In philosophy class we discussed Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. We even discussed Buddha and Jesus Christ. There was also Max Weber. Though Weber was a sociologist there was clearly a train of philosophy in his otherwise socially scientific thoughts. Therefor I shall explain my understanding on government based on my rudimentary understanding of the philosophy of Max Weber, sociologist philosopher.

As much as we like to point the finger at leadership we need them in the purest form of irony.

During times of feast we celebrate and times of famine we lament. But like the yin yang we have thise lamenting the leadership in feast and celebrating in famine.

However, leadership keeps people together. Either as a rallying force for the way or a enemy to band against. For the latter the people will banded against those against the greater good. A necesssry but still evil culling, which is the reason for the leadership.

This leadership has culminated in our society into what we call government. We as people cannot see past our immediate needs to outside. The idea of government is a group of elites that can see the big picture. Even so they have their own interests and people can really tell when someone is on the take. They rally against that corruption respresented by that corrupt figure. The corruption succeeds or it fails but otherwise people would not have the grand goals of supporting the good, benefitting from the corrupt, or fighting the bad. Their goals would be hunter gather and hunt food. That lifestyle is the most harmless and pure to society. It is clean mountain water not tap, but most would die without tap.

That is why we are the dominant species on the planet. We have infrastructure that runs deep. If weren't for the leadership and the governments we would not even be living as good as those that live off the grid, because they have access to modern technologies that make their life possible. We would still be in caves hunting and gathering with a population comparable to any other predator like a bear with a slight advantage because of our thumbs.

Max Weber described government as the monopoly of force. When the individual is allowed his own force no society can emerge from that. He would fight community for his own well being and food. Take the force from him and people can work together. Somebody has to occupy that spot or we would still be stuck in a cave.

LOL!

>"For someone who complains about me talking about semantics, you sure do like to complain about semantics a whole lot."

From my side it's not really a question of semantics since semantics concerns the meaning of the words.

>"I can rephrase that easily to fix it. Here is the fixed second premise, ""Should", "moral right," and "moral wrong" are imaginary (premise)" (moral right and moral wrong, in this case, are defined as the usage of right and wrong associated not with accuracy or direction, but the definitions used in moral philosophy)."

You haven't fixed it, you've done this:

1. Star Wars is generally considered by definition (in available dictionaries), by the general populace, and by pop culture experts to be about "aliens", "robots", and "an omnipresent psychic force" (premise)

2. "Aliens", "R2-D2" and "The Force" are imaginary (premise) (R2-D2 and The Force, in this case, are defined as the usage of robots and omnipresent psychic force associated not with minesweepers or parapsychology, but the definitions used in pop culture).

3. Therefore, Star Wars as it is defined and understood (by the general populace) is about imaginary things (conclusion)"

It works in general because it's Star Wars but it doesn't hold up when it's scifi in general and you have advanced technology in the first premise and rayguns and perpetual motion machines in the second premise so you can conclude scifi is about nothing real (implying scifi itself isn't real).

>"Because what you've said about definitions is incoherent and unsupported. I literally had no idea how to respond to it because when you talked about definitions, you didn't make an actual logical argument. I cannot critique an argument that has not been made."

You couldn't grasp the obvious implication of these fifteen words? The definition for the Sun and the stars used to include "They orbit the Earth."

>"Yes, and in this specific conversation we are having an arguments. Arguments have reasons. When I say I have no reason, I mean you have provided no reasons, and thus your argument is logically unsound."

Again, you're making that same dance.

I could say "The Moon orbits the Earth and the Earth orbits the Sun hence the Moon orbits the Sun." and you could go "I don't agree and I see no reason to agree with you." or "I have no reason to believe that, if I did it would provide proof in favour of its reality or its factualness or accurateness." without even reading my argument through.

Let me put it this way: I don't care about your agreeing with what orbits what or you believing what orbits what. I don't mind you questioning my logic when I say "X orbits Y." but what you're doing is not understanding (or perhaps pretending to not understand) that definitions come out of books written by us humans for the sake of talking about things, the universe did not write those books for us humans describing its inner workings for us to eventually decipher.

In other words, imagine if Galileo had said "The books say the Sun orbits the Earth so no reason to look in that telescope for myself or look at why the math doesn't add up, smarter people than me would have done better in the past and if they couldn't it will take the smart people of the distant future to solve it."?

>"Stop with this silly "should is a myth" semantics."

It's not semantics. Semantics is about meaning e.g. "What do we mean by the word dog?", not reality/fiction e.g. "Are dogs fictional?" is not a question about semantics. "Should" is a fiction.

>"I'm not talking about that right now, so stop arguing with me about random stuff I haven't even brought up."

It's not random. You're the one bringing those myths up e.g. that I "have to" do X in order to fulfill Y of making a logical argument which is ironic since "imperatives" are not logical. :-)

You can compress income so no one is living like an animal and also have the talented better off. Look at the Nordic model.

> Tyranny of the majority

As opposed to literally every other system which gives power to a smaller handful.

>In more properly functioning democracies inequality isn't so egregious.

I mean, most democracies have fairly high levels of inequality, and to the extent you seem to mean "free society" by "democracy" rather than "tyranny of the majority", economic inequality seems baked in - people are not equal, so any system that leaves people with a fair amount of economic freedom is going to end up reflecting that.

> I notice almost all criticisms of democracy are explained by a lack of actual democracy, which is encouraging as a democracy enthusiast.

Or you are no true scotsmanning it.

This article seems incomplete. It does not reference us to any instances of anyone using the "Little Gods" argument except for Sam Harris, and in that case there's no indication of where specifically Harris uses it. It's unclear which versions of free will this argument is valid against. It's not stated how this argument relates to other arguments against free will, or what the counter-arguments might be. It's not even clear where the term "Little Gods Argument" comes from – is it just an invention of the author of this piece, or is it a categorization of arguments that was advanced by some prior work? The overall categorization seems very interesting, but there's nothing in this article that suggests that we're looking at anything more than a single poorly constructed argument vaguely alluded to once by Sam Harris.

I got bored...

1. People exist (premise)
2. People can intentionally harm eachother (premise)
3. Therefore, intentional harming of others exists (conclusion)

​

1. People exist (premise)
2. People can intentionally protect eachother (premise)
3. Therefore, intentional protection of others exists (conclusion)

​

1. Intentional protection of others exists (premise)

2. Benevolence (behaviour exhibiting a kind/charitable/altruistic attitude, good will, wishing others well) exists (premise)

3. Benevolently protecting others is heroism (premise)

4. Therefore, heroism exists (conclusion)

​

1. Intentional harming of others exists (premise)

2. Malevolence (behaviour exhibiting a hostile/spiteful attitude, ill will, wishing ill on others) exists (premise)

3. Malevolently harming of others is villainy (premise)

4. Therefore, villainy exists (conclusion)

​

1. A person can recognize heroism (premise)

2. A person can recognize villainy (premise)

3. A person can recognize the distinction between heroism and villainy (premise)

4. A person's recognition of the distinction between heroism and villainy and choosing to be heroic (or even try to) is that person's morality (premise)

5. Therefore, morality (personal morality) exists (conclusion)

​

1. A person can recognize heroism (premise)

2. A person can recognize villainy (premise)

3. A person can recognize the distinction between heroism and villainy (premise)

4. A person's recognition of the distinction between heroism and villainy and choosing to be villainous (or even try to) is that person's immorality (premise)

5. Therefore, immorality (personal immorality) exists (conclusion)

​

1. Even if no people exist in the past or present, people will exist in the future (premise)

2. Even if no people exist in the past or present, people will be able to harm eachother in the future (premise)

3. Even if no people exist in the past or present, benevolence and malevolence will exist in the future (premise)

4. Therefore, even if no people existed in the past or present, heroism and villainy will exist in the future (conclusion)

​

1. Even if no people exist in the past or present, heroism and villainy will exist in the future (premise)

2. Even if no people exist in the past or present, people will be able to recognize the distinction between heroism and villainy and choose to be one or the other (or even try to) (premise)

3. Therefore, even if no people exist in the past or present, personal morality and personal immorality will exist in the future (conclusion)

​

1. A person's recognition of the distinction between heroism and villainy and choosing to be heroic (or even try to) is that person's morality (personal morality) (premise)

2. Even if no people exist in the past or present, heroism and villainy will exist in the future (premise)

3. Even if no people exist in the present, there is nothing different about the present that would prevent them from being heroic or being villainous as they will in the future (premise)

4. Even if no people exist in the present, there is nothing different about the present that would prevent their recognition of the distinction between heroism and villainy and choosing to be heroic (or even try to) (premise)

5. Therefore, morality (abstract morality) exists in all past, present and future of this universe whether people (and their personal morality) exist or not (conclusion)

​

1. An abstract thing is not bound in time or to conditions* (premise)

2. People can exist at some point in time (premise)

3. Heroism and villainy can exist because people can exist (premise)

4. Personal morality can exist because heroism and villany can exist (premise)

5. Abstract morality exists because personal morality can exist (premise)

6. Therefore, abstract morality exists across all time (and arguably even beyond) (conclusion)

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[removed]

>"Leap of logic."

No, it seems you're confusing logic with what people have written in dictionaries. To which I keep saying this: Something used to be written in dictionaries about the Sun and the stars was "They orbit the Earth."

>"You need to prove"

Objection. I never "need" to do anything, I could have died in the womb or all organic life could have died out before there were even dinosaurs. "Needing/need/necessity" is a myth.

>"that "benevolence is good" or, "benevolently protecting others is good". Benevolence's definition does not equal good's definition, and so to prove that benevolent action is good (in this case, benevolent protection), you need to provide other premises to prove that. Because you are implementing a logic chain (as is common in arguments), the fact that this premise is logically unsound means that your entire argument (after this premise) is unsound. So, if you want to correct your argument, you need to fix this issue first, but even though this damns your argument already I will provide some more criticisms below."

All of this is nothing I didn't already know. Except the last part about fixing this issue, I do not at this point recognize that there is an issue to fix.

Logically prove to me (with numbers, premises and conclusions) that (just pulling an example out of a hat here) a firefighter choosing to sacrifice their life to save a complete stranger from a burning building is not being good (i.e. opposite of being evil).

Or, if you prefer, logically prove to me that a man ("legally" sane i.e. not hallucinating that he's saving the world from alien invasion through this) chaining a complete stranger up in a building he's just lit on fire so the stranger will burn to death is not being evil.

Because if you can't do either, then what does my "logical leap" (as you call it, incorrectly if you ask me) conflict with? Other people's inconclusive philosophical theories? Other people's unproven "personal definition" of what good and evil are, i.e. the Pope has one based on religious dogma?

Or perhaps you already have the proof as perhaps you have a dictionary that can reveal unto us the "Definitive Definition Of What Good And Evil Are" like Deep Thought was asked to reveal The Ultimate Answer and The Ultimate Question in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy?

>"Same issue with above. This is unsupported. Just because harming exists, and malevolence exists, does not mean malevolent harm is evil. This needs to be proven with further evidence, reasons, or premises or else it also causes your argument to be unsound and illogical."

Same issue as above. I do not at this point recognize that it is unsupported.

If I could just stomp babies to death in front of their weeping mothers because I have a gun and they don't and no one on the planet called this "evil"... because "Well, you know, our academics have never figured out what this thing that the word evil would stand for would actually be. In ancient Greece some scholars argued that it refers to whatever Zeus and the pantheon frowned upon while others argued that Zeus and the pantheon would frown upon it because it would be a flaw in an otherwise perfect universe. And some argue that it refers to something devoid of moral value as blablabla.", well... that is absurd.

That is the way I understand this (and I may be wrong here), that if you can't logically prove the "stranger in a burning building" thing to be morally neutral then the above is exactly what you're doing, you're holding up philosophy papers and dictionary excerpts written by others and proclaiming that no one simply recognized a basic 'lack of neutrality' and named it "good and evil", no, there "must" be this grand all-encompassing solution so that discovering it will ALSO make all the philosophical papers and dictionaries stop conflicting on the subject. Again, the "Definitive Definition Of What Good And Evil Are"... like Deep Thought was asked to reveal The Ultimate Answer and The Ultimate Question.

That would seem to me philosophers have their concepts of "good and evil" on such a tall pedestal that philosophy itself is literally parody of seeking the truth.

>"I do not accept these premises. Different cultures all around the world recognize the existence of evil and good."

Cultures are irrelevant.

>"However, what they call evil, and what they call good, is drastically different."

Which is one of the larger parts of how cultures are irrelevant. I don't care what the Pope calls good or evil anymore than what some stoned medicine man in the deepest part of anywhere calls good or evil since it's irrelevant. Say they both say homosexuality is evil, I don't give a flying *** since homosexuality is not malevolent causing of harm hence I don't consider gays and lesbians evil or immoral. A rapist or pedophile, on the other hand... yeah, I don't care what the Pope or the medicine man or any human of any culture you can bring to the table has to say about that either.

>"In many cases, say some ancient pagan cultures (lets just say the Asatru norse, in this case) would say that malevolent harm can be good (and not evil) if its done in the service of a God, or in an act of revenge."

Exactly, which is how they're wrong. That is not how morality works. Being in the service of a fictional "deity" or revenge is not benevolent protection of others hence it would not (even partially) cancel out the malevolent harm.

>"Even Christian witch hunts, which are malevolent cause of harm, would not be recognized as evil, and this witch hunts have continued in Africa into modern times. If we are using your definitions of good and evil, then it is actually completely incorrect to say that people can recognize good and evil."

You're completely misreading (or intentionally twisting) the point: Yes, they could recognize that burning a person alive at the stake would normally be evil, they just didn't believe it was in this case since they believed God made it not be evil in this case. If the "witches" were doing the burning of the Christians, you think the neighboring Christians would shrug and go "Oh well, God's will be done. Hope they don't come for me tomorrow. Time to milk the cows."? I do findeth that unlikely.

>"Not necessarily."

You're using that word again. Also, you're misunderstanding the point. Wind the clock back to before we exist and we will exist in the future. Since I said "in the past or present". Which does not include "in our future" (heat death etc).

So the articles criticizing the soundness of analytic philsophers arguments

You are missing the heart of this imho. You should read Planck’s ‘Philosophy of Physics’. It’s an excellent perspective on the relationship between known and unknown and how science cannot explain everything.

For instance, explain consciousness to me……

You can’t. And yet we know consciousness is a thing.

Plus, spirituality, philosophy, metaphysics, esoteric thought and even religion have bridged important gaps that led to greater scientific progress for humankind. This is fairly well acknowledged by academics. So essentially we wouldn’t be where we are today without this other, rich human thought.

Humans love the black and white even though the universe is actually grey and about balance.

Since it's fundamental to a free society, It is (in my view) the main virtue.

> Musk

In more properly functioning democracies inequality isn't so egregious. I notice almost all criticisms of democracy are explained by a lack of actual democracy, which is encouraging as a democracy enthusiast.

Thank you for the review and I'll check out the literature you cited!

I argue in the piece that democracy lacks inherent moral and epistemic value. I'll argue for its instrumental value in a later piece though. It lacks moral value since democratic decisions may stray from ethical principles of the social contract (tyranny of the majority) and it lacks epistemic authority since there are certain systemic biases of the electorate (anti-market, identitarian biases, etc.) that inhibit any resulting wisdom of crowds. Especially as laws require more complexity to deal with modern issues.

On the first point, I argue that certain decisions would be better handled through expert-led agencies and courts. They already perform this role in some regard. For example, courts have been enforcing social rights in the face of democratic legislation, but not economic rights.

On the second point, I mean reason as publicly recognized justifications. The SEP on Public Reason captures my view fairly well.

If you have any more reading recommendations, I'd be happy to review them and address their arguments in later posts.

[removed]

>Based on how I use means vs. ends for instance, I would say that economic development, higher literacy, better health outcomes, and robust human rights protections are inherently good.

Nothing is inherently good. Those things are all things that tend to be good for modern urbanized centers. To the extent that "economic development" has meant shifting from primary and secondary economic activities to tertiary ones, it has been deveststing to many rural areas and small towns. Literacy is of course very important in a knowledge-based economy, which is good, if you happen to be in a position to thrive in such an economy. "Better health outcomes" sounds like it might be one of those things you could get universal agreement on, but after watching a parent die of Alzheimer's at 80, you might wonder if helping them avoid a heart attack at 75 was really such a good idea. And of course, by "robust human rights protections" I assume you include a variety of policies opposed by solid majorities of those living outside major metropolitan areas.

It's pretty clear from this passage in the middle:

>As the United States sought to cement its newfound dominance in the world, counterposed against that of the Soviet sphere of influence, it entered a period of rigorous political control of the academy. The epithet usually applied to this era of persecution and paranoia is “McCarthyism,” but the phenomenon is wider than the term suggests. The persecution extended well beyond McCarthy’s notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The chief motor of the surveillance and persecution was, in fact, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Both Carnap and Reichenbach were subjected to surveillance and harassment from the FBI. Since the FBI regularly intercepted letters, anyone could be drawn into its realm of suspicion (they had got onto Carnap by reading the correspondence of another Vienna Circle member, Philipp Frank). Mere association with the whiff of Communist ideas or activity could be enough to prompt warranted anxiety.

>The climate of fear operated according to a very simple logic. Academics who were suspected of being Communists were called before HUAC, or before various associated committees (the Rapp-Coudert Committee in New York, the Canwell Committee in Washington State). They were called as witnesses, but effectively they were defendants. If they were found guilty, either because they admitted to being or having been Communists, or by remaining silent, then dismissal followed, by means of the following straightforward argument, schematized by Victor Lowe in the pages of the Journal of Philosophy:

>>1) Professor X is a Communist.

>>2) A Communist has no respect for freedom of inquiry or for objectivity in teaching; to put it positively, he indoctrinates for the party line and the Soviet dictatorship.

>>Therefore 3) X is not fit to be a professor.

>In other words, the professor’s actual political views need not be examined, nor their teaching record.

>One’s religious, artistic, or personal values can’t have any political authority over others who don’t share those values. What has political authority is reason, more specifically, those principles which can’t be reasonably rejected. Those are our moral principles, which any legitimate political and legal institution needs to be based on.

This just sounds like you lack self-awareness of your own biases. Because all moral principles are at base personal preferences. Politics is always about whose values get to be imposed on everyone and justified as "reasonable". Religion only fell out of favor as a good source of such values because society changed to quickly to keep up, and so it lost too many adherents to make its influence stick.

This is a genuine woosh bro. The mind/matter gap has always been a distinct part of western philosophy. The best we have are “compromises” that may or may not be logically sound, like Kant’s phenomenal world. But even in the 1700s, David Hume, a SCOTTISH EMPIRICIST (those most concerned with evidence), developed the idea that all observations are simply related in time, and it’s the human psychological urge to organize that gives any correlation at all. Otherwise, you’re left with a dogmatic, unchanging interpretation of science, not an actual scientific method based on falsifiability and reinterpretation. The best we have for “truth” is universal assent, as in most people agree.

>You're missing the inherent virtue of democracy: it provides the maximum dispersion of power throughout a population, which matters because in a free society everyone should have an equal voice, virtually by definition.

Is this its main virtue, though? Or is it just that it gives people desperate for change a non-violent means of pursuing it, and people hungry for power a non-violent way of seeking it? Because I don't think high levels of social power equality is particularly characteristic of most democracies. Elon Musk has a wee bit more power than, say, your average janitor, despite living in a democracy.

r/askphilosophy is for questions. I mean, you can ask here as well but your question is more likely to be seen there and since it's the purpose of the sub you're more likely to get better and more detailed answers over there.

The post seems to presume that morality is subjective. If morality is objective, a reviewer could censor false normative statements as well. While epistemically knowing whether certain moral statements are true or false may be difficult, it is not always difficult. I don't see why censoring, for example, "cannibalism is good" should be a tough call.

>Except for the problem with the second premise.

For someone who complains about me talking about semantics, you sure do like to complain about semantics a whole lot. I can rephrase that easily to fix it. Here is the fixed second premise, ""Should", "moral right," and "moral wrong" are imaginary (premise)" (moral right and moral wrong, in this case, are defined as the usage of right and wrong associated not with accuracy or direction, but the definitions used in moral philosophy).

>You're just going to willfully ignore what I've said about definitions, huh?

Because what you've said about definitions is incoherent and unsupported. I literally had no idea how to respond to it because when you talked about definitions, you didn't make an actual logical argument. I cannot critique an argument that has not been made.

>No, I am simply having a conversation

Yes, and in this specific conversation we are having an arguments. Arguments have reasons. When I say I have no reason, I mean you have provided no reasons, and thus your argument is logically unsound. That is what that means. Stop with this silly "should is a myth" semantics. I'm not talking about that right now, so stop arguing with me about random stuff I haven't even brought up.

I’ll have to look up GE Moore. Thanks!!