You can't just say "No." without saying "Because..."
Actually, they can when you are flagrantly misrepresenting what they said (assuming you are the same AC). letxa2000 said only that "we have additional evidence from human history"
You responded with an ad hominem ("idiot"), a unsubstantiated and inflammatory claim ("translated by multitudes"), and a strawman ("as default"). Nope, the burden of proof is not on lexta2000.
Here, maybe an illustration would help:
"I hope NASA gets funding for another moon landing."
"What, you're saying that we should fund a billion-dollar program based on the fabrications and propaganda of a desperate Cold War administration that we ever went to the moon in the first place?
There are people out there, people in power, who want to teach creationism as science -- some using the paper-thin disguise of Intelligent Design
Let's start by defining terms. In fact, let's do almost nothing but define terms. =)
If by "creationism" you mean Biblical creationism or something similar, then I certainly agree that this should not be taught in public schools. And I agree that there are many who are pushing a creationist agenda under the guise of "intelligent design." As a Christian, I find this reprehensible, and (for what it's worth) I am sorry for it.
But this abuse doesn't mean that creationism and intelligent design are the same, as many accuse. I oppose the teaching of intelligent design in schools, but not because it's reprehensible -- it's because there isn't enough evidence. You may scoff at that notion! Perhaps your definition of intelligent design is worthy of your scorn. So let's define it properly, instead:
1. It is possible to scientifically detect and study evidence of design. 2. It is possible that such evidence exists in the natural world.
Claim #1 is absolutely non-controversial. It's the basis of forensics, archaeology, and SETI. Only claim #2 is controversial -- but having stated it clearly, I hope it is now obvious that no scientific grounds exist for denying it. (Note that claim #2 is quite compatible with the facts of evolution.) You can only oppose claim #2 on ideological grounds, which is to say, on religious grounds.
After all, if you were to deny that #2 is even possible, then I'd certainly ask you to produce scientific evidence. But in order to do so, you would have to engage in very nearly the same research that the intelligent design camp is trying to legitimize, and which you claim is not science.
Therefore: pro-ID and anti-ID are both scientific, or they are both ideological. What's your pick?
No, but it is extremely desirable for politicians holding public office to compartmentalize their religious views and try to keep them private, especially when said views are offensive to many of their constituents.
You make an eloquent case, but with all due respect, your argument undercuts itself.
You espouse the idea that religion is "private." But this is a very particular view of what religion is and how it is to be carried out. That is indisputably a religious view, both at face value, and also by directly contravening what most religions say about the very same subject. Moreoever, you claim that religion "should be" private. As soon as one invokes words like "should be" or "desirable," one is making a moral demand -- a religious demand -- upon others.
Is this not an imposition? For that matter, it's not just an imposition, it's an imposition of a religious viewpoint. It's an imposition of a religious viewpoint that may well be offensive to many of one's constituents.
Believe it or not many people dislike it when the person running their state or nation tells them they are going to go to hell for their personal religious views. It is a statement which is a strong indicator of bias, and that the person saying it believes you are an inferior to him because of your personal religious views.
Again, you are speaking from a particular religious viewpoint: that religion is purely personal. I cannot speculate on why you hold this view, but many hold this view for one of two reasons: (1) they believe that all religions are equally true, or (2) they believe that all religions are equally false. Therefore, this is indisputably a religious issue, and religious issues have religious answers. Most Christians (and Muslims, and Orthodox Jews, and...) hold a very different view on religion: we think that religious facts are possible. Not mere religious beliefs, personal and private, but religious facts that are as solid as historical and scientific facts. Of course, anyone is welcome to persuade me that I have gotten my facts wrong, that I've made some mistake -- I've no problem with that, at all! But to do that, you must first accept that my religious views consist of things that are capable of being right or wrong, rather than things that exist only inside my head. Either God exists, or God does not exist, and every person on Earth is either right or wrong about this.
Thus, I have the natural, and legal, and intellectual right to accept a well-founded religious claim as being a well-founded religious fact. The basic claims of most religions are claims about reality and how reality works. They answer fundamental axiomatic questions like, "Why does the universe exist?", "What is the public good?", or "What is a human being, and does it have rights?" Such axioms represent questions that everyone must answer one way or another in order to carry out even basic duties -- whether personal or public. When it comes to axioms, neutrality does not exist. Therefore, to whatever extent that secularism answers religious questions, secularism is a religious view -- a specific, identifiable, religious view.
Accordingly, it is not bias for me to accept, as fact, that there is a particular type of impending disaster (hell), for which there is a particular remedy (rescue). It is not bias for me to think this, even if I might be wrong, and even if many intelligent, respectable people disagree with me. Actually, I'd prefer to be wrong about this, but I reluctantly find that the evidence speaks otherwise. Furthermore, I do not consider myself superior because I happen to possess this information, any more than I could consider myself superior for noticing an impending tornado and sounding a warning. That would be both stupid and immoral.
separation of church and state, is just as much in their interest as it is of atheists
1 on 1 teacher time is not as valuable as 1 on 1 student time, given difficult problems to solve. Being told existing solutions is not nearly as useful as banging your head against a wall coming up with "new" solutions
I absolutely agree with your second sentence, but it doesn't follow from the first sentence. When teaching, I try to avoid telling anyone the answer to anything. The whole process ideally centers around setting things up so that they can figure it out for themselves. My best teachers asked more questions than gave answers, and were available at all hours to bounce around ideas. And this was very complementary to the 1-on-1 student interaction. So that's the model I aspire to (poorly, truth be told, but I think I'm improving -- as with most things, it's more about practice and willingness than about ability).
The most exciting moments are when my students come up with things I'd never think up myself.
Those skills are trivially easy to outsource overseas, and they will be. On the other hand, if you want to have a competitive advantage based on your familiarity with Western culture, economics, human psychology, creative arts, and a foreign language, get a degree with a CS major at a Liberal Arts school, and take all those non-CS "core" classes seriously.
Hear, hear!
These non-CS classes do make a concrete contribution to your skills as an engineer because they make a concrete contribution to your overall intelligence. The point is to build up a mental toolkit.
Let me give a personal illustration: I credit a great part of my debugging skills to an Art History class -- no exaggeration. The data-synthesis skills I learned there outweigh everything else, when it comes to rooting out certain types of problems. Personally, it's simply the right tool for the job. And it's one you just don't get in an engineering curriculum.
"Remember that the point of attending a university is to get a *well rounded* education."
No, no it's not.
Well, yes it is. But the term "well-rounded" is vague and misleading. It's not really "well-rounded" versus "highly-focused." It's really education versus job training.
I judge education on only one measure: it should make you smarter, and ideally wiser. Mere knowledge is not intelligence, mere intelligence is not wisdom, and mere wisdom is not character. If education does not bring you up this hierarchy, then it has failed in some measure.
Studying arts, humanities, writing, philosophy, sociology, history, foreign languages... the point is not to learn the material. The point is that all of those disciplines exercise and train the mind in radically different ways. And this makes a concrete difference in the quality of thought that I see from different engineers I've worked with. There are mental tools that you simply will not get in an engineering curriculum. This becomes evident when you turn the example around -- how many times have you encountered people who are unable to "think like an engineer" or "think like a scientist" when the situation demands? A good education makes you smarter by building your mental toolkit.
Accordingly, I am unimpressed when I see students go off to some big-name college and return unchanged after four years, except stuffed with job skills that will become obsolete in 2-5 years. I am highly impressed when I see students go off to a great educational institution and come back better and brighter than anyone could've hoped. Yes, they also got the job training, but they gained the all-important transferable skills: critical thinking, a love for learning, communication, adaptability, initiative, discipline, leadership, and so on.
Let's make this concrete. Education-focused undergraduate schools -- that is to say, liberal arts colleges -- dominate the landscape in per-capita Ph.D. generation, including the sciences. Fourteen out of the top twenty Ph.D. producers (and three out of the top five) are liberal arts colleges. They are frequently less selective in admissions, bringing in second- or third-tier students yet graduating first-rate candidates for grad school -- matching and outperforming their Ivy League competition. Incidentally, Princeton is the only Ivy on that top-twenty list, and it's number twenty.
The point of university is to totally immerse yourself in your chosen subject. See European universities for examples of how this really works. You spend three or four years doing nothing but what you signed up for. Far better use of time.
The point of graduate school is to totally immerse yourself in your chosen subject, i.e., job training. The point of undergraduate school is to improve your brain, i.e., education.
Have you noticed that engineers have a terrible habit of naively treating everything like an engineering problem? This is often because they have never been taught any other way to think, and that is a waste of a great brain. Have you noticed that engineers with extremely narrow skill sets will somehow tolerate being unemployed for years because "nobody is hiring?" This is often because they believe they are limited to what they've been trained to do, and that is a waste of a great brain. No one should ever settle for a limited mental toolkit.
Yet, this is exactly the European model. In fact, they sort students into these tracks in grade school, sometimes as early as elementary school -- a decade or more before their brains are even fully grown.
Again, let's make the contrast more concrete. The Yale class of 1957 was polled after 25 years to see where they were all working. Seventy-five percent were employed in jobs that did not even exist in 1957. That's just 25 years -- hardly halfway to retirement. Think about our own time -- ten years ago,
the real issue is that only a minority of programmers are able to take skills developed in one context and apply them in a different context
You're right -- and change "programmers" to "people" and you'll still be right.
It used to be understood that education, particularly at the college level, was intended to teach people how to think. Most now believe that education is intended to train people how to work. Not that a college education shouldn't include that, but it's much less important than learning how to learn independently, think critically, adapt quickly, and communicate persuasively -- to say nothing of other essential (and learnable!) qualities like character, discipline, initiative, leadership, cooperation, and so on.
This is why people used to graduate from university at the age of 12 or 13, and be considered ready to make their way in the world. It was assumed that they would simply pick up whatever knowledge they needed.
Granted, there's much more knowledge to be "picked up" these days. But rather than augmenting the classical model, most of the world has entirely jettisoned it in favor of stuffing untrained minds full of unstructured data so that they can pass standardized tests and industry certifications.
Here and there you'll find holdouts -- mostly in the US, at smaller, lesser-known colleges. And what you find is that these institutions accept B or C students as freshmen and turn out graduates who can out-think and out-perform competition from Big Ten and Ivy schools. In other words, a proper education makes people smarter. If it doesn't, then it's not education... it's just training.
Religious people really DO think their beliefs shape the universe.
Nope. You're thinking of these folks, the postmodern non-realists. Religious people think that their beliefs accurately describe the universe, i.e., that it is possible for nonempirical truths to exist.
Actually, almost everyone believes nonempirical truths exist, such as the existence of logic, or the reliability of science. Which makes almost everyone religious. The only disagreement lies around which claims are true and which aren't.
Speaking of truth, let's inject some into this account:
Turns out the Inquisition thought the book was right. Didn't matter that anyone could duplicate Galileo's observations - they're right there in the sky.
Turns out the majority of scientists thought Ptolemy was right. Geocentrism was not derived from the Bible. The Bible has so little to say about this issue that it is consistent with either geocentrism or heliocentrism. But since the highly refined Ptolemaic cosmology was in fact the best scientific position at the time, the Church adopted this view both in science and in Biblical interpretation.
Hardly sounds unscientific to me.
As it happens, Galileo's most strident opponents were other scientists -- the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian astronomers. And some of them figured that taking this issue up with the Church would be a great way to shut him up.
Now that's not terribly scientific.
Anyone with good glass working skills can see the same stuff Galileo saw.
Again, check your facts, please. Not until Kepler would telescopes become accurate enough to vindicate heliocentrism over against geocentrism. Let me repeat for emphasis: in purely empirical terms, geocentrism was superior to heliocentrism at the time of Galileo.
Galileo propounded heliocentrism primarily based on its elegance, and not because he had collected better scientific evidence than geocentrism. The best minds of the time accepted Aristotle's 2000-year-old refutation of heliocentrism: if the Earth moves, why do we see no parallax effects? Kepler would eventually show that there are, but Galileo had no such power.
Unfortunately, Galileo was not so wise. He wrote the book mocking the views of the Pope via a character named Simplicius the Fool... thereby alienating his most powerful supporter. Even then, the Church was still (1) completely willing to sanction heliocentrism as a hypothesis until solid evidence was presented, and (2) completely willing to revisit Biblical interpretation after solid evidence was presented, since there is never any real conflict between scriptural truth and scientific truth.
Galileo stonewalled. He insisted his view was correct, without presenting superior evidence over the contemporary scientific and Biblical understanding. And that was considered heresy.
And y'know what? Doing the same thing today would be considered heresy by scientists -- the only difference is that we don't call it heresy, and we don't arrest people for it. But it's the same scenario. The history of science clearly shows that dogmatism is just as prevalent there as anywhere else -- paradigm shifts in science rarely occur until the distinguished scientists who hold the old view all die.
Thanks for the kind comment. I don't often have time to participate on Slashdot, but I can't help myself when certain popular falsehoods come up.:-) The Admiral gave the best counterargument I've encountered so far (well, not in favor of positivism per se, that being impossible, but at least for some form of "scientism"). At any rate, I count myself fortunate to be having the discussion.
Thanks for the very thoughtful response. I apologize for the very late reply. I've had triple deadlines to contend with, and was unable to free myself to give your post the attention it merits. I don't know when the thread will lock, but it's probably soon, and I hope you have time to respond.
I've also put in references when they were handy, but I wasn't too scrupulous about it. I also wish I had time to write something shorter.:-)
"This idea is a form of positivism."
It does not necessarily have to be. It can be a form of pragmatism. The two are distinct. Your post seems to completely ignore this alternative.
Granted, I apologize for assuming that you were advocating the type of naive positivism that regularly makes its rounds on Slashdot. Pragmatism is a sophisticated and nuanced view that deserves detailed discussion, and I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to do so. As a matter of fact, we may be agreed in more areas than you think, as I may have been misunderstood in a couple of spots.
To this end, I would like to henceforth be scrupulously clear on terms. Your original post implicitly used "scientific" as a synonym for "pragmatic" rather than the more common meaning of "empirical." On the latter understanding, your statement was a formulation of positivism. On the former understanding, your statement can be a formulation of pragmatism. So, let's use "pragmatic" and "empirical" rather than "scientific."
I intend to argue that pragmatism does not escape the ills of positivism. Let's start by clarifying my objection:
To state that "Only scientific claims are knowable" is equivalent to stating, "Only ten-word sentences are true."
No it isn't. For a start, one is demonstrably false, the other is at least plausible.
The statement, {1} "Only ten-word sentences are true" is not just demonstrably false. No, it's much worse than that. It is inherently false. A claim that is merely demonstrably false is one that might have been true, under some circumstances. But a claim that is inherently false contradicts itself. It is the opposite of a tautology. It cannot ever be true, under any circumstances. Demonstrating its falsehood would be redundant.
Substituting "empirical" for clarity, it is well known that the statement, {2} "Only empirical claims are knowable," is inherently false in exactly the same way [Ayer 1978]. Since it cannot be empirically addressed, it contradicts its own standard. Therefore, this claim cannot even be analytic, given (as you say) the way "know" and "scientific" are used in ordinary language.
This was my objection to positivism. Let us see if this objection holds for pragmatism as well.
Let's adopt the term "self-contradictory," which seems to be clearer than "self-refuting" or "inherently false."
I. Pragmatism is self-contradictory
There will be an infinite number of possible theories that fit the facts, and arguing over which one is true is thereby pointless, because they all are.... What the pragmatists are trying to get the dogmatists to realize is that our own behaviour and our own use of words like "knowledge" are relentlessly pragmatic. Once we realize that an infinite number of theories will fit any evidence we have, then truth in the dogmatist sense becomes pointless, because there will be an infinite number of true theories.
With all due respect, I think we need to get rid of this equivocation over the word "true." If I understand correctly, your claim can be reworded as follows: "There will be an infinite number of possible theories that fit the facts, and arguing over which one is objectively true is thereby pointless, because they all are pragmatically true." On this understanding, the claim seems to
Thank you, sir, for putting this discussion on the right track. The central issue is epistemology -- or, rather, ignorance of epistemology, particularly when this topic arises on certain geek news sites. However, I think we'll have to respectfully disagree on a few points. Perhaps you'd prefer a more technical treatment, but let's start simple for the benefit of the readers.
the limitations of science should be seen as the limitations of human knowledge.
No offense intended, but the prevalence of this fallacy makes it one of my pet peeves.
First, and most importantly, this position is inherently false because it is self-refuting. It is a serious and far-reaching claim, requiring justification. However, the claim itself falls outside the limitations of science. It cannot meet its own standard of justification. To state that "Only scientific claims are knowable" is equivalent to stating, "Only ten-word sentences are true."
At worst, the claim proves its own falsehood. At best, it suggests its own unknowability. So, in the best case, you should neither expect anyone to believe you, nor complain when they don't.:-)
This idea is a form of positivism. Positivism enjoyed remarkable popularity for an remarkably short span in the early 20th century. Many hailed positivism as the end of religion, just before it died a rapid death at its own hands... though not before the scientific community had adopted it as -- oops! -- unquestioned dogma. It is a myth, perpetuated from generation to generation by those who don't know better. (Hey, that sounds a lot like Dawkins! Fancy that.)
Second, this position is also incidentally false. One could hold that a rational person shouldn't accept any non-scientific claim, even if that claim somehow happens to be correct. But no one actually does this. There are plenty of propositions that most of us accept, though they lie outside the limitations of science. The clearest example is the claim that the universe exists. Is that silly? Let me rephrase: the claim that the universe, rather than the Matrix, exists. By definition, this question can never be addressed scientifically. But that doesn't prevent it from being true, and one is hardly considered irrational or unscientific for believing in a real universe.
Other examples abound, including logic, ethics, human rights, and (of course) the principles of science itself. You are free to claim that we can't know if science works, but then you can hardly make the recommendation that you are making.
We just need to face up to the fact that we appear to be epistemically limited creatures.
It is quite clear that we have epistemic limitations. But it is also quite clear that those limits aren't quite as narrow as you propose. Any epistemology that's too limited will probably be self-refuting.
Even if it's possible to doubt some of the things I've mentioned, like an objective physical world, (1) there is no obligation to do so, and (2) no one actually does so, including full-fledged skeptics (as Hume himself admits). In a many cases, perhaps most cases, doubting has no epistemic superiority over not doubting. This leads philosopher Dallas Willard to quip, "You can't just doubt your beliefs and believe your doubts. Sometimes you have to doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs."
But it is the prevailing intellectual fashion to doubt. This is really too bad, because unjustified doubt is no more intelligent than unjustified belief, a.k.a. gullibility. And it is no more accurate.
It seems to me that I could just as well suggest, "We just need to face up to the fact that it is sometimes rational to accept unprovable truths." Even if, say, the principles of science don't possess epistemic certainty, they are suffici
but that "error correction" is just approximating and filling gaps.
Nope, that's a common misunderstanding. Error correction means correcting errors, perfectly. Interpolation is only used if the error is too large to correct.
Under ideal conditions, you should be able to drill a 2.4mm hole into a CD without losing any information whatsoever. Under normal conditions, even significant scratches present no difficulty.
I don't think that simply taking the existence of God as axiomatic is enough to produce a definitive moral code.
Sorry for the late reply, and I certainly agree there. My post was quite long enough without going into even more detail. =) However, while I do think that the axiom of God's existence is not sufficient, it does appear necessary (and the argument I made requires only necessity, not sufficiency).
There are a good number of ways to develop this further. It seems to me that your suggestion,
I think that one also has to accept the axiom that whatever God says is moral is actually moral.
is only one possibility. And I agree that this axiom is, to some extent, vulnerable to the charge of degenerating into "might makes right." Objective morality cannot be grounded in arbitrary statements backed up by power.
In this vein, contemporary theology and philosophy has richly explored the view that the basis of objective morality is not merely in God's decrees, but in God's nature. In other words, the necessary and sufficient axioms are: "God exists, and God is perfect." Given these premises, it is impossible for any authentic statement from God to be anything but good. This is a very tidy result; the legitimacy and correctness of the moral instruction is rooted in God's perfection, while the obligation of the moral instruction is still rooted in power. Both of these aspects are needed. Without correctness, we simply arrive at "might makes right" again. Without obligation, we have empty statements with no authority -- supposing a superintelligent cockroach were to communicate perfectly correct moral instruction, that would be scant reason to actually carry out those instructions if I didn't feel like it.
In short, it seems that "God exists" is therefore necessary for any moral obligations to exist, and "God is perfect" is necessary for moral obligations to be true. They are both necessary, and together they are sufficient.
Tangentially, I like to complement this with a teleological view: the simple idea that "God is the architect of the Universe," which is highly likely to be true if God exists at all. On this view, nothing in the universe is arbitrary, but rather serves some specific purpose. Therefore, the optimal condition for any entity, whether asteroid or human, is to be operating according to its purpose. There is an important nuance here. Modern culture tends to cast "morality" as an imposition of rules (such as "Go to bed at 10") upon an a priori lawless personal liberty. I think this is a false dichotomy. A teleological understanding of morality reveals that morality is more like a manual than a rulebook: "If you drink benzene, next year you will get cancer." If this view is true, then morality doesn't oppose freedom, it coincides with freedom.
I find the argument that atheists lack an objective basis for morality uncompelling because the religious basis for morality often appears so thin. The idea that one can "solve" the problem of morality by introducing a set of rules by fiat doesn't strike me as a stunning philosophical achievement
Even if theism lacks a compelling basis, this has no bearing on whether or not atheism lacks a compelling basis. Perhaps you're saying that atheism's lack of a basis seems unproblematic if theism lacks a basis as well? This would be correct if the former were merely a negative argument -- i.e., that an atheistic basis has yet to be formulated. The negative argument is true (and has been for two centuries), but I'd say that a positive argument can be made that an atheistic basis cannot be formulated.
It has been suggested that objective moral propositions might simply exist as "brute facts," with no need to reference any divinity. But there are problems with working this out in practice. I can conceive of two types of "brute fact
I puzzled over this for a while, because that's the first time someone has asked me that particular question. I'm not a philosopher by training, and my own experience picking up the subject wasn't ideal. (At the same time, it's positively criminal that this kind of fundamental critical thinking is no longer taught in schools...)
Anyway, I've cobbled together some ideas, but this might be unhelpful. Sorry!
Philosophy is usually taught by the reading of primary texts. This is because you're expected to make novel contributions of thought (at the graduate level, anyway) since the point is not to "know" the material but to learn how to think.
Then I remembered that a friend (who is a philosopher) recommended using encylopedias of philosophy specifically for the purpose of studying for philosophy exams -- where the point is to know the material. The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy is good and free, while the Routledge Encylopedia of Philosophy is very good and very non-free. For a pretty technical introduction, either one should serve nicely. Wikipedia is also sometimes decent, as usual. As for the subject, most of my post was about epistemology, and IMHO that's a good place to get one's feet wet.
Some popular texts do exist also. I haven't read Mortimer J. Adler's Ten Philosophical Mistakes but it comes highly recommended. Though Adler was not a groundbreaking philosopher, he was an important figure for his superlative ability to accurately bring complex ideas to a popular audience.
One final thought: perhaps try Antony Flew's God and Philosophy, 2005 edition. While Contemporary Debates merely presents views, this book was written by the leading atheist philosopher of the 20th century, arguing stridently in favor of atheism... yet counterbalanced by the fact that the author has now become a theist.
Enjoy. Drop me a line if you'd like to talk about how things turn out. (I'm a terrible correspondent, though, as you may have guessed. =)
I've heard this argument from my Christian friends, that at the bottom of rational thought lies some faith, but it's really messy, slippery-slope argument. Pretty soon you invoke Nietzsche, and then ultimately, Hume.
Not necessarily. Only certain premises degenerate into Nietzsche and Hume. Perhaps the argument wasn't presented well. In fact, I hesitate even call it an argument, since it's really just elementary epistemology. It's more like a clarification of terms, particularly the English word "faith," which carries too many conflicting definitions to be of any use in a proper argument. Here's the way I usually formulate it:
Let's start with the term "axiom" instead.
I think it would be hard to disagree that "at the bottom of rational thought" lies a set of axioms. The very laws of reason obviously form part of this axiom system, for instance, as well as certain axioms of mathematics. Axioms may be either unproven or unprovable, but that doesn't prevent them from being true. The best nontrivial example is the axiom that the Universe exists. Does that sound silly? Let us rephrase it, then: the Universe, rather than the Matrix, exists. This is a rigorously unprovable proposition, yet nobody would be considered irrational for believing it.
How, then, should we choose between axiom systems? There are a good number of plausible axiom systems, yet we know that only one (or zero) of them can be correct. Humean skepticism would have us regard this whole exercise as either subjective or contingent, but I see no reason to agree since we're dealing with propositions that are quite capable of being known. As philosopher Dallas Willard has remarked: you can't just believe your doubts and doubt your beliefs, sometimes you have to doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs. In other words,
Faith is the choice between plausible axioms.
This is not blind faith, but a rational commitment to an unprovable truth -- it begins as judgment call and ends as confident principle. Incidentally, this is exactly the definition used in the Bible -- and not any of the other outrageously irrational definitions that are attached to the word "faith." Frankly, I'd rather get rid of the word entirely and use, say, "conviction" instead. (Note that this definition cuts two ways: (1) it exposes the countless polemics against "faith" as strawmen of the highly-uninformed variety, and (2) it exposes countless Christians as being of the highly-uninformed variety also.)
Indeed, we can expand the definition to be even more useful:
Conviction is the choice between plausible alternatives.
Such beliefs are therefore entirely rational, even in the face of significant uncertainty. For instance, consider the proposition "P != NP". There are many good reasons to think this is true, along with some good reasons to think it isn't. Someday we may find out, but for now, I choose to believe that P != NP, and therefore trust RSA encryption. This is not a strong conviction, but it is nevertheless a conviction. Others may choose to believe that P == NP, and therefore RSA could be devastated at any moment.
Of course, you can probably see where this is going:
God is an axiom.
I happen to think it is rather baldly obvious that this is a valid position. The stereotype of a "rational," "intelligent," "educated" person is one who is committed to certain axioms, such as the reliability of logic and the existence of the universe -- but not other axioms, such as the existence of God. This is an arbitrary cultural bias, and has nothing to do with being rational, intelligent, or educated.
We can develop this part more technically, if you are interest
Jordan was writing an epic, there is a difference you know.... They want to fully embrace complexity to show the unfolding of events that effect an entire world, you can only do that with a tapestry of characters and plotlines. If you don't like that kind of story, then just don't read it.
Look at the context of the thread again. Jordan wasn't only writing an epic, he was also allegedly extending the series for financial reasons. (I've no idea how true that is, but I've no complaint if it is. Even writers gotta eat.) The suggestion was that there were many ways for him to write the extra books, especially since we do know that the Wheel of Time series was intended to be much shorter.
Even so, I'd bet that shortening the tale would have improved the epic qualities of the series rather than diminished them. Such qualities do not derive from length but from size and scope. Writing something long and detailed may not necessarily result in anything epic, while even a short work, if it successfully situates itself within a greater milieu, may evoke that sense of awe that we're looking for in epic literature -- the sense, perhaps, of being rooted in something grand that transcends any individual.
Let me illustrate, with a predictable example. Although I enjoyed WoT very much, I left at book 7 to await the remainder. For no particular reason, I decided to reread LoTR just then, and the contrast was a palpable shock: because Tolkien evokes an enormous history, I was immediately subjected to an epic scale. This was not the result of the story's length or detail -- it couldn't have been, because the epic scale was present from the very beginning.
In other words, that epic background milieu can remain unstated, and often should. That's what background is for. It is not something you necessarily have to develop within the story, but something you start with. For instance, Tolkien will often allude to great swaths of "history" with nothing more than a casual remark -- as a craftsman, he has the option of accessing that richness just to infuse some particular scene with depth and texture and context, and then simultaneously get on with the story. To take a more serious example, it probably would've been impossible to compose The Odyssey if Homer had tried to include a comprehensive account of every relevant myth of the Greek pantheon.
As much as I appreciate Robert Jordan's magnificent creativity, the GP's observation is shrewd. Jordan could have structured his opus to deliver all of the same detail in multiple, coherent series. That's not the only way he could've done it, but it probably would've been at least as successful as the way he did do it.
And if the series is ever finished, may he rest in peace, I still plan to finish it as well.
Expecting to be paid for your software is reasonable. Taking tactics which can actually damage your customers' computers is not.
Absolutely correct. I beat my students over the head constantly about the ethics of stealing software -- while simultaneously endorsing "circumvention devices" because I despise copy protection in all its forms. If both sides behaved more or less correctly, we wouldn't have any of this crap.
SecuROM doesn't even deserve the title of "copy protection." It is an intrusion, and both the authors and customers of SecuROM should be treated like the criminals they are.
However:
A pirated copy is not a lost sale. A pirated copy is not a lost sale. A pirated copy is not a lost sale. I know it's comforting when you can believe the world is black and white, but it isn't.
Funny, that's kinda black and white there, isn't it? Are you really implying that 1 ripped copy = 0 lost sales? After all, no one here is claiming that 1 ripped copy = 1 lost sale. Only corporate shills do that.
What's undisputed is that some ripped copies represent lost sales. As long as the quantity of loss is anything greater than zero (or, perhaps, some negligible epsilon), then the "not a lost sale!" response simply fails to address the ethical challenge in the first place.
It's quite interesting that all of the replies to your thoughtful post have made the assumption that intelligence is purely or primarily a functional consideration. (Though one poster brought up the interesting idea that intelligence does not require self-awareness.)
I haven't thought this all the way through, but let's throw out another idea for discussion. When we look at humans, we obviously see a range of intelligence. At what point do we judge a human to not possess intelligence? In the case of infants, the mentally disabled, the insane, and even animals, we often use a definition that resembles the following:
An intelligent being is one with moral agency.
In other words, what would be required before we are willing to complain that a machine has been "dishonest," or "unfair," or "didn't wait its turn in line?" We do not presently apply these concepts to spyware, traffic cameras, or Predator drones -- but we often apply them to their designers. At what point does ethical responsibility shift from the designer to the product? Even highly autonomous products like the Roomba are not held responsible for breaking a vase.
Similarly, though perhaps more poignantly, what would be required before we are willing to accept the complaint of a machine that we were dishonest to it, or unfair to it, or did not wait our turn in line? Machines are capable of making such complaints today, but they are not capable of being taken seriously, even if they possess many functions that intelligent beings possess. In fact, it's not clear to me that we'd take such claims seriously even if machines possessed all the functions that intelligent beings possess. A functional view seems too limited.
Come to think of it, it looks like many posters assume that the defining line between humans and machines is purely or primarily a matter of intelligence. Let's propose another idea:
Machines can be considered human if and only if we are willing to recognize their intrinsic rights.
This is in parallel with human rights -- not granted rights like the right to bear arms, which are created and provided by human governments -- but intrinsic rights like freedom and life, which all humans possess even if their government or culture disagrees. At what point does a machine come to deserve equivalent rights, such that a violation of those rights holds the same ethical status as slavery or genocide?
(Of course, one is free to claim that intrinsic rights don't "really" exist, but then we'd have to stop calling them "human" rights, we'd have to stop accusing other governments of "violating" them, and we'd have to start making bizarre claims like, "African-American slaves did not deserve freedom prior to the moment that the white, male U.S. Congress decided to grant them that right.")
Dennett is a brilliant philosopher, but he's also well-known for propounding a particular agenda. While his view is plausible, it is not intrinsically more plausible than Gelernter's view.
By dwelling on the functional equivalence of Deep Blue chess and Kasparov chess, Dennett skillfully lays the assumption that this is the correct way to compare all differences between humans and machines. Rhetoric like "as far as we know" quietly asserts that all right-thinking intellectuals agree with him, while argument is dismissed as "cling[ing]... to brittle visions."
However, both his view and Gelernter's are merely expressions of the consequences of certain prior assumptions, and these assumptions are unprovable ones: function vs. being, for instance, or philosophical naturalism vs. methodological naturalism.
Gelernter adequately illustrates a counter-view that many of Dennett's peers would hold:
"...the idea that Deep Blue has a mind is absurd. How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing and cares about nothing have a mind? It can win at chess, but not because it wants to. It isn't happy when it wins or sad when it loses. What are its apres-match plans if it beats Kasparov? Is it hoping to take Deep Pink out for a night on the town? It doesn't care about chess or anything else. It plays the game for the same reason a calculator adds or a toaster toasts: because it is a machine designed for that purpose."
"The more powerful your computer, the more sophisticated the behavior it can imitate. In the long run I doubt if there is any kind of human behavior computers can't fake, any kind of performance they can't put on. It is conceivable that one day, computers will be better than humans at nearly everything. I can imagine that a person might someday have a computer for a best friend. That will be sad--like having a dog for your best friend but even sadder.
"Computers might one day be capable of expressing themselves in vivid prose or fluent poetry, but unfortunately they will still be computers and have nothing to say. The gap between human and surrogate is permanent and will never be closed. Machines will continue to make life easier, healthier, richer and more puzzling. And human beings will continue to care, ultimately, about the same things they always have: about themselves, about one another and, many of them, about God. On those terms, machines have never made a difference. And they never will."
Dennett might not be wrong, but he might not be right.
I've only a few minutes to dash off a quick, belated reply -- I hope you have time to respond before the discussion gets archived. You are welcome to have the last word.
Despite the oft-used "universality" attached to such things as the Rights of Man, they have hardly made up the basic rules of socities throughout history, or even of many societies today.
I think you may have misunderstood what is being claimed. Please allow me to clarify. The universality of human rights doesn't derive from an observation, e.g., "we observe that X is true of most cultures." The universality of human rights is a declaration, i.e., "we claim that X applies to all humans, and it always has, and it always will."
If a universal principle exists at all, logically it can only be something that is discovered, rather than something that is constructed. Or, to put it in reverse, it is impossible to construct a universal. Therefore, the existence of any universal principle, of any kind, is not dependent on the number of people who have believed it. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, for instance, has no dependence on the number of past, presence, or future societies that believe it. It is either true (likely), or it is false (unlikely).
Similarly, the existence of any universal is not dependent on whether it confers a selective advantage. So it is irrelevant that "[h]uman societies do not require freedom of conscience to exist." I think you could be right on that point, but it's not relevant to my claim.
The real issue is what it always has been: do any universal rights exist?
You are welcome to hold that human rights are not universal, merely a cultural perception "...filtered through a different sensibility." But to be consistent, it seems to me that one would have to stop calling them human rights, because that is understood to be universal. To be consistent, one would have to stop pointing out "human rights violations" by non-signatories to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, since the humans who live in those countries do not have those rights. To be consistent, one would have to tell the African-American community that their ancestors did not deserve freedom until the white majority decided that they should have it. And to be consistent, one would have to stop saying that human rights are
...A good construct...
because constructed rights are not good or bad. If they were, that would imply a universal by which you are judging the construct, which would transitively imply that the construct itself is universal. If no such universal exists, then constructs are merely preferences. You can only say that, "In my personal opinion only, I like the idea that people shouldn't be enslaved based on their skin color. But anyone else's opinion is just as valid."
The why of any moral code is ultimately that which any given society feels is a social rule that is important enough to be ingrained and enforced.... Ultimately, however, morality is the creation of the people that adhere to it
This is, of course, a very popular and fashionable view at the moment.
I find it quite interesting, however, that those who adhere to this view often make a number of rather glaring exceptions. The best illustration is the question of human rights, as commonly understood to be universal and inalienable. It is impossible, logically, for any construct of a society to be either of those things.
Abstractly and theoretically, we might assent to the idea that human rights are merely a social agreement, with no validity beyond its own adherents. But in reality, most of us do in fact go around accusing other cultures of "human rights violations," as if they had done something... wrong.
Abstractly and theoretically, we might then rationalize this as an everyday power play, imposing our arbitrary preferences upon a weaker entity. But in reality, most of us do in fact feel that we are adhering to justice rather than to self-interest. After all, slave labor enriches us with very inexpensive goods.
Abstractly and theoretically, we might congratulate ourselves for "progressing" to the understanding that slavery is "undesirable." But in reality, most of us do in fact understand that slavery was always wrong in the past, is still wrong today, and will continue to be wrong in the future, regardless of what society decides. After all, we do not say to an African-American, "You deserve freedom today, but you did not deserve it 150 years ago, prior to our deciding that you do. And you'd better hope that we don't decide differently tomorrow."
I still contend that the (often religious) argument "all humans have some hard-wired moral rules" is a sham, created to perpetrate the spread of ignorance on controversial topics.
The religious argument is not that humans have "hard-wired" moral rules, but that the Universe has hard-wired moral rules in the same way it has hard-wired physical rules. If this premise is correct, it would be unsurprising for evolution to favor mental and social structures that reflect moral laws, just as evolution favors physical structures that reflect physical laws -- and all imperfectly.
This debate is usually cast in the following terms:
Side A: "Evolutionary psychology explains morality, therefore it's merely an artifact of evolution with no particular significance."
Side B: "Evolutionary psychology can't explain morality, therefore it's greater than an artifact of evolution and bears significance."
Neither of these arguments is valid. The real debate is what it always has been:
Side A: Morality is relative to society
Corollary: Evolution will favor structures that work.
Side B: Morality is universal across society
Corollary: Evolution will favor structures that work.
Therefore, it seems to me that the elucidation of a mechanism for ingraining moral laws has no logical connection to the intrinsic status and origin of those laws. Or, put another way: the evidence is not quite as important as the premises.
In the same way, to reduce morality to a mere consequence of some presumed a priori empathy does not seem any more valid than reducing empathy to a mere consequence of some presumed a priori morality. Therefore, this formulation does not advance the argument either.
We should always question our judgments using our intellect... because that is really what separates us from other mammals.
Could you clarify what you think is the role of intellect in this? It seems to me that intellect can tell us how well our judgments conform to an a priori standard of morality (including, technically, no standard at all -- but then what are you judging?).
So, assuming you believe a judgment can be made, what is the standard upon which the action is judged, and what is the justification for the standard itself?
Yes, under the law, copyrighted material per se isn't considered a service (IANAL either). I was responding to this claim:
[Y]ou cannot say that the company has lost anything physical. That's why the law doesn't consider it stealing.
Many nonphysical things can be considered stolen, because it is possible to steal value without removing something physical from the owner. We can quibble about details, such as the difficulty of assigning an objective value to a nonphysical asset (i.e., the tired old "not every copy is a lost sale!" argument). That's a strawman. We all agree that not every copy is a lost sale. But we also agree that some copies are lost sales. So, despite being unable to precisely quantify the loss, it is unchallenged that the loss is nonzero. If so, it constitutes theft of services.
Therefore, I do claim that the distributing material without the author's permission is morally equivalent to theft of services. It does not substantively differ from jumping a turnstile to ride on the subway, or freeloading a cable TV signal. In both cases, nothing physical has been lost. In both cases, it is theft because I am benefiting from a service, against the will of the service provider, by withholding payment.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't just say "No." without saying "Because..."
Actually, they can when you are flagrantly misrepresenting what they said (assuming you are the same AC). letxa2000 said only that "we have additional evidence from human history"
You responded with an ad hominem ("idiot"), a unsubstantiated and inflammatory claim ("translated by multitudes"), and a strawman ("as default"). Nope, the burden of proof is not on lexta2000.
Here, maybe an illustration would help:
There are people out there, people in power, who want to teach creationism as science -- some using the paper-thin disguise of Intelligent Design
Let's start by defining terms. In fact, let's do almost nothing but define terms. =)
If by "creationism" you mean Biblical creationism or something similar, then I certainly agree that this should not be taught in public schools. And I agree that there are many who are pushing a creationist agenda under the guise of "intelligent design." As a Christian, I find this reprehensible, and (for what it's worth) I am sorry for it.
But this abuse doesn't mean that creationism and intelligent design are the same, as many accuse. I oppose the teaching of intelligent design in schools, but not because it's reprehensible -- it's because there isn't enough evidence. You may scoff at that notion! Perhaps your definition of intelligent design is worthy of your scorn. So let's define it properly, instead:
1. It is possible to scientifically detect and study evidence of design.
2. It is possible that such evidence exists in the natural world.
Claim #1 is absolutely non-controversial. It's the basis of forensics, archaeology, and SETI. Only claim #2 is controversial -- but having stated it clearly, I hope it is now obvious that no scientific grounds exist for denying it. (Note that claim #2 is quite compatible with the facts of evolution.) You can only oppose claim #2 on ideological grounds, which is to say, on religious grounds.
After all, if you were to deny that #2 is even possible, then I'd certainly ask you to produce scientific evidence. But in order to do so, you would have to engage in very nearly the same research that the intelligent design camp is trying to legitimize, and which you claim is not science.
Therefore: pro-ID and anti-ID are both scientific, or they are both ideological. What's your pick?
...with ReiserFS you can store multiple small files or the tails of files into a single block.
AdvFS was doing that about 15 years ago.
You make an eloquent case, but with all due respect, your argument undercuts itself.
You espouse the idea that religion is "private." But this is a very particular view of what religion is and how it is to be carried out. That is indisputably a religious view, both at face value, and also by directly contravening what most religions say about the very same subject. Moreoever, you claim that religion "should be" private. As soon as one invokes words like "should be" or "desirable," one is making a moral demand -- a religious demand -- upon others.
Is this not an imposition? For that matter, it's not just an imposition, it's an imposition of a religious viewpoint. It's an imposition of a religious viewpoint that may well be offensive to many of one's constituents.
Again, you are speaking from a particular religious viewpoint: that religion is purely personal. I cannot speculate on why you hold this view, but many hold this view for one of two reasons: (1) they believe that all religions are equally true, or (2) they believe that all religions are equally false. Therefore, this is indisputably a religious issue, and religious issues have religious answers. Most Christians (and Muslims, and Orthodox Jews, and...) hold a very different view on religion: we think that religious facts are possible. Not mere religious beliefs, personal and private, but religious facts that are as solid as historical and scientific facts. Of course, anyone is welcome to persuade me that I have gotten my facts wrong, that I've made some mistake -- I've no problem with that, at all! But to do that, you must first accept that my religious views consist of things that are capable of being right or wrong, rather than things that exist only inside my head. Either God exists, or God does not exist, and every person on Earth is either right or wrong about this.
Thus, I have the natural, and legal, and intellectual right to accept a well-founded religious claim as being a well-founded religious fact. The basic claims of most religions are claims about reality and how reality works. They answer fundamental axiomatic questions like, "Why does the universe exist?", "What is the public good?", or "What is a human being, and does it have rights?" Such axioms represent questions that everyone must answer one way or another in order to carry out even basic duties -- whether personal or public. When it comes to axioms, neutrality does not exist. Therefore, to whatever extent that secularism answers religious questions, secularism is a religious view -- a specific, identifiable, religious view.
Accordingly, it is not bias for me to accept, as fact, that there is a particular type of impending disaster (hell), for which there is a particular remedy (rescue). It is not bias for me to think this, even if I might be wrong, and even if many intelligent, respectable people disagree with me. Actually, I'd prefer to be wrong about this, but I reluctantly find that the evidence speaks otherwise. Furthermore, I do not consider myself superior because I happen to possess this information, any more than I could consider myself superior for noticing an impending tornado and sounding a warning. That would be both stupid and immoral.
1 on 1 teacher time is not as valuable as 1 on 1 student time, given difficult problems to solve. Being told existing solutions is not nearly as useful as banging your head against a wall coming up with "new" solutions
I absolutely agree with your second sentence, but it doesn't follow from the first sentence. When teaching, I try to avoid telling anyone the answer to anything. The whole process ideally centers around setting things up so that they can figure it out for themselves. My best teachers asked more questions than gave answers, and were available at all hours to bounce around ideas. And this was very complementary to the 1-on-1 student interaction. So that's the model I aspire to (poorly, truth be told, but I think I'm improving -- as with most things, it's more about practice and willingness than about ability).
The most exciting moments are when my students come up with things I'd never think up myself.
Those skills are trivially easy to outsource overseas, and they will be. On the other hand, if you want to have a competitive advantage based on your familiarity with Western culture, economics, human psychology, creative arts, and a foreign language, get a degree with a CS major at a Liberal Arts school, and take all those non-CS "core" classes seriously.
Hear, hear!
These non-CS classes do make a concrete contribution to your skills as an engineer because they make a concrete contribution to your overall intelligence. The point is to build up a mental toolkit.
Let me give a personal illustration: I credit a great part of my debugging skills to an Art History class -- no exaggeration. The data-synthesis skills I learned there outweigh everything else, when it comes to rooting out certain types of problems. Personally, it's simply the right tool for the job. And it's one you just don't get in an engineering curriculum.
Well, yes it is. But the term "well-rounded" is vague and misleading. It's not really "well-rounded" versus "highly-focused." It's really education versus job training.
I judge education on only one measure: it should make you smarter, and ideally wiser. Mere knowledge is not intelligence, mere intelligence is not wisdom, and mere wisdom is not character. If education does not bring you up this hierarchy, then it has failed in some measure.
Studying arts, humanities, writing, philosophy, sociology, history, foreign languages... the point is not to learn the material. The point is that all of those disciplines exercise and train the mind in radically different ways. And this makes a concrete difference in the quality of thought that I see from different engineers I've worked with. There are mental tools that you simply will not get in an engineering curriculum. This becomes evident when you turn the example around -- how many times have you encountered people who are unable to "think like an engineer" or "think like a scientist" when the situation demands? A good education makes you smarter by building your mental toolkit.
Accordingly, I am unimpressed when I see students go off to some big-name college and return unchanged after four years, except stuffed with job skills that will become obsolete in 2-5 years. I am highly impressed when I see students go off to a great educational institution and come back better and brighter than anyone could've hoped. Yes, they also got the job training, but they gained the all-important transferable skills: critical thinking, a love for learning, communication, adaptability, initiative, discipline, leadership, and so on.
Let's make this concrete. Education-focused undergraduate schools -- that is to say, liberal arts colleges -- dominate the landscape in per-capita Ph.D. generation, including the sciences. Fourteen out of the top twenty Ph.D. producers (and three out of the top five) are liberal arts colleges. They are frequently less selective in admissions, bringing in second- or third-tier students yet graduating first-rate candidates for grad school -- matching and outperforming their Ivy League competition. Incidentally, Princeton is the only Ivy on that top-twenty list, and it's number twenty.
The point of graduate school is to totally immerse yourself in your chosen subject, i.e., job training. The point of undergraduate school is to improve your brain, i.e., education.
Have you noticed that engineers have a terrible habit of naively treating everything like an engineering problem? This is often because they have never been taught any other way to think, and that is a waste of a great brain. Have you noticed that engineers with extremely narrow skill sets will somehow tolerate being unemployed for years because "nobody is hiring?" This is often because they believe they are limited to what they've been trained to do, and that is a waste of a great brain. No one should ever settle for a limited mental toolkit.
Yet, this is exactly the European model. In fact, they sort students into these tracks in grade school, sometimes as early as elementary school -- a decade or more before their brains are even fully grown.
Again, let's make the contrast more concrete. The Yale class of 1957 was polled after 25 years to see where they were all working. Seventy-five percent were employed in jobs that did not even exist in 1957. That's just 25 years -- hardly halfway to retirement. Think about our own time -- ten years ago,
the real issue is that only a minority of programmers are able to take skills developed in one context and apply them in a different context
You're right -- and change "programmers" to "people" and you'll still be right.
It used to be understood that education, particularly at the college level, was intended to teach people how to think. Most now believe that education is intended to train people how to work. Not that a college education shouldn't include that, but it's much less important than learning how to learn independently, think critically, adapt quickly, and communicate persuasively -- to say nothing of other essential (and learnable!) qualities like character, discipline, initiative, leadership, cooperation, and so on.
This is why people used to graduate from university at the age of 12 or 13, and be considered ready to make their way in the world. It was assumed that they would simply pick up whatever knowledge they needed.
Granted, there's much more knowledge to be "picked up" these days. But rather than augmenting the classical model, most of the world has entirely jettisoned it in favor of stuffing untrained minds full of unstructured data so that they can pass standardized tests and industry certifications.
Here and there you'll find holdouts -- mostly in the US, at smaller, lesser-known colleges. And what you find is that these institutions accept B or C students as freshmen and turn out graduates who can out-think and out-perform competition from Big Ten and Ivy schools. In other words, a proper education makes people smarter. If it doesn't, then it's not education... it's just training.
Nope. You're thinking of these folks, the postmodern non-realists. Religious people think that their beliefs accurately describe the universe, i.e., that it is possible for nonempirical truths to exist.
Actually, almost everyone believes nonempirical truths exist, such as the existence of logic, or the reliability of science. Which makes almost everyone religious. The only disagreement lies around which claims are true and which aren't.
Speaking of truth, let's inject some into this account:
Turns out the majority of scientists thought Ptolemy was right. Geocentrism was not derived from the Bible. The Bible has so little to say about this issue that it is consistent with either geocentrism or heliocentrism. But since the highly refined Ptolemaic cosmology was in fact the best scientific position at the time, the Church adopted this view both in science and in Biblical interpretation.
Hardly sounds unscientific to me.
As it happens, Galileo's most strident opponents were other scientists -- the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian astronomers. And some of them figured that taking this issue up with the Church would be a great way to shut him up.
Now that's not terribly scientific.
Again, check your facts, please. Not until Kepler would telescopes become accurate enough to vindicate heliocentrism over against geocentrism. Let me repeat for emphasis: in purely empirical terms, geocentrism was superior to heliocentrism at the time of Galileo.
Galileo propounded heliocentrism primarily based on its elegance, and not because he had collected better scientific evidence than geocentrism. The best minds of the time accepted Aristotle's 2000-year-old refutation of heliocentrism: if the Earth moves, why do we see no parallax effects? Kepler would eventually show that there are, but Galileo had no such power.
In fact, this failure may have been responsible for the whole debacle. The Pope at the time was a great admirer of Galileo, and "personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism". Sounds pretty fair-minded to me.
Unfortunately, Galileo was not so wise. He wrote the book mocking the views of the Pope via a character named Simplicius the Fool... thereby alienating his most powerful supporter. Even then, the Church was still (1) completely willing to sanction heliocentrism as a hypothesis until solid evidence was presented, and (2) completely willing to revisit Biblical interpretation after solid evidence was presented, since there is never any real conflict between scriptural truth and scientific truth.
Galileo stonewalled. He insisted his view was correct, without presenting superior evidence over the contemporary scientific and Biblical understanding. And that was considered heresy.
And y'know what? Doing the same thing today would be considered heresy by scientists -- the only difference is that we don't call it heresy, and we don't arrest people for it. But it's the same scenario. The history of science clearly shows that dogmatism is just as prevalent there as anywhere else -- paradigm shifts in science rarely occur until the distinguished scientists who hold the old view all die.
Thanks for the kind comment. I don't often have time to participate on Slashdot, but I can't help myself when certain popular falsehoods come up. :-) The Admiral gave the best counterargument I've encountered so far (well, not in favor of positivism per se, that being impossible, but at least for some form of "scientism"). At any rate, I count myself fortunate to be having the discussion.
I've also put in references when they were handy, but I wasn't too scrupulous about it. I also wish I had time to write something shorter.
Granted, I apologize for assuming that you were advocating the type of naive positivism that regularly makes its rounds on Slashdot. Pragmatism is a sophisticated and nuanced view that deserves detailed discussion, and I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to do so. As a matter of fact, we may be agreed in more areas than you think, as I may have been misunderstood in a couple of spots.
To this end, I would like to henceforth be scrupulously clear on terms. Your original post implicitly used "scientific" as a synonym for "pragmatic" rather than the more common meaning of "empirical." On the latter understanding, your statement was a formulation of positivism. On the former understanding, your statement can be a formulation of pragmatism. So, let's use "pragmatic" and "empirical" rather than "scientific."
I intend to argue that pragmatism does not escape the ills of positivism. Let's start by clarifying my objection:
The statement, {1} "Only ten-word sentences are true" is not just demonstrably false. No, it's much worse than that. It is inherently false. A claim that is merely demonstrably false is one that might have been true, under some circumstances. But a claim that is inherently false contradicts itself. It is the opposite of a tautology. It cannot ever be true, under any circumstances. Demonstrating its falsehood would be redundant.
Substituting "empirical" for clarity, it is well known that the statement, {2} "Only empirical claims are knowable," is inherently false in exactly the same way [Ayer 1978]. Since it cannot be empirically addressed, it contradicts its own standard. Therefore, this claim cannot even be analytic, given (as you say) the way "know" and "scientific" are used in ordinary language.
This was my objection to positivism. Let us see if this objection holds for pragmatism as well.
Let's adopt the term "self-contradictory," which seems to be clearer than "self-refuting" or "inherently false."
I. Pragmatism is self-contradictory
With all due respect, I think we need to get rid of this equivocation over the word "true." If I understand correctly, your claim can be reworded as follows: "There will be an infinite number of possible theories that fit the facts, and arguing over which one is objectively true is thereby pointless, because they all are pragmatically true." On this understanding, the claim seems to
So... you're telling me that I shouldn't believe a word you've said. Sure, no problem!
No offense intended, but the prevalence of this fallacy makes it one of my pet peeves.
:-)
First, and most importantly, this position is inherently false because it is self-refuting. It is a serious and far-reaching claim, requiring justification. However, the claim itself falls outside the limitations of science. It cannot meet its own standard of justification. To state that "Only scientific claims are knowable" is equivalent to stating, "Only ten-word sentences are true."
At worst, the claim proves its own falsehood. At best, it suggests its own unknowability. So, in the best case, you should neither expect anyone to believe you, nor complain when they don't.
This idea is a form of positivism. Positivism enjoyed remarkable popularity for an remarkably short span in the early 20th century. Many hailed positivism as the end of religion, just before it died a rapid death at its own hands... though not before the scientific community had adopted it as -- oops! -- unquestioned dogma. It is a myth, perpetuated from generation to generation by those who don't know better. (Hey, that sounds a lot like Dawkins! Fancy that.)
Second, this position is also incidentally false. One could hold that a rational person shouldn't accept any non-scientific claim, even if that claim somehow happens to be correct. But no one actually does this. There are plenty of propositions that most of us accept, though they lie outside the limitations of science. The clearest example is the claim that the universe exists. Is that silly? Let me rephrase: the claim that the universe, rather than the Matrix, exists. By definition, this question can never be addressed scientifically. But that doesn't prevent it from being true, and one is hardly considered irrational or unscientific for believing in a real universe.
Other examples abound, including logic, ethics, human rights, and (of course) the principles of science itself. You are free to claim that we can't know if science works, but then you can hardly make the recommendation that you are making.
It is quite clear that we have epistemic limitations. But it is also quite clear that those limits aren't quite as narrow as you propose. Any epistemology that's too limited will probably be self-refuting.
Even if it's possible to doubt some of the things I've mentioned, like an objective physical world, (1) there is no obligation to do so, and (2) no one actually does so, including full-fledged skeptics (as Hume himself admits). In a many cases, perhaps most cases, doubting has no epistemic superiority over not doubting. This leads philosopher Dallas Willard to quip, "You can't just doubt your beliefs and believe your doubts. Sometimes you have to doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs."
But it is the prevailing intellectual fashion to doubt. This is really too bad, because unjustified doubt is no more intelligent than unjustified belief, a.k.a. gullibility. And it is no more accurate.
It seems to me that I could just as well suggest, "We just need to face up to the fact that it is sometimes rational to accept unprovable truths." Even if, say, the principles of science don't possess epistemic certainty, they are suffici
Nope, that's a common misunderstanding. Error correction means correcting errors, perfectly. Interpolation is only used if the error is too large to correct.
Under ideal conditions, you should be able to drill a 2.4mm hole into a CD without losing any information whatsoever. Under normal conditions, even significant scratches present no difficulty.
Sorry for the late reply, and I certainly agree there. My post was quite long enough without going into even more detail. =) However, while I do think that the axiom of God's existence is not sufficient, it does appear necessary (and the argument I made requires only necessity, not sufficiency).
There are a good number of ways to develop this further. It seems to me that your suggestion,
is only one possibility. And I agree that this axiom is, to some extent, vulnerable to the charge of degenerating into "might makes right." Objective morality cannot be grounded in arbitrary statements backed up by power.
In this vein, contemporary theology and philosophy has richly explored the view that the basis of objective morality is not merely in God's decrees, but in God's nature. In other words, the necessary and sufficient axioms are: "God exists, and God is perfect." Given these premises, it is impossible for any authentic statement from God to be anything but good. This is a very tidy result; the legitimacy and correctness of the moral instruction is rooted in God's perfection, while the obligation of the moral instruction is still rooted in power. Both of these aspects are needed. Without correctness, we simply arrive at "might makes right" again. Without obligation, we have empty statements with no authority -- supposing a superintelligent cockroach were to communicate perfectly correct moral instruction, that would be scant reason to actually carry out those instructions if I didn't feel like it.
In short, it seems that "God exists" is therefore necessary for any moral obligations to exist, and "God is perfect" is necessary for moral obligations to be true. They are both necessary, and together they are sufficient.
Tangentially, I like to complement this with a teleological view: the simple idea that "God is the architect of the Universe," which is highly likely to be true if God exists at all. On this view, nothing in the universe is arbitrary, but rather serves some specific purpose. Therefore, the optimal condition for any entity, whether asteroid or human, is to be operating according to its purpose. There is an important nuance here. Modern culture tends to cast "morality" as an imposition of rules (such as "Go to bed at 10") upon an a priori lawless personal liberty. I think this is a false dichotomy. A teleological understanding of morality reveals that morality is more like a manual than a rulebook: "If you drink benzene, next year you will get cancer." If this view is true, then morality doesn't oppose freedom, it coincides with freedom.
Even if theism lacks a compelling basis, this has no bearing on whether or not atheism lacks a compelling basis. Perhaps you're saying that atheism's lack of a basis seems unproblematic if theism lacks a basis as well? This would be correct if the former were merely a negative argument -- i.e., that an atheistic basis has yet to be formulated. The negative argument is true (and has been for two centuries), but I'd say that a positive argument can be made that an atheistic basis cannot be formulated.
It has been suggested that objective moral propositions might simply exist as "brute facts," with no need to reference any divinity. But there are problems with working this out in practice. I can conceive of two types of "brute fact
I puzzled over this for a while, because that's the first time someone has asked me that particular question. I'm not a philosopher by training, and my own experience picking up the subject wasn't ideal. (At the same time, it's positively criminal that this kind of fundamental critical thinking is no longer taught in schools...)
Anyway, I've cobbled together some ideas, but this might be unhelpful. Sorry!
Philosophy is usually taught by the reading of primary texts. This is because you're expected to make novel contributions of thought (at the graduate level, anyway) since the point is not to "know" the material but to learn how to think.
Then I remembered that a friend (who is a philosopher) recommended using encylopedias of philosophy specifically for the purpose of studying for philosophy exams -- where the point is to know the material. The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy is good and free, while the Routledge Encylopedia of Philosophy is very good and very non-free. For a pretty technical introduction, either one should serve nicely. Wikipedia is also sometimes decent, as usual. As for the subject, most of my post was about epistemology, and IMHO that's a good place to get one's feet wet.
For a whole lot of detail, the same friend has a study guide for epistemology, as well as notes for a short class he taught on philosophical apologetics. That class used Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion as a primary text.
Some popular texts do exist also. I haven't read Mortimer J. Adler's Ten Philosophical Mistakes but it comes highly recommended. Though Adler was not a groundbreaking philosopher, he was an important figure for his superlative ability to accurately bring complex ideas to a popular audience.
I also rather enjoyed Moral Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air.
One final thought: perhaps try Antony Flew's God and Philosophy, 2005 edition. While Contemporary Debates merely presents views, this book was written by the leading atheist philosopher of the 20th century, arguing stridently in favor of atheism... yet counterbalanced by the fact that the author has now become a theist.
Enjoy. Drop me a line if you'd like to talk about how things turn out. (I'm a terrible correspondent, though, as you may have guessed. =)
Not necessarily. Only certain premises degenerate into Nietzsche and Hume. Perhaps the argument wasn't presented well. In fact, I hesitate even call it an argument, since it's really just elementary epistemology. It's more like a clarification of terms, particularly the English word "faith," which carries too many conflicting definitions to be of any use in a proper argument. Here's the way I usually formulate it:
Let's start with the term "axiom" instead.
I think it would be hard to disagree that "at the bottom of rational thought" lies a set of axioms. The very laws of reason obviously form part of this axiom system, for instance, as well as certain axioms of mathematics. Axioms may be either unproven or unprovable, but that doesn't prevent them from being true. The best nontrivial example is the axiom that the Universe exists. Does that sound silly? Let us rephrase it, then: the Universe, rather than the Matrix, exists. This is a rigorously unprovable proposition, yet nobody would be considered irrational for believing it.
How, then, should we choose between axiom systems? There are a good number of plausible axiom systems, yet we know that only one (or zero) of them can be correct. Humean skepticism would have us regard this whole exercise as either subjective or contingent, but I see no reason to agree since we're dealing with propositions that are quite capable of being known. As philosopher Dallas Willard has remarked: you can't just believe your doubts and doubt your beliefs, sometimes you have to doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs. In other words,
This is not blind faith, but a rational commitment to an unprovable truth -- it begins as judgment call and ends as confident principle. Incidentally, this is exactly the definition used in the Bible -- and not any of the other outrageously irrational definitions that are attached to the word "faith." Frankly, I'd rather get rid of the word entirely and use, say, "conviction" instead. (Note that this definition cuts two ways: (1) it exposes the countless polemics against "faith" as strawmen of the highly-uninformed variety, and (2) it exposes countless Christians as being of the highly-uninformed variety also.)
Indeed, we can expand the definition to be even more useful:
Such beliefs are therefore entirely rational, even in the face of significant uncertainty. For instance, consider the proposition "P != NP". There are many good reasons to think this is true, along with some good reasons to think it isn't. Someday we may find out, but for now, I choose to believe that P != NP, and therefore trust RSA encryption. This is not a strong conviction, but it is nevertheless a conviction. Others may choose to believe that P == NP, and therefore RSA could be devastated at any moment.
Of course, you can probably see where this is going:
I happen to think it is rather baldly obvious that this is a valid position. The stereotype of a "rational," "intelligent," "educated" person is one who is committed to certain axioms, such as the reliability of logic and the existence of the universe -- but not other axioms, such as the existence of God. This is an arbitrary cultural bias, and has nothing to do with being rational, intelligent, or educated.
We can develop this part more technically, if you are interest
Jordan was writing an epic, there is a difference you know. ... They want to fully embrace complexity to show the unfolding of events that effect an entire world, you can only do that with a tapestry of characters and plotlines. If you don't like that kind of story, then just don't read it.
Look at the context of the thread again. Jordan wasn't only writing an epic, he was also allegedly extending the series for financial reasons. (I've no idea how true that is, but I've no complaint if it is. Even writers gotta eat.) The suggestion was that there were many ways for him to write the extra books, especially since we do know that the Wheel of Time series was intended to be much shorter.
Even so, I'd bet that shortening the tale would have improved the epic qualities of the series rather than diminished them. Such qualities do not derive from length but from size and scope. Writing something long and detailed may not necessarily result in anything epic, while even a short work, if it successfully situates itself within a greater milieu, may evoke that sense of awe that we're looking for in epic literature -- the sense, perhaps, of being rooted in something grand that transcends any individual.
Let me illustrate, with a predictable example. Although I enjoyed WoT very much, I left at book 7 to await the remainder. For no particular reason, I decided to reread LoTR just then, and the contrast was a palpable shock: because Tolkien evokes an enormous history, I was immediately subjected to an epic scale. This was not the result of the story's length or detail -- it couldn't have been, because the epic scale was present from the very beginning.
In other words, that epic background milieu can remain unstated, and often should. That's what background is for. It is not something you necessarily have to develop within the story, but something you start with. For instance, Tolkien will often allude to great swaths of "history" with nothing more than a casual remark -- as a craftsman, he has the option of accessing that richness just to infuse some particular scene with depth and texture and context, and then simultaneously get on with the story. To take a more serious example, it probably would've been impossible to compose The Odyssey if Homer had tried to include a comprehensive account of every relevant myth of the Greek pantheon.
As much as I appreciate Robert Jordan's magnificent creativity, the GP's observation is shrewd. Jordan could have structured his opus to deliver all of the same detail in multiple, coherent series. That's not the only way he could've done it, but it probably would've been at least as successful as the way he did do it.
And if the series is ever finished, may he rest in peace, I still plan to finish it as well.
Expecting to be paid for your software is reasonable. Taking tactics which can actually damage your customers' computers is not.
Absolutely correct. I beat my students over the head constantly about the ethics of stealing software -- while simultaneously endorsing "circumvention devices" because I despise copy protection in all its forms. If both sides behaved more or less correctly, we wouldn't have any of this crap.
SecuROM doesn't even deserve the title of "copy protection." It is an intrusion, and both the authors and customers of SecuROM should be treated like the criminals they are.
However:
A pirated copy is not a lost sale. A pirated copy is not a lost sale. A pirated copy is not a lost sale.
I know it's comforting when you can believe the world is black and white, but it isn't.
Funny, that's kinda black and white there, isn't it? Are you really implying that 1 ripped copy = 0 lost sales? After all, no one here is claiming that 1 ripped copy = 1 lost sale. Only corporate shills do that.
What's undisputed is that some ripped copies represent lost sales. As long as the quantity of loss is anything greater than zero (or, perhaps, some negligible epsilon), then the "not a lost sale!" response simply fails to address the ethical challenge in the first place.
It's quite interesting that all of the replies to your thoughtful post have made the assumption that intelligence is purely or primarily a functional consideration. (Though one poster brought up the interesting idea that intelligence does not require self-awareness.)
I haven't thought this all the way through, but let's throw out another idea for discussion. When we look at humans, we obviously see a range of intelligence. At what point do we judge a human to not possess intelligence? In the case of infants, the mentally disabled, the insane, and even animals, we often use a definition that resembles the following:
An intelligent being is one with moral agency.
In other words, what would be required before we are willing to complain that a machine has been "dishonest," or "unfair," or "didn't wait its turn in line?" We do not presently apply these concepts to spyware, traffic cameras, or Predator drones -- but we often apply them to their designers. At what point does ethical responsibility shift from the designer to the product? Even highly autonomous products like the Roomba are not held responsible for breaking a vase.
Similarly, though perhaps more poignantly, what would be required before we are willing to accept the complaint of a machine that we were dishonest to it, or unfair to it, or did not wait our turn in line? Machines are capable of making such complaints today, but they are not capable of being taken seriously, even if they possess many functions that intelligent beings possess. In fact, it's not clear to me that we'd take such claims seriously even if machines possessed all the functions that intelligent beings possess. A functional view seems too limited.
Come to think of it, it looks like many posters assume that the defining line between humans and machines is purely or primarily a matter of intelligence. Let's propose another idea:
Machines can be considered human if and only if we are willing to recognize their intrinsic rights.
This is in parallel with human rights -- not granted rights like the right to bear arms, which are created and provided by human governments -- but intrinsic rights like freedom and life, which all humans possess even if their government or culture disagrees. At what point does a machine come to deserve equivalent rights, such that a violation of those rights holds the same ethical status as slavery or genocide?
(Of course, one is free to claim that intrinsic rights don't "really" exist, but then we'd have to stop calling them "human" rights, we'd have to stop accusing other governments of "violating" them, and we'd have to start making bizarre claims like, "African-American slaves did not deserve freedom prior to the moment that the white, male U.S. Congress decided to grant them that right.")
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Dum de dum.
Yale CS professor David Gelernter wrote an article about the match, expressing a quite different view.
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http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,986355,0
Dennett is a brilliant philosopher, but he's also well-known for propounding a particular agenda. While his view is plausible, it is not intrinsically more plausible than Gelernter's view.
By dwelling on the functional equivalence of Deep Blue chess and Kasparov chess, Dennett skillfully lays the assumption that this is the correct way to compare all differences between humans and machines. Rhetoric like "as far as we know" quietly asserts that all right-thinking intellectuals agree with him, while argument is dismissed as "cling[ing]... to brittle visions."
However, both his view and Gelernter's are merely expressions of the consequences of certain prior assumptions, and these assumptions are unprovable ones: function vs. being, for instance, or philosophical naturalism vs. methodological naturalism.
Gelernter adequately illustrates a counter-view that many of Dennett's peers would hold:
"...the idea that Deep Blue has a mind is absurd. How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing and cares about nothing have a mind? It can win at chess, but not because it wants to. It isn't happy when it wins or sad when it loses. What are its apres-match plans if it beats Kasparov? Is it hoping to take Deep Pink out for a night on the town? It doesn't care about chess or anything else. It plays the game for the same reason a calculator adds or a toaster toasts: because it is a machine designed for that purpose."
"The more powerful your computer, the more sophisticated the behavior it can imitate. In the long run I doubt if there is any kind of human behavior computers can't fake, any kind of performance they can't put on. It is conceivable that one day, computers will be better than humans at nearly everything. I can imagine that a person might someday have a computer for a best friend. That will be sad--like having a dog for your best friend but even sadder.
"Computers might one day be capable of expressing themselves in vivid prose or fluent poetry, but unfortunately they will still be computers and have nothing to say. The gap between human and surrogate is permanent and will never be closed. Machines will continue to make life easier, healthier, richer and more puzzling. And human beings will continue to care, ultimately, about the same things they always have: about themselves, about one another and, many of them, about God. On those terms, machines have never made a difference. And they never will."
Dennett might not be wrong, but he might not be right.
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Dum de dum.
I've only a few minutes to dash off a quick, belated reply -- I hope you have time to respond before the discussion gets archived. You are welcome to have the last word.
...A good construct...
Despite the oft-used "universality" attached to such things as the Rights of Man, they have hardly made up the basic rules of socities throughout history, or even of many societies today.
I think you may have misunderstood what is being claimed. Please allow me to clarify. The universality of human rights doesn't derive from an observation, e.g., "we observe that X is true of most cultures." The universality of human rights is a declaration, i.e., "we claim that X applies to all humans, and it always has, and it always will."
If a universal principle exists at all, logically it can only be something that is discovered, rather than something that is constructed. Or, to put it in reverse, it is impossible to construct a universal. Therefore, the existence of any universal principle, of any kind, is not dependent on the number of people who have believed it. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, for instance, has no dependence on the number of past, presence, or future societies that believe it. It is either true (likely), or it is false (unlikely).
Similarly, the existence of any universal is not dependent on whether it confers a selective advantage. So it is irrelevant that "[h]uman societies do not require freedom of conscience to exist." I think you could be right on that point, but it's not relevant to my claim.
The real issue is what it always has been: do any universal rights exist?
You are welcome to hold that human rights are not universal, merely a cultural perception "...filtered through a different sensibility." But to be consistent, it seems to me that one would have to stop calling them human rights, because that is understood to be universal. To be consistent, one would have to stop pointing out "human rights violations" by non-signatories to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, since the humans who live in those countries do not have those rights. To be consistent, one would have to tell the African-American community that their ancestors did not deserve freedom until the white majority decided that they should have it. And to be consistent, one would have to stop saying that human rights are
because constructed rights are not good or bad. If they were, that would imply a universal by which you are judging the construct, which would transitively imply that the construct itself is universal. If no such universal exists, then constructs are merely preferences. You can only say that, "In my personal opinion only, I like the idea that people shouldn't be enslaved based on their skin color. But anyone else's opinion is just as valid."
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Dum de dum.
The why of any moral code is ultimately that which any given society feels is a social rule that is important enough to be ingrained and enforced. ... Ultimately, however, morality is the creation of the people that adhere to it
This is, of course, a very popular and fashionable view at the moment.
I find it quite interesting, however, that those who adhere to this view often make a number of rather glaring exceptions. The best illustration is the question of human rights, as commonly understood to be universal and inalienable. It is impossible, logically, for any construct of a society to be either of those things.
Abstractly and theoretically, we might assent to the idea that human rights are merely a social agreement, with no validity beyond its own adherents. But in reality, most of us do in fact go around accusing other cultures of "human rights violations," as if they had done something... wrong.
Abstractly and theoretically, we might then rationalize this as an everyday power play, imposing our arbitrary preferences upon a weaker entity. But in reality, most of us do in fact feel that we are adhering to justice rather than to self-interest. After all, slave labor enriches us with very inexpensive goods.
Abstractly and theoretically, we might congratulate ourselves for "progressing" to the understanding that slavery is "undesirable." But in reality, most of us do in fact understand that slavery was always wrong in the past, is still wrong today, and will continue to be wrong in the future, regardless of what society decides. After all, we do not say to an African-American, "You deserve freedom today, but you did not deserve it 150 years ago, prior to our deciding that you do. And you'd better hope that we don't decide differently tomorrow."
Whence relativism, then?
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Dum de dum.
I still contend that the (often religious) argument "all humans have some hard-wired moral rules" is a sham, created to perpetrate the spread of ignorance on controversial topics.
The religious argument is not that humans have "hard-wired" moral rules, but that the Universe has hard-wired moral rules in the same way it has hard-wired physical rules. If this premise is correct, it would be unsurprising for evolution to favor mental and social structures that reflect moral laws, just as evolution favors physical structures that reflect physical laws -- and all imperfectly.
This debate is usually cast in the following terms:
Side A: "Evolutionary psychology explains morality, therefore it's merely an artifact of evolution with no particular significance."
Side B: "Evolutionary psychology can't explain morality, therefore it's greater than an artifact of evolution and bears significance."
Neither of these arguments is valid. The real debate is what it always has been:
Side A: Morality is relative to society
Corollary: Evolution will favor structures that work.
Side B: Morality is universal across society
Corollary: Evolution will favor structures that work.
Therefore, it seems to me that the elucidation of a mechanism for ingraining moral laws has no logical connection to the intrinsic status and origin of those laws. Or, put another way: the evidence is not quite as important as the premises.
In the same way, to reduce morality to a mere consequence of some presumed a priori empathy does not seem any more valid than reducing empathy to a mere consequence of some presumed a priori morality. Therefore, this formulation does not advance the argument either.
We should always question our judgments using our intellect... because that is really what separates us from other mammals.
Could you clarify what you think is the role of intellect in this? It seems to me that intellect can tell us how well our judgments conform to an a priori standard of morality (including, technically, no standard at all -- but then what are you judging?).
So, assuming you believe a judgment can be made, what is the standard upon which the action is judged, and what is the justification for the standard itself?
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Dum de dum.
Yes, under the law, copyrighted material per se isn't considered a service (IANAL either). I was responding to this claim:
[Y]ou cannot say that the company has lost anything physical. That's why the law doesn't consider it stealing.
Many nonphysical things can be considered stolen, because it is possible to steal value without removing something physical from the owner. We can quibble about details, such as the difficulty of assigning an objective value to a nonphysical asset (i.e., the tired old "not every copy is a lost sale!" argument). That's a strawman. We all agree that not every copy is a lost sale. But we also agree that some copies are lost sales. So, despite being unable to precisely quantify the loss, it is unchallenged that the loss is nonzero. If so, it constitutes theft of services.
Therefore, I do claim that the distributing material without the author's permission is morally equivalent to theft of services. It does not substantively differ from jumping a turnstile to ride on the subway, or freeloading a cable TV signal. In both cases, nothing physical has been lost. In both cases, it is theft because I am benefiting from a service, against the will of the service provider, by withholding payment.
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Dum de dum.