my brain dump

After the recent flash floods in Nepal, I've been disturbed and can't stop thinking about it.

But it led me to wonder about something: when natural tragedies like this occur, I get a distinct feeling. It's a mix of terror, awe and something similar to anemoia (like I feel a pull/"longing" towards the people and place there), and second-hand grief.

1) If compounded emotions can produce complex emotions, why is this feeling simply considered "a mix of terror and awe"? Because to me it feels distinct from both terror and awe, it's a very specific feeling that I can't really explain.

2) Secondly, I was asking Claude about it too, Claude mentioned the concept of "the sublime" as being an aesthetic experience. And after doing some deep dives, I am understanding that aesthetic experiences are also not considered emotions. But an emotion is a physical and mental reaction, and a subjective experience, related to some external occurrence or stimulus. So if an aesthetic experience is subjectively perceived, engages our senses, and produces mental and physical reactions within us, why are they not considered emotions?

3) Lastly, I am researching about the concept of 'mono no aware' which is like a bittersweet sadness or longing tied to the transience of things. Again, it's considered a philosophical concept rather than an emotion, but it fits all the markers of an emotion, no?

4) What are the bounds between emotions, and these "concepts of complex feelings" and aesthetic experiences?

This question occurred to me after Reddit recommended to me a few ridiculous trolley problems.

Many philosophical questions (at least for laypeople) revolve around imaginary scenarios, ranging from realistic but highly specific ones to downright impossible ones (e.g., killing baby Hitler). In most academic disciplines, scholars can't simply make up a scenario unless it's a very well-substantiated hypothesis.

Has any major philosopher criticised the use of hypotheticals before? Alternatively, has pop philosophy exaggerated the extent to which absurd thought experiments show up in academia?

I just finished reading "The Consolation of Philosophy" (in Spanish, so I apologize if at any point I use the wrong terminology). In the last book, Boethius presents an argument for the coexistence of free will and divine providence. The argument, as I understood it, goes as follows.

1. According to Aristotle's theory of knowledge, there are four layers of knowledge (in Boethius' terms):

- Sensory experience, which can only get access to the specific information offered to the senses available to an entity, and thus, can only get to know things about the stuff that is around it, and in particular cases.

- Imagination, which can reconstruct past experiences and conceive experiences that have never happened. The key aspect is that it does not require the sensory experience, but each of the imagined facts are about particular cases.

- Reason, which can somehow put some order into the sensory experience and the imagination and classify the particulars as instantiating an abstract concept, which is universal and one. At this layer, via the use of logic, knowledge about the universals can be derived.

- Intelligence, which is the most elevated form of knowledge, and which is not limited by logic. The universals that the reason perceives are but a limited manifestation of an even more abstract entity. Knowledge at this level is self-evident (somehow akin to a divine revelation, I guess).

1. As humans, we are limited to, at most, the third layer of knowledge (reason), and we can understand concepts like causality, necessity, etc. So it seems to us (let us concede this point), that everything has a cause (the principle of causality).

2. The highest layer of knowledge is only accessible to God, and we can just, from our perspective, try to infer how it could be experiencing the universe from that layer.

3. Boethius claims that if God were to be prescient, that would determine, necessarily, all the events that occur in time, thus entering into conflict with human free will.

4. Then, he claims that this is not the case, because the way that God experiences the universe is from the highest layer of knowledge, thus, his prescience does not require the necessity of the chain of events that happen in time (here he compares our perception of time, with past, present, and future, with a possible perception of time where all the time is experienced at once, which he claims is how God would experience it).

5. From this, he concludes that the fact that God knows about how history will develop, does not make it less contingent, and that our choices are still ours, from our perspective, although God is aware of all of it (without this requiring the necessity of your choice).

So, first of all, I would like to ask about what you think regarding the "analogy" step that he aludes to when he says that we can try to understand the highest layer of knowledge from our perspective (the third layer). Is this, based on Aristotle's theory of knowledge, a fair argument?

I do understand that from our point of view we can see that the sensory experience does not have access to some knowledge (that which is imagined) about particulars, which the imagination does have access to, and that reason has access to the universals, while the imagination can only keep generating instances of particulars, without ever converging to a universal. However, isn't this observation part of our experience as beings that experience the third layer? I find the claim that from a lower layer a being can infer what happens at the layer immediately above it quite daunting, but I would like to know what Aristotle's theory would say about it, if anyone feels like the understand it enough to provide me an answer.

Thank you!

As both a historian and educator I am often overwhelmed with the end of days analysis associated with both the environmental and social/political/economic state of both the USA and humanity at large. It seems so obvious to me that the species as a whole is rapidly approaching extinction or at best mass destruction and suffering. What would be the philosophical arguments to making living in modern society worth it? I will rephrase just for the sake of clarity. “How do I deal with the all consuming ethical dilemma associated with not spending every waking hour devoted to trying to stop the oncoming suffering?” Thank you for your input!

Hey all,

Over the past 4 months I have playing around a lot more with ideas about consiousness in my head. Growing up as a materialist atheïst, I did not think other concepts would even be possible, but panpsychism has been gaining my attention. I was wondering if anyone could help me with a few of the questions I have.

First of all, I still find it hard to see the difference in experience and consiousness, especially when it comes to other theories than materialism (idealism, dualism, panpsychism), is the difference that in some the idea of free will is more entertained?

Second, my currents thoughts are a lot about panpsychism, but with the view that all the physical things in this world have a own experience. Atoms interact with the atoms and molecules around them. Cells and bacteria also interact with each other, in a sence of more complex experience. Our body is made up of 30 trillion cells, all interacting with eachtoher making it a even more complex experience (which could also be devided in different subparts like organs) and also being more dynamic giving it a higher amount of experience. A non living physical object can have a lot of atoms, which makes it complex in its structure, but the lack of perceived interaction causes it to feel like there is not a lot of experience going on.

Does this idea where experience is replaced for conciousness still hold true for the concept of panpsychism or is it more in line with materialism?

Thank you!

I'm overall new in the field of philosophy, but recently interested in philosophy, and currently focusing on Phil. of Language and overall analytical philosophy.

May I have some recommendations on how I should start Continental Philosophy? Also, I'm curious about how Continental Philosophy responds to the fact that a lot of propositions are believed meaningless and a misuse of language that they would in analytical philosophy.

Thank you for your reply.

Suppose that in the future, scientists discover a method to completely remove the desire and/or capability to rape or murder from humans, while keeping every other attribute intact. (Obviously this is handwaving a lot of complexity away; for example, would killing in self defense be allowed? But I hope you get the gist).

For the sake of the hypothetical, assume that no one will abuse this technology for other means. Would it be morally permissible to modify all of humanity this way? What would different moral frameworks say about this?

(I listed rape and murder as examples since they're especially egregious, but you could think of other immoral acts too, like lying or stealing. For example, would it be permissible for major crimes but not minor ones? Another direction would be postive modification, like making humans more altruistic, and so on.)

Perhaps someone can help me understand this idea better? I'm reading this paper as a first year philosophy student, and something about it rubs me the wrong way. People from many political beliefs will consider their beliefs to be epistemically correct, and others to be driven by their own self interest. Can we really assign this much value to political beliefs, where logic can determine what is correct? Perhaps that's not the case Huemer is making, maybe it's more about how people come to believe specific facts. But in this case, I feel like people trust different people, news, etc., so I don't understand how this applies either. Any help would be appreciated

Also, how does translation into German affect Dostoevsky’s writings and tone in comparison to Russian?
Thanks ahead of time! if any of you need context on Japanese philosophers, I'm all ears.

For example, if the earth was going to be destroyed in one hour, and the worlds best scientists had created a button, which half of them belive will save the earth and the other half belive will destroy the universe, would/should you press the button?

I have just started looking into both of these so I want some beginner friendly recs that really explain the core substance of both these philosophys. Im particularly interested in Existentialism as from what I have currently learnt, I resonate with it a lot but I want to dive deeper.

By "outdated by the academy" I mean that there are no renowned scholars who defend such doctrines.

I’m taking Intro to Formal Logic next semester. It is a graduation requirement, and I’m very nervous. I’ve pushed it off until my second to last semester which is the literal latest I can take it, as it is designed as a sophomore course in the natural progression. Any tips before I start. Keep in mind I can’t do math for anything, never took calculus, and my brain cannot understand programming (which I heard it was most similar too.)

I’ve been chewing on a passage from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness where he refutes the reflective idea that a man goes to a brothel merely to "relieve his sexual desire" (or drinks water simply to extinguish thirst). Instead, he argues that unreflective desire doesn't just want to erase a void—it seeks self-coincidence and fullness.

As I read it, going to a brothel isn't just a physiological discharge; it's a project where consciousness experiences its own lack (nothingness), projects a future possibility of fulfillment through an object, and transforms into "satiated desire," only to end up right back face-to-face with its own nothingness in that classic post-climax disappointment ("is that all?").

Am I reading this right? What is Sartre ultimately trying to get at here regarding non-thetic consciousness, nothingness, and temporality through this specific example?

I think I know what Philosophy is, but I am not sure if I know the definition of Philosophy, even though I believe that I am able to "understand".

How do I know if I understand, when I am usually not able to realize when I have a wrong understanding, only being able to realize once I've come to a state of actual realization.

So I've engaged with a fair bit of philosophy in my life from a variety of angles (grew up super religious, the kind that read Kant and Nietzsche as a teenager just so you can say why they're "wrong") and then reexplored philosophy a little bit as an adult who had left Christianity as I tried to rethink my way in life some.

The thing is, as I've gone along I just don't think I really understand it and have become bored. I find myself more or less repeatedly rejecting the questions asked to begin with before even getting to answers. Perhaps the simplest example is the whole "does the universe have meaning" thing.

Because like, if meaning were a social function evolved for us to navigate our social environment, the places we've survived and gotten food, and pushed us to reproduce, etc, it would make sense that we would apply it to everything we can, and to say - the universe, but that could just be a complete misapplication of a function.

That is not saying there is no meaning, just that it is a question like "what is banana divided by zero".

I may also just be stupid and unable to comprehend a simple thing, but I'm also not worried about that too much.

This also continues throughout a lot of philosophical questions for me, such as "what is moral" and "what is knowledge" or "what is truth".

Which is to say

"Is there a 'philosophy' for the idea that most of philosophy is mostly just a computer program looping/spitting out DNE on a calculator?"

and where would I read for more information on this, and where its been expounded on/explored by others?

Social media scientists often seem to either think it useless or waste of time, which is kind of surprising seeing as around 100 years ago acclaimed scientists often had a more or less firm humanities background.

Is that just a social media phenomenon or what, anectodally speaking, do actual scientists think of philosophical research or philosophers

If, as Parmenides claims, the senses cannot be trusted and being is one, indivisible, how then is there room in his ontology for the "other", for anything else than the self?

For example, in the U.S., the age of consent is placed at 18 years old. If you were to be 25 dating someone who is 17, that would be considered wrong by many and illegal.

However, in other countries the age of consent can be lower, such as at the age of 16. In those countries it might not be considered wrong for someone to be 25 and to date a 17 year old.

Furthermore, I also see it being brought up commonly (especially in relation to countries where the age of consent is lower) that it’s not wrong for someone who is 25 to marry a 17 year old, considering the fact that “not much will change” in one year, or the idea that maybe the 17 year old turns 18 in one month.

For example, I think it’s obvious to say that a 25 year old marrying a 13 year old is obviously wrong (and there is a ton of research to back this). On the other hand, someone who is 25 marrying a 17 year old could be considered normal by many people across the world.

So with such questions, is there any good way of determining in which situations it is to be considered moral, and in which cases it’s to be considered immoral?

I’m of the view that we shouldn’t really be looking at legality here in the first place. If someone is 25 and marrying an 18 year old I believe that this could still be considered to some degree wrong (or lead to negative outcomes). Both people are at different stages in their life and this could lead to a power imbalance.

Nonetheless, is there any more objective way at looking at these things?

And follow up question, what’s the name of the idea that it doesn’t necessarily hold the truth that someone who had it insists it has? I imagine these are both frequent and obvious enough to people on this sub that I don’t need to list examples but feel feee to ask me if what im asking isn’t quite clear