Do you ever review your values?

[JimC]

Age has ossified any ability I once may have had to review anything...

[Ronja]

There is an ethical dilemma which asks, if there are five patients in an emergency room, and you can save four of them by sacrificing the fifth for his organs, would that be moral? I'm like, "K. Got the scalpel. Let's go, time's a wasting."

If so, I imagine you'd be brilliant in a crisis, actually.

Fuck. What does that say about me?

If it says something (specific), it would say the same about me, because that was my very first thought, before I stopped to think. Thankfully, the ER organ donation scenario is not realistic due to blood types, tissue types and whatnot - but the lifeboat scenario is more so. If a lifeboat is filled to capacity, and a couple of new people were trying to climb in from shark-infested waters, should they be helped in, even though that will risk all the others, too, if the weather gets even a bit stormy, or should they be beaten back?

Extending on the dilemma ... If the person you wanted to sacrifice to save the others was a loved one of mine: apophenia

If the the fifth was a loved one of yours, would you still be in there with your scalpel?

Depends very much on a) the loved one's condition and b) if the loved one has ever expressed feelings about such a situation. I for one carry an organ donor card and have written a living will that states very clearly that if my brain is severely damaged, I do not want to live, and that in such a situation I want whatever parts of my body that can be used to be used for the good of other people. And I have told this to my family and friends several times, just to be sure that they know, if something would happen to MiM, too.

But no scalpel work for me, if any of the five was a loved one. Unless absolutely unavoidable (no other person available with suitable training).

[charlou]

There is an ethical dilemma which asks, if there are five patients in an emergency room, and you can save four of them by sacrificing the fifth for his organs, would that be moral? I'm like, "K. Got the scalpel. Let's go, time's a wasting."

If so, I imagine you'd be brilliant in a crisis, actually.

Fuck. What does that say about me?

If it says something (specific), it would say the same about me, because that was my very first thought, before I stopped to think. Thankfully, the ER organ donation scenario is not realistic due to blood types, tissue types and whatnot - but the lifeboat scenario is more so. If a lifeboat is filled to capacity, and a couple of new people were trying to climb in from shark-infested waters, should they be helped in, even though that will risk all the others, too, if the weather gets even a bit stormy, or should they be beaten back?

Extending on the dilemma ... If the person you wanted to sacrifice to save the others was a loved one of mine: apophenia

If the the fifth was a loved one of yours, would you still be in there with your scalpel?

Depends very much on a) the loved one's condition and b) if the loved one has ever expressed feelings about such a situation. I for one carry an organ donor card and have written a living will that states very clearly that if my brain is severely damaged, I do not want to live, and that in such a situation I want whatever parts of my body that can be used to be used for the good of other people. And I have told this to my family and friends several times, just to be sure that they know, if something would happen to MiM, too.

But no scalpel work for me, if any of the five was a loved one. Unless absolutely unavoidable (no other person available with suitable training).

Both good points.

On the first, I assumed by apophenia's use of "can" that the types would be matching (far-fetched as that may be). The lifeboat scenario is somehow more difficult, in that the people both on the boat and in the water are all presumably healthy and it's presumably just luck that some are relatively safe, while some are not ... Hypotheticals aside, I'd find it more difficult to physically proceed to beat someone off in the lifeboat situation, than to make a purely objective medical decision based on each person's relative chance of survivial. If I had a child or children with me in the lifeboat, though, I'd have less problem beating off competition, for survival.

On the second, I'd definitely take that into account in my own assessment of what's the right thing to do, but only if the prognosis for my loved one were death, either way. I'd made the mistake of making assumptions about apophenia's scenario wrt the status of the fifth patient, ie that all the patients had an equal chance of survival or death, and that number five was selected arbitrarily, pretty much as the scenario was presented, with no details.

*she says, knowing full well that the reality of such situations would likely be rather different, no matter how good she imagines her imagination to be*

[hiyymer]

In sum, I think there's this large mythos that we are rational creatures, and that we act by reasoning from intellectually held positions. The truth, appears, quite the reverse of this, and this is but a fairy tale we tell ourselves so that we can feel good, and sleep peacefully at night.

I think I mentioned before. "Descartes Error" by Antonio Damasio deals with this exact question. And it's great reading if you have even a little bit of a scientific mindset. I would put it at the top of your reading list. Have you ever considered that the practice of Philosophy is in the fairy tale realm, exactly because we do not have conscious reasons for our actions. The only way to make progress rationally is to do what science does. Posit a reality which exists entirely independent of our experience.

[Atheist-Lite]

Science today is a exercise in corporate or individual profit taking. It doesn't seek the truth unless it happens to correspond with some percieved notion of monetary value.

[charlou]

The only way to make progress rationally is to do what science does. Posit a reality which exists entirely independent of our experience.

I agree, and would add that our experience may coincide with reality, but that's irrelevant to the point here because experience alone is where we're coming from ... and I'd add that testing and confirming or falsifying such posited ideas in an ongoing effort to ascertain reality is an important part of rational progression.

[hiyymer]

The only way to make progress rationally is to do what science does. Posit a reality which exists entirely independent of our experience.

I agree, and would add that our experience may coincide with reality, but that's irrelevant to the point here because experience alone is where we're coming from ... and I'd add that testing and confirming or falsifying such posited ideas in an ongoing effort to ascertain reality is an important part of rational progression.

Important to you.

[apophenia]

In sum, I think there's this large mythos that we are rational creatures, and that we act by reasoning from intellectually held positions. The truth, appears, quite the reverse of this, and this is but a fairy tale we tell ourselves so that we can feel good, and sleep peacefully at night.

I think I mentioned before. "Descartes Error" by Antonio Damasio deals with this exact question. And it's great reading if you have even a little bit of a scientific mindset. I would put it at the top of your reading list. Have you ever considered that the practice of Philosophy is in the fairy tale realm, exactly because we do not have conscious reasons for our actions. The only way to make progress rationally is to do what science does. Posit a reality which exists entirely independent of our experience.

Have I considered whether philosophy lies in that region, indeed I have. And the answer is neither yes or no. In my opinion, truth is the object of social discourses. It is not the posession of individuals, but of social processes. This is not to say that some social processes aren't more efficient at generating some kinds of truth than others (science is better at generating knowledge of efficient causes, mathematics, logic and philosophy are more efficient at generating another kind of truth [though sometimes the two cross, as in computational mathematics and I'm blanking on the corresponding fields in biology and physics]). Philosophy as a science has historically evidenced a dialectical character, in which yesterdays ideas are undermined by today's counter-arguments, which yield tomorrow's synthesis -- and this many footed dragon lumbers forward, only pausing for people to change chairs in this dance. What people don't realize is that science follows much the same model (and while Kuhn is important here, that's not my object). The early geocentric model was vastly refined by Arab astronomers, to be replaced by a radically different, yet even more accurate model, that of Tycho Brahe; that then was contrasted with Copernicus' heliocentric model, in spite of its making worse predictions than the best geocentric models; it wasn't until the invention of the telescope enabled Galileo to make observations which cast strong doubt on geocentrism did heliocentrism come into its own, yet they still modeled the movement of the planets on that of perfect spheres; it wasn't until Kepler analyzed the data that the elliptical nature of the orbits was known; and then, finally Newton came along with his theory of gravity which essentially replaced all theories that went before it; only to be himself replaced by Einstein's model which again is radically different from that which came before; and we still don't have a quantum level understanding of gravitational effects, and theories attempting to unify physics YET AGAIN radically turn the model upside down, replacing QEF with string theory, and postulating 10 or even 26 dimensions, not our pedestrian 4. I think that Joe Sixpack has a view of science as one of steady progress, with our picture of reality slowly but steadily becoming sharper, and more accurate. The truth is science moves forward more through revolution than it does peaceful change.
(Eh. Maybe my point was rather Kuhnian after all. )


Anyway, you'd asked about philosophy, and I got side-tracked by the science. I'll return to the philosophy question if you like. But just a quick note. I won't claim to understand the meaning of the term 'analytic philosophy' --the most significant philosophic movement of the 20th century -- but it appears to have been shaped by Wittgenstein's concerns that a) many philosophical problems are not philosophical problems at all, but rather confusions of language, and b) that philosophical progress is best ensured by deep, structured analysis, contra the great system builders of the 18th and 19th centuries. So in a sense, philosophy is not unaware of these issues, even if one might take issue with the nature of their response. Finally, I'll point out something many who fall for the mythologies of scientism and science as a truthing totalizer neglect: science depends critically on philosophy, math and logic for such things as theories of justification, theories of discourse, philosophy of science, probability theory, logic and a whole host of other things.

(ps. I'll look into the Damasio book; it sounds right up my alley.)

[charlou]

The only way to make progress rationally is to do what science does. Posit a reality which exists entirely independent of our experience.

I agree, and would add that our experience may coincide with reality, but that's irrelevant to the point here because experience alone is where we're coming from ... and I'd add that testing and confirming or falsifying such posited ideas in an ongoing effort to ascertain reality is an important part of rational progression.

Important to you.

Not to you, the person who said "the only way" ?

[apophenia]

Oh, there's a fine distinction to be made here, and that is that science does not describe "reality", it's not even clear that it describes "experience", but if anything that would be it. (Theories of pragmatism and reliabilism make strong counter-arguments that science isn't what is true, rather science is what works (and constructivist and coherentist conceptions of truth are just over the horizon, waiting with their steely knives).) Since going there would be a massive digression on an already serious digression, I suggest we not go there. But it's more or less agreed in both philosophy and science, afaik, that reality qua reality is unknowable.

“Thus i had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith”
— Immanuel kant, Critique Of Practical Reason (Bxxxi)

[hiyymer]

The only way to make progress rationally is to do what science does. Posit a reality which exists entirely independent of our experience.

I agree, and would add that our experience may coincide with reality, but that's irrelevant to the point here because experience alone is where we're coming from ... and I'd add that testing and confirming or falsifying such posited ideas in an ongoing effort to ascertain reality is an important part of rational progression.

Important to you.

Not to you, the person who said "the only way" ?

It's the only way is an attempt at a rational assertion. If x then y. "Important" is a normative word implying a need for action. I want y so I will x. It's subjective.

[hiyymer]

Oh, there's a fine distinction to be made here, and that is that science does not describe "reality", it's not even clear that it describes "experience", but if anything that would be it. (Theories of pragmatism and reliabilism make strong counter-arguments that science isn't what is true, rather science is what works (and constructivist and coherentist conceptions of truth are just over the horizon, waiting with their steely knives).) Since going there would be a massive digression on an already serious digression, I suggest we not go there. But it's more or less agreed in both philosophy and science, afaik, that reality qua reality is unknowable.

“Thus i had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith”
— Immanuel kant, Critique Of Practical Reason (Bxxxi)

The real question is whether science provides any reason to believe that there is a physical caused (and therefore rational) reality out there that exists independent of our experience, whether it is "knowable" with any certainty or not. Science arrives at it's theory of what that reality is by induction and it will always be uncertain and incomplete, however useful. Still I would answer the question with an overwhelming yes. Your quote by Kant is very telling. It only reinforces my conviction. (Kant died before Darwin was born.)

[Robert_S]

Somewhere between an opinion and a value this, but I think I have changed my mind about the ability of groups of people to 'self organise' and therefore by implication, self regulate without any form of hierarchy emerging. This also applies to this forum I might add. Given my views about moderation expressed in the past, though not of late you might or might not have noticed, this is indeed a change of view brought about by 'review' and reflection.

A hierarchy always emerges, but it is often a great deal looser and more tangled than it looks.

[charlou]

Your quote by Kant is very telling. It only reinforces my conviction. (Kant died before Darwin was born.)

What conviction is that?

[hiyymer]

Your quote by Kant is very telling. It only reinforces my conviction. (Kant died before Darwin was born.)

What conviction is that?

The yes to the question conviction.