What I like about that quote is rarely does the person playing it care if it is actually true.

> If it differs wrt the fact that mathematics/logic are indifferent to substantive questions of fact or value, then I'm afraid to say that your model is incorrect on this point.

I'm thinking along these lines: "Perhaps certain conditions can be set and then things will resolve on their own."

You seem to be appealing to flawless mathematical evaluation, whereas I am referring to the behavior of the illogical walking biological neural networks we refer to as humans.

> No doubt, but once again that doesn't contradict what I said

I believe it does to some degree because you are making statements of fact, but you may not be able to care if your facts are actually correct. In a sense, this is the very exploit that my theory depends upon.

> But then you can't resolve a moral problem or dilemma, the topic of this thread.

"Perhaps certain conditions can be set and then things will resolve on their own."

Tangential topics often occur in threads, I thought this approach might be interesting to some.

> When it comes to reasoning or logic, you can't get out more than you put in

"Each agent in the system has onboard cognition"

> if you want to come to a conclusion involving a moral judgment or moral obligation/prohibition, you need premises laying down the necessary moral presuppositions for the conclusion to follow.

"agents are affected by their environment, their knowledge/belief, and the knowledge/belief of other agents in the system. Normalizing beliefs (ideally: a net decrease in delusion, but perhaps not even necessarily) could change things for the better (or the worse, to be fair)."

> And mathematics or logic is of no avail here.

Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not.

> Sure, and none of that is objectionable; but the OP is talking about using mathematics or logic to solve moral problems, and my point is simply that the point where mathematics or logic are useful is after the hard part has already been done, i.e. determining what sort of moral framework or what sorts of moral presuppositions are right or correct.

In the virtual model within your mind that you are examining - I have a virtual model that is different than yours (this is one non-trivial but often overlooked detail that I would be sure to mention front and centre in all discussions).

> Like, if you're a utilitarian you can use simple arithmetic in many situations to decide what course of action maximizes happiness and minimizes unhappiness....

To estimate what course of action...

> ...but the tricky part is determining whether one should be a utilitarian or not in the first place.

There are many tricky parts - some known, some not, some "known" incorrectly, etc.

I think it may be useful for humans to be a bit more experimental in our approaches, it seems to me that we are in a bit of a rut in many places.

> But then you can't conclude with a moral judgment.

Correct.

> Presumably solving moral dilemmas involves being able to make correct moral judgments wrt the dilemma in question, right?

Perhaps certain conditions can be set and then things will resolve on their own. Each agent in the system has onboard cognition, and agents are affected by their environment, their knowledge/belief, and the knowledge/belief of other agents in the system. Normalizing beliefs (ideally: a net decrease in delusion, but perhaps not even necessarily) could change things for the better (or the worse, to be fair).

> But you're needing to make an inference, yes? In order to come to a conclusion as to the correct answer or correct course of action wrt a given moral problem or dilemma?

I'm thinking speculatively, kind of like "I wonder if we did X within this system, what might happen?" Not a risk free undertaking, but that rarely stops humans.

> You definitely don't need to be making an explicit or verbal argument, but if you're engaging in a line of reasoning or making an inference to a conclusion, then the same old and you need to assume a particular moral framework (or at least certain moral/normative premises).

To the degree that this is in fact necessary, that would simply be part of the description as I see it - if something is necessarily true, simply disclose it.

> If you don't assume any value judgment or normative statements, you cannot conclude with any value judgments or normative statements; any argument that did the latter without doing the former would necessarily be deductively invalid.

Right, don't do that either. Pure descriptive, zero prescriptive.

> And it has nothing to do with the manner of your presentation, "steel-mannered" or otherwise you still run afoul of Hume's law if you attempt to conclude an argument with normative or morally evaluative language if you did not include any among your premises.

And if you aren't making an argument?

> You can only "solve" moral problems with logic or mathematics once you've already assumed a particular moral philosophy or ethical framework- consequentialism, for instance.

What if you merely present all of the valid options in a steel-manned manner, making no presumptions or epistemically unsound assertions along the way?

> Nothing can be solved WITHOUT logic and probability!

Disagree - heuristics can solve many issues, and there is substantial evidence that heuristics do not run on (actual, flawless) logic.

> logic and probability are basic elements of all actions and all analytics (of action).

So too with heuristics!

> Kants Imperatives gives you everything you need. The hypothetic gives you the logic and the categoric gives you the clear goal you need to attend.

Is this necessarily an evidence-based True Fact, or might it be merely a heuristic powered belief?

> So its up to us and our "actual goals and logics" to set the moral standards. and so its up to us how many we safe or if we dont safe anybody and how we safe them. we dont have the the duty, only if we give us the duty!

What if people disagree with other people's "logic" and conclusions?

> You can't solve moral problems with math. You can only express your moral beliefs in symbolic forms and manipulate them with the tools of mathematics

I agree you can't guarantee a solution, or create a solution that solves them directly, but a math based solution could cause belief formation that is sufficient to alter human behavior enough to (at least substantially) solve the problem, could it not?

On one hand, this is kinda "cheating"....but on the other hand, ignoring how reality actually works isn't flawless either.

> Agree above quote provides no actual reason for low quality assertion though.

Odd that it has 8 upvotes, in a philosophy forum.

> Someone says "this idea is incorrect" is reference to an idea that has been thoroughly debunked in any number of ways....

Can you link to even one thorough debunking of the specific ideas promoted in this piece?

> ... and you claim they're "screaming Nazi and running away." You blatantly mischaracterize what was said.

Sir, are you "having a laugh" with us today? The text of /u/amazin_raisin99's comment (as it appears on my screen) is this:

> > > As Salmieri notes in his response, throughout her piece Cleary takes it for granted that Rand’s views are wrong and expects that refuting them should be straightforward. Notably, she never offers any attempted refutations of Rand’s actual positions. > > If that doesn't sum up the entire intellectual/political discourse in current year then I don't know what does. People scream Nazi and run away from real discussion as fast as they can.

There is no mention at all of "screaming Nazi and running away". And then on top of it, you say "You blatantly mischaracterize what was said", when as far as I can tell, you are actually the one who has done that, which would make you not only wrong, but backwards.

Could you possibly shed some light on what is going on here today? Maybe I've somehow completely missed your point (and apologies if I have.....6 upvotes vs 1 is suggestive that I may have, but then it may also be suggestive of something else), but to me it is extremely confusing.

> How come the only experts that defend Rand are associated with the Ayn Rand Institute or are experts in an unrelated field?

Can you explain how you went about determining that this proposition is actually true? Are you running an automated bot of some sort that crawls the internet looking for people defending Rand? If not, what methodology did you use?

And if you have no such methodology (and are therefore running on heuristics/faith perceived as facts), does it not seem a little ironic that you are criticizing the quality of other people's beliefs/cognitive abilities?

> An article defending Rand written by a director of the Ayn Rand Institute, posted on a site that explicitly endorses and pushes Rand's philosophy to the exclusion of others. > > Very low-quality post.

Out of curiosity: are you implying that there is a cause and effect relationship in play here? That because of "An article defending Rand written by a director of the Ayn Rand Institute...", therefore it logically and necessarily follows that "it is a very low-quality post"?

> Oh, Randians whining that they're not taken seriously? Shocking.

The author's prescience is fairly impressive:

>> Skye Cleary is a philosophy professor who opened a recent piece at Aeon with this remark: “Philosophers love to hate Ayn Rand. It’s trendy to scoff at any mention of her.” I know what she means. As a former philosophy professor who respects and agrees with Ayn Rand’s philosophy, I’ve had the experience of witnessing this scoffing on more than a few occasions.

> But in fact, supposing that an objective reality exists, it has to go through the filters of our perception to be perceived, and language to be expressed in concepts and theories.

In turn generating more objective reality, except this kind is directly derived from subjective experience making a sort of hybrid reality end product.

> What would the natural state of humanity be?

Delusion, unrealized.

Out of curiosity, do you happen to keep a database of reviewed authors and works, and maybe even a cross reference of various topics that have been covered across books and authors?

remindme! 8 hours

This is rather amazing!

How many people are in your organization?

Do you keep in touch with any of the people you interview (or, have that option perhaps, say if you had followup questions for them)?

> No… but reducing Chinese philosophy’s differences from the West to a consequence of tilling rice paddies is pretty bad…no?

It is, so why are you doing it?

> but damn if this doesn’t smack of it, nonetheless.

I recommend you fix your terrible perception then.

> I don’t even think he’s intending racism; he’s probably just so enamored with the sense of the exotic that he is absent-mindedly and inaccurately placing cause and effect relationships therein.

Of course: what seems to be true is "probably" true.

remindme! 8 hours

Hahaha.....I'm a bit of an odd duck, I wouldn't take me too seriously!

FWIW, I'm gonna RES tag you so to avoid being a jerk if we should ever cross paths again.

> I’m amazed that someone would think personal beliefs, tied in with the internet wouldn’t have an impact on how people act.

Me too, and yet here we are. > > > > That person flat out said no to you and that is such a blind and ignorant viewpoint.

Can you quote that text, I don't recall seeing it?

> > > > This sub is looking like Ben Shapiro wannabes.

The sickest of burns, how did you come up with something so novel?

Speaking of truth: it may sound like opportunism, but is it actually?

I'm not saying so much as I am demonstrating how a person behaves when a point is raised that conflicts with their presentation of reality. In this case, you dodged the question - in my experience there are < 10 standard behaviors, and this is one of them.

> I'm not much into metaphysics but complex social constructs with multiple meanings don't do well.

Agree, but pretending this dimension of reality does not exist, or references to it are "woo woo" doesn't seem like a good approach.

> Billiard balls and components that are engineered to replicate exactly to the tested prototype do great.

Physical reality and metaphysical reality run very differently, especially when it comes to causality. Physical reality is extremely simple, and scientism0oriented folks tend to assume the same is true of metaphysical causality, if the notion is even on their radar.