Everyone's focussing on ethics, but the use of thought experiments is widespread. The author of this article mentions the Gettier problems in epistemology, I'm currently churning through stuff like Mary the Scientist and pZombies in philosophy of mind.

In ethics I think the problem is more whether the thought experiments are formulated to "lead the witness". I question whether thought experiments like pZombies that are designed to flush out metaphysical truths are actually helpful.

>Before the city council changed the rules, Mission Playground was a public good open to all. After the rules changed, it became in part a privately held commodity, open only to those with the knowledge and means to pay for it.

This is where the analysis starts to fall apart.

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Lets recap how the land was previously allocated by residents:

>If there wasn’t enough space for everyone, some played while others watched from the sidelines. Once one team scored, the losing team would trade places with those who’d been on the sidelines. Sooner or later, everyone got a chance to play.

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So we have some scarce resource and we need a way to allocate it amongst consumers. Not everybody can use it at once, its limited in scope, and people will want to make sure its use is maximized during peak times.

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Imagine a simple player model:

You have some time budget on how long you can just be out there, T, some time on the field K, and a likelihood that you'll be picked to play, S. And utility gained from playing U(K/T).

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So your condition is ensuring that U(K/T) = S(K/T), that the benefit to you from playing always at least has to be equal to the likelihood and time of you actually playing the game. If U(K/T) < S(K/T), then you'll leave and do something else. If U(K/T) >S(K/T), then you'll wait till its your turn.

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The problem with this is if demand for the field increases, there are more people on the sidelines, so the likelihood of getting picked falls, and the time spent on the sideline rises. S shrinks, T grows. So you'd have to somehow magically get way more utility from playing a smaller amount.

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That isn't sustainable.

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A permit simplifies things. Imagine permit costs C, you have some friends F to split the cost with, and so your spending, P, is P = C/F. Since its just you and your friends, there is no waiting on the sidelines, S is 100%, and you spend all the time on the field, so K= T, so now we have

U(K) = C/F. As long as the utility gained from playing soccer at least equals the individual share of the permit costs, you'll get the permit.

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The author is heading in the wrong direction. It was never really a "public" good, it functioned as a private good where its both excludable and rivalrous --, and its allocation was fragile, dependent on some really circumstantial rules that people tacitly agreed to because demand for the field was relatively low, and the cost of abiding by the time was also low. But as demand grows, these rules would break down and we would need a different way to allocate it to people -- a way that is more visible and clear to all.

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>then it seems that what the protestors were fundamentally objecting to was the practice of treating housing as just a commodity. For when housing is treated as just a commodity, residential landlords have a right to exclude tenants from their homes whenever they can no longer afford whatever rent the landlord demands. Writ large, this right of exclusion produces displacement and housing insecurity

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The rest of the article is basically not-answering the basic question:

How do landlords retain price setting power? Do all landlords have this power? Does a landlord in no-where Wisconsin have the same market power as a landlord in The Mission? Why, why not? If landlord surplus is rising, how come other landlords are entering to capture that excess profit?

Why don't the people who are renting buy a home to protect themselves from cost inflation? Can they? Why or why not? Why did that lady rent for years after watching her rent rise? etc.

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You gotta answer those questions before trying to your hand a policy proposal. Because if you get those answers wrong, the solution derived from it would also be wrong.

Some solutions to problems are going to be objectively better than others in their given context. Morality and ethics are problem solving tools, emergent from the evolutionary process.

Does anyone use sauna to better focus on philosophical values like reflection, introspection, intentional acts? My hypothesis is that there`s something about taking sauna that makes one have a different way of thinking, or a different way relating/dealing with ones thoughts. I would argue one does have a "clearer" mind and thoughts that is not so coloured by positive or negative emotions or mindset, which results in a more focused and clearer line of thougts. Which is not so common these days with social media capturing and flooding our attention.
So kinda using sauna as a tool to philosophize on either daily/normal stuff, or more complex philosophical or abstract issues.

Writing a philosopical paper on taking sauna, so any input with personal experiences would be appreciated. (English is not my first language, so sorry for any vague or unclear terms).

Many thanks for the reply. Don't get me wrong, I like philosophical pessimism, and believe there is some merit to the ideas. On the other hand there are criticisms too. For instance, you can't objectively make the claim that there is more suffering in the world than there is happiness (as Schopenhauer seems to suggest). We have no metric to measure these things, even though I am sympathetic to Schopenhauer's ideas.

Needless to say, in usual fashion, I will list my views on the subject at hand. I feel there is some scope here for discussion.

A) Humans are selfish in nature, but also compassionate. If we are to make statements from observations, we must make honest and clear observations.

B) A foetus cannot give consent to be born. I feel this is a fallacy of the whole argument. Only when an individual becomes an adult are they able to assess the issues at hand in a serious fashion. In order for consent to be given, they need to have grown into an adult, and have developed faculties. This requires them to be born.

C) A great deal of suffering can also be caused when an individual isn't given the opportunity to have children.

D) I also feel there is a distinction to be made from advocating people to not have children, and killing people (in the example given, of blowing up earth). Indeed both actions may be deemed callous and are achieving similar ends, it must be noted they are simply not the same thing.

There is no universally true moral statement. There is no way to definitively prove any moral statement. Hence, there is no objective morality.

Everyone has different desires and goals. Some want to maximize pleasure, others may want to be zealous with their religion. The only constructive argument to be made is how best to adhere to their morality.

There's definitely a moral philosophy that is the most compatible with a functioning human society. Like a morality that maximizes growth, pleasure, and health of the society (some form of utilitarianism). It may be necessary for creating the most effective and functional society. But, it's not the only morality that exists and some may desire society to be less functional or they may be completely indifferent to it.

I would argue that the most common morality is actually detrimental to society. The morality of capitalism, being that of the belief in private property, productivity, and profit being inherently good. This isn't capatible with humanity and our communal structures. However, it is the current ruling morality.

I loveeeee me some gentrification

rent control doesn't mean not being able to fix anything, the question was loaded hyperbole from the beginning. So you need to do your own research.

That's an awfully interesting interpretation.

You just wrote all that but didn't really say anything. Besides that you specifically want to exclude things that don't suit your conclusion...

"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

Yes it's an old joke, but relevant. Reasoning is inherently based on analogy and abstraction. I would claim "what ifs" are necessary to form any sort of world view or philosophical position. The fact that context can change our view of the correct answer is interesting but does not defeat the purpose of the question. Arguing about which context is most relevant is just where it starts to get interesting.

Good job not answering the question.

That's one theory anyway. There certain seems to be some pretty clear commonalities of what most people determine as harmful or helpful or what most people regardless of culture find to be a laudible goal.

Even non human animals have some basic intuitions about reciprocity, compassion, and survival. Some answers seem better suited to achieving a generally positive outcome than others.

And of course you could point to some outliers who might find for whatever reason that causing unneeded suffering is somehow ideal for them. But I could also probably find a similar number of people whom when placed in an unlocked cage decide the best way out is to defecate on the floor.

What I mean to say is people say "There is no objective morality" like that is some kind of given, obvious statement. When it's not. It's just as likely to be a coping mechanism for our lack of ability to make optimal ethical determinations due to our biases and flaws.

It's interesting that you can completely separate economics and philosophy. Do you have no interest in thinking about material conditions in our world and how they can affect people in positive or negative ways?

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They are already proven wrong by the successful existence of rent control, public housing, and decommodification of shelter that many other cities have implemented with great success. The top 3 global industries are financial services, construction, and real estate, which all directly feed off the buying and selling of buildings and land. These markets and their monetary interests shape our experience with housing in every conceivable way, but some people can't see past that influence.

There is no objective morality. It doesn't really matter what you say in the dilemmas, neither answer is correct or wrong. However, they're good at determining the fundamental aspects of what you personally think is right

This sub is not very open minded for being into philosophy. Some people can't comprehend any level of decommodifying housing even with real world examples like Austria's long running public housing strategy.

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Sure, but I felt the article made a compelling case for avoiding use of thought experiments as a way of arguing or discovering what's right/wrong. Also, happy cake day!

> First, often people respond to them differently across demographic groups, particularly different cultures, and second; small, irrelevant changes in how thought experiments are worded can change entirely how we respond to them.

These are just known aspects of ethics, not unexpected features only present in thought experiments. If anything, the use of thought experiments (including framing) to expose and analyze these things is useful, not detrimental.

It seems like these objections to thought experiments would only make sense if the response - and ethics in general - is thought to be objective.

No one is forced to leave their community. I’m of course defining force as violent government aggression or threat thereof. But of course that’s precisely the force you WOULD need to prevent gentrification and force people from moving.

It’s morally abhorrent under virtually any philosophical framework.

It’s literally one of the lead in assertions and factually incorrect.

"So often, it’s not just rich people moving in – it’s rich white people" is one of the 3 subheadings that is bold and in red. It stands out more than the text around it. This is done intentionally. Clearly the author places emphasis on this. I am treating their words with the same level of sincerity, seriousness, and thoroughness that they themselves are treating their own words. I quoted the author directly on their assertions and showed that the factual basis for their assertions were demonstrably false. Am I to ignore the words inside the article and instead criticize what the author was trying to say? How am I not being honest by contending directly with the words the author uses?

"...the deleterious consequences of both for race- and class-oppression" is a line in the concluding paragraph. Race and Class are treated rather equally in the article: the word "class" appears 5 times, "White" appears 3 times, "race" appears 1 time. This 5-4 ratio shows that the mentioning of Whites/race isn't some errant tangent. This is what the author believes, this what the author wrote, and this is what I am criticizing.