1. Humans remain needed as consumers, but not as producers. Given that the population of our planet is much higher today than in previous times, the problem is intensifying. So, how should people earn their living? Perhaps they can fill a niche in services? But even this is not infinite and will eventually be automated over time. — Astorre

It's been suggested that one solution is to provide a combination of government services and universal basic income for those that have been displaced by AI. Many workers just cannot retrain or transition fast enough to other field of work either due to age or abilities or economic reasons.
In the past displacement wasn't because there's a faster machine/AI that can do the jobs, it's because supply and demand drove the changes.
Retraining was also offered for free as a parallel transition to other jobs.
Today, it's a different fight.

3. How will a market economy cope with this challenge? After all, if we simply start handing out money to people simply for living, inflation will instantly reduce this money to nothing. Prices will simply rise. For example, if tomorrow everyone had one million dollars, then a loaf of bread would cost a million dollars. — Astorre

Would it?
Are you saying that competition for business would also disappear?
You just don't hand out money -- like during Covid. Yes, that's a good example of just handing out money. Let's use that as a lesson.

What depth of rumination can we transfer to the floor of conscious deliberation here at the Philosophy Forum? — Alexander Hine

That ethics is in the heart of governance.

I and, I'm sure, some of the members here would like see some arguments about the national security as it relates to personal data gathering and tracking of individual movements across borders and across cyber domains.

Local compute is being phased out! That's my point, not which country is making them! — BenMcLean

Fine.

True, there is a 'pressure' put on businesses to go cloud storage rather than giving businesses scale options. Most businesses are small enough to not depend on cloud for day to day operations.

This wouldn't be such a huge concern in itself if we saw a market correction to deal with it by increasing supply coming soon but instead, Micron / Crucial decided they're leaving the consumer computer hardware market altogether to focus exclusively on cloud and the clear indication across the whole industry is that they are going to intentionally reduce consumer computer hardware supply across the board, specifically to force everybody onto cloud subscriptions for everything. It seems to be happening. — BenMcLean

You got the right trajectory of events, but incorrect insight. Semiconductors have increased in production -- but maybe not in the US. Do you know whose the biggest supplier of Nvidia? Taiwan Semiconductor. Their chips production is being subsidized, not just financially, but also politically, by none other than the big C.
It got too costly to produce in the US.

Maybe you think I'm being paranoid, — BenMcLean

Well no. Just try to see where the funds come and go.

Maybe you haven't been following recent news in the computer hardware market? — BenMcLean

Do tell.

Consciousness seems like a flashlight in a dark room. We move the flashlight around and come to know what was already there. — frank

So, you are a realist!
Good analogy.

Good analysis.

What scares me is that "AI" being based on a subscription model accelerates a trend which was happening long before it -- cloud computing not just supplementing but totally replacing local compute. — BenMcLean

So servers will become obsolete?
Big companies use a hybrid of their own servers and public cloud.

What we've seen happen recently isn't just the death of Moore's Law but a clear technological regression -- the baseline requirement for the computer gaming market has actually reduced its specification for the first time in history, from 16 GB RAM back down to 8 GB RAM. This is totally unprecedented and the implication is really disturbing. — BenMcLean

I truly don't understand the sentiment here because upgrades are available.

That’s a good point. The here and now of conscious awareness is the absolute starting point for Husserlian phenomenology. Heidegger and Derrida as well accept the absolute primacy of the experienced now. Their deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence aims to show that within the now itself there is a bifurcation or hinge even more intimate than pure presence. So they dont look outside of the now to what is beyond our immediate awareness, but within this assumed immediacy. — Joshs

Good!

I think of the things outside of our immediate awareness as scaffolding necessary to hold our attention to what's within our means to perceive the world.

I would hope actually that there would be a philosophical debate about war in this forum. Too easily it becomes related to current events and ongoing wars. And this is already this OP is found the lounge, not in "ethics" or in "political philosophy". — ssu

Good point!
I'm glad you're pointing this out.

I've stayed away from -- not even reading-- threads about war because the topic becomes a series of postings about current events.

There is the political philosophy proper to discuss this:
The just war theory and ethics in the battlegrounds.
The ethics of diplomacy and negotiations should also be included here.

Largely, yes. But not because the theory is necessarily “wrong.”

You’re right to push back on such a big claim. But try to think of it less as reinventing the wheel and more of talking about the chariot. Doing so doesn’t negate the wheel’s invention, it’s simply talking about something else, albeit adjacent. — Mikie

You're supposed to dig deeper into the philosophers' work you cited in your OP. Then you can make an argument for or against it. This is what I wanted to say. But if you're not at all threading into their waters, but just want to name the subject, I don't think it's fair to name drop either.

I see that there's still confusion happening on this thread, at two pages of it.

Now you can make an argument that everything from gravity to behavior that’s “second nature” all happen in the present, but that’s begging the question. It’s essentially saying “x is present because it happens in the present.” From one perspective, this makes perfect sense: everything happens in the present, then becomes past in memory while pushing into the unknown future. Like a moving point on a number line. But this perspective is exactly what’s being questioned. — Mikie

That's the thing -- we can't even make a memory out of something that's outside of our consciousness. And no, the argument in quotes "x is present because it happens in the present" is not even a proper argument. I'm just pointing out to you when I used the ANS that what's hidden from consciousness may not necessarily be at a disadvantaged given that humans have a propensity to favor the clear and present perception.

According to my daimon Marcus Tullius Cicero "[t]here's nothing so absurd but some philosopher has already said it." And that was in 44 BCE!

I would amend that statement, or perhaps it would be more correct to say expand on in light of the subject matter: There's nothing more otiose but some philosopher has already proclaimed it.

And now some words from John Dewey: "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device
for dealing with the problems of philosophers
and beomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men." — Ciceronianus

Oh the irony! :lol:

Or hypocrisy?

Philosophers do not re-invent the wheel, but rather try to build on what's already been presented by past thinkers. — L'éléphant
Like Aristotle and Plato, yes. But if that presentation obscures something, we should think about it anew. — Mikie

Not the way the hermeneuts would do it. As I said, philosophers try to avoid reinventing the wheel. If you believe we should think anew, you are essentially saying we should discard what's already been annotated, reviewed, argued, critiqued, and defended. In other words, we should discard what's already been theorized.

Should we come up with our own view from scratch? What do you think theories are? Made from scratch? No! There are axioms, ideas, and truths collected from past works that make up a theory.

I like to think of it as studying unconscious (absence) behavior as opposed to conscious behavior. — Mikie

So, you don't think the autonomic nervous system doesn't happen in the present? It's a system that works without us being conscious of it. Please try to give a better example.
Gravity is something we're not conscious of. We were told about it. But it's happening now.

When I saw the thread title, my first thought was as in communion in Christianity. The presence of spirit. — Punshhh

Yes, good catch.

They’re arguing about the tendency to treat presence as self-affecting presence to self, A=A. What is colloquially called ‘real time’ is treated as a metric placed over events. — Joshs

Please expand on this as I'm no clear on its meaning.

One way to open a thread on this topic is to define "presence" the way it is defined within the confines of philosophy. Philosophers do not re-invent the wheel, but rather try to build on what's already been presented by past thinkers.

So, metaphysics of presence as opposed to what? By providing this piece of information, it would be clearer to understand. And just to add to this understanding, the metaphysics of presence is a critique against the privilege that we put on the 'now'-- the world as we experience it in real time.

So what are they arguing about?

As trial and error, the probability of mistakes and bad outcomes is many degrees higher than the likelihood of good outcomes, so the thing must be closely monitored, caged to avoid letting loose the monster. However, since it is possible to make many many trials, the probability of discovering something good, eventually, is also quite high. The issue would be to define what "good" is in this context. Some would say, probably many would say, "we ought not interfere with God, therefore there is no possibility of good here", but that's an absolutist, exclusionary, and probably unrealistic approach. We already have GMOs. — Metaphysician Undercover

The experimental stage should be as important as the application itself when considering ethics here. Yes, many many trials are possible, but at whose expense? What happens to the subjects when there's an error? So, the ethical inquiry must be a continuous examination all throughout the stages of the project.

I do sympathize with the notion of "we ought not to interfere with God" because the underlying sentiment in this is the naturally given attributes or properties of things in the world before man-made things become normal. There are actually efforts throughout the world to preserve the unmodified flora and fauna for the next generations who would otherwise not experience the wild origins of things.

In other words, it is a kind of philosophy that destroys humanity. When you try to understand anything, you are turning not only that thing into an object, but yourself as well into an object. — Angelo Cannata

In a manner of speaking.

We ourselves are an object of inquiry. But it doesn't mean we are mere objects like rocks and chairs. I think there is a difference between referential -- we are the object of inquiry; and the practical objects we see.

I realize that rocks and things may not be what you have in mind. Objectification is. But if that is so, then objectification is more a political rather than a philosophical notion.

Okay, then we disagree.

Not sure why we’re talking about relativism or what it can or cannot say. We’ve already discussed the well-established relativist fallacy in this thread and dealt with it, I do not disagree with it.

I’ve been trying to explore anti-foundationalism. — Tom Storm

Understood.

How could there be any such thing in a temporal world — Janus

Which has been used as a counter argument many times before.
This is like saying, how could there be consciousness when we live in a temporal world?
Are you saying that the existence of consciousness is just a matter of people's cultures or an agreement among people? What about the existence of gravity? Did we just agree among ourselves that gravity is real, or does it exist independent of what we feel? (Here, I am making a parallel argument, given that consciousness or gravity is a topic of a different nature)

And I'm not saying there is no universal moral truth, I am deflating the notion of universal moral truth to a more human and less rigid scale. I am making an empirical claim for more or less universal facts concerning what humans everywhere value and dis-value. — Janus

Again, a repeat of the quote I made above. The universal moral truth, if you agree that there is such a thing, is independent of what we value or do not value. That the moral truth coincides or addresses the things we value is of a different discussion. Our upbringing and customs and traditions are matters of moral relativism, not objective morality.

When paired with AI-driven gene expression models, the possibility arises of dynamically editable DNA a codebase not just inherited, but upgradable. Researchers such as Venter (2023) have proposed synthetic “xenogenomes” for future human-machine interfaces, where artificial nucleotides interact with embedded processors to form hybridized bio-digital systems. This raises the possibility of DNA encoding both biological traits and computational logic. — Post-Human Biotechnologies: Toward Recursive Intelligence and Bio-Digital Identity

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the ethical implications of this new form of technology called biodigital convergence. — Metaphysician Undercover

For ethical considerations - whether the editing is done on somatic or germ cells, the first thing we would want to see is regulation of research and the eventual applications of those findings. The risk associated with errors. And it is even riskier with the inherited genes.
We have been repeating the mantra the 'end justifies the means' -- we may be hoping for the betterment of humanity, but the process leading to it should be scrutinized carefully due to the possible "catastrophic" results.

Of course, we would like to see gene editing to address the disorders passed down from parents to child. This should be one of the primary reasons why we should support this kind of research. But what happens if errors were made?

And upgradable? Are we now headed to creating a new population of athletes that are semi-bionic? (Just an example)

Examples of biodigital convergence should be provided.

1. pace makers
2. genetic manipulation to produce desired behavior or charateristics
3. wearable device such as timed insulin delivery
4. I would say targeted treatment for certain diseases

Are these good examples?

Anti-foundationalism isn’t the same as moral relativism. Relativism says what’s right or wrong depends entirely on culture or individual preference. Anti-foundationalism doesn’t make any claim about what is right or wrong; it only questions whether there are absolute, universal moral truths. It’s about how we justify moral claims, not about the content of those claims, so you can be anti-foundationalist without saying “anything goes.” — Tom Storm

Please see my post above in response to Janus as to why I disagree with your post.

In philosophy, the justification for any belief-- moral, scientific, or metaphysical-- is a warranted reason (not emotions or feelings) given in a claim or assertion. It is objective.

You said: Relativism says what’s right or wrong depends entirely on culture or individual preference..
This is a claim (see the epistemic meaning of a claim or assertion), which the relativist cannot make because it is self-contradictory.

@AmadeusD please see below for my response to Janus:

It doesn't have to be a universal claim, but merely an observation that no one has been able to present a universal truth, such that the unbiased would be rationally compelled to accept it. The closest we can get, in my view is the empirical observation that things like murder, rape, theft, devious deception and exploitation are despised by most people across cultures. The only caveat being that those things may be not universally disapproved of if they are done to the "enemy" or even anyone who is seen as "other". — Janus

I'm not sure we are on the same page as far as the meaning of universal moral truths. The working definition of 'universal', as I am using it, is that it is objective and timeless and its weight is measured as true or false. They're moral principles that are not restricted by culture, period, or societal values.

That said, I have explained that moral relativists -- which is what you're describing -- cannot then make a claim (someone else mentioned this @Esse Quam Videri) or a judgment (which, in philosophy is actually a proposition or assertion) that "there is no universal moral truth, only disapproval of despicable acts by most people across cultures" because this claim is an assertion, thereby contradicting their own principle.

Essentially you are making an assertion, the value of which is measured by the truth or falsity of your belief. That is why it is self-contradictory.

So, I think that any foundation which is not simply based on the idea that to harm others is bad and to help others is good, per se, is doomed to relativism, since those dispositions are in rational pragmatic alignment with social needs and they also align with common feeling, and also simply because people don't universally, or even generally, accept any other foundation such as God as lawgiver, or Karmic penalties for moral transgressions or whatever else you can think of. — Janus

We can't combine 'foundation' with relativism by virtue of relativism's subjective stance on harm, for example. Relativism denies the objective moral truth.

Foundationalism, on the other hand, is, at its core, an epistemic principle whose theory is based on axioms and justification. (I've already given the philosophical definition of 'universal' above -- not to be confused with 'the general or majority of the population).

What I am interested in here is whether it is possible to make moral claims from either position. I can certainly see how simple relativism makes it a performative contradiction. Hence the relativist fallacy.

Anti-foundationalists, by contrast, hold that we can still justify our views through shared practices, shared goals and reasoning, even if there’s no single universal truth to ground them.

For instance, morality could be seen as something that grows out of human agreements, pragmatic necessities and dialogue rather than absolute rules — Tom Storm

First of all, Tom, your OP makes a very good point.

But to @Janus -- you touched on the heart of the argument between foundationalism and other forms of moral arguments such as relativism.

The one thing that is always missed in discussions like this is that while the foundationalist view claims that there are universal moral truth, anyone who argued against foundationalism is also making -- though maybe not intentionally and without awareness -- a 'universal' claim, mainly that there is no universal truth and morality is based on cultural differences..

So a relativist has a conundrum -- how to make an argument against foundationalism without making a universal or truth-based claim?

Here is an example, as described by Leontiskos:

Then you're committed to the value of human flourishing and you think everyone should recognize your value whether or not they do. In that case you would seem to be a moral realist, someone who sees human flourishing as an intrinsic telos of human beings. — Leontiskos

Moral realism, just like foundationalism, claims that there are moral truths that are not constrained by one's culture, customs, or society.

Relativism is a peculiar position because it is a view one cannot hold without also claiming moral truth which is the very thing it purports to deny.

To juxtapose another moral claim -- moral intuitionists can actually make an argument against moral realism because the former is not denying that there is no objective morality, only that the discovery of moral truths is self-evident.

if you're in communication with people trying to burn down a hotel, and you're saying burn down the hotel, I'm not so sure this would be protected speech there either. — Mijin

You could get arrested or investigated. It's in the context of that moment.

Good luck!

Though it is for Christmas, here's the lunar new year good luck:

Did the OP abandon this thread?

I'm confused. Do we both agree that natural and normal are two different things?

how do you define it? — Copernicus

Natural in the sense that something is natural in a subject due to the subject's existing conditions -- negative or positive environmental factors. That's why it is trendy because its environmental factors could change after a period of time. A good example of this is the human life expectancy over 100 years ago compared to now.

Normal in the sense that it is undoubtedly in the scientific sense that homo sapiens is different from homo neanderthalensis. They cannot interchange each other as differences in cranial and brow bones are significantly different.

[Edit]
So to me, the definition of normal is one of a hard-and-fast condition in which the features or properties of a subject are the benchmark for measurement.

I just find that Hume's sceptical account of everyday causality, very true in itself, doesn't really take into account the advances of modern science, say like theoretical physics. — hwyl

You just pinpointed what is Hume's empirical observation -- it's not about theory or logical deduction. It's about an ordinary person's direct experience or observation at the moment.

So if that's your criticism on Hume's skeptical account of causality, then you're not disagreeing with him.

No one is ever average... — Banno

There is a pattern here in this thread. Rules are made up as we go.

I don't think normal is equivalent to natural (which resorts to central tendancy). — Copernicus

Normal has a scientific and critical foundation, often an organic, developmental, or evolutionary progression.
Natural is a trend in a given time period -- often studied statistically or probabilistic. For example, there is no 'normal' in life expectancy, only natural.

The driving force was disabled activists insisting that disability is not a deviation from the normal human body, but the consequence of social design. — Banno

I'm still having a hard time putting it this way. It's the same as saying that the infrastructure in place now is discriminatory towards and/or dismissive of people with disability. Or, the design itself makes them disabled.

But, to borrow a word used for workers, ergonomics is exactly the way we design things for the purpose of reducing or eliminating risk of injury based on the natural functioning of the human body.

Engineering and construction focus towards the functionality and usage by the average population. Which means the majority of the population should be able to use bridges, stairs, doors, roads, buildings, and vehicles with ease.

Is there an R?

This means that each word we say in a language is, on one side, understood because it is repeatable, shared, belongs to the system of language. But, on the other side, since each word, the moment it is used, becomes also a unique event, this makes it impossible to totally understand, because uniqueness means that we have nothing to compare it with.

Impossible to understand does not mean impossible to receive. I cannot understand your uniqueness, but still, in the event of communication, it flows to me and I receive it, beyond my understanding. — Angelo Cannata

I understand what you're saying about the uniqueness of person's subjective view. Yes, I will not completely understand being you because I cannot be you. Self-reporting is what receive from you and this is the limitation of my understanding about your being.
But as we all are in this situation, this is a philosophical question that has no solution. Similarly, since we all cannot step outside of our perception, then that question will remain unanswered.

But philosophy does not require that we have an answer for everything. It requires that we examine reality. So, we may just come up with findings to list, but not an answer to a question. Such is the status of subjectivity. We know what it is and we know that each person is limited by their subjective perception and opinions, but we are not required to get into the mind of that person.

Scurrilous?

It's about shifting the narrative from “what’s wrong with you?” to “what do you need to thrive?” — Banno

This is a short-cut to my reply.

"What do you need to thrive" is what our societies have been communicating by putting in place the regulations that help the disabled. This includes, financial and health insurance support, building codes, and workplace laws to prevent discrimination. The point of all these is to help the disabled thrive.

The authentic approach to this reflection lies only in our living witnessing the particularity of subjectivity. Its intellectual understanding, which as such belongs to objectivity, can only touch subjectivity as a contradiction of objectivity, — Angelo Cannata

Good meditation on the subject.

But I disagree with the use of the word contradiction when considering both the objectivity and subjectivity. The objective analysis is a critical thinking used to describe a whole bunch of philosophical questions including the problem of subjectivity. You may notice the elevated status of objectivity here. It is an analytical tool in philosophy to understand the ways of thinking.

Some consideration might give us pause here. A wheelchair user is not incapacitated by ramps, but by stairs. Folk with visual impairment can find their way around in spaces that are accessibly designed, but struggle in spaces designed for the sighted. So it’s not their body that is disabling so much as its interaction with its environment.

This has led to disability being seen as a gap between what a body is able to do and what it has been historically expected to be able to do, the gap between body and social expectation. — Banno

First, I do not agree with your use of the word 'historically' when referring to human anatomy. To say historically implies that it is a practice put in place. Like a history written based on the events that happened.

No. Humans found themselves in such a constitution that they created their environments to fit into this constitution. Nature created the human constitution. It is our choice to further discover that we can do 'much more' with ease and speed, without disabling ourselves -- for examples, removing our vertebrae so we can slither much smoother through crevices that would otherwise be prohibitive.

Second, I agree that the environment can be, not always, a hindrance to the disabled. (societies acknowledge this by creating building codes to make an environment accessible to the disabled).

The presumption that a disability is a deficit does exactly that, no? — Banno

It is a deficit but not in the sense of morals.

I wanted to say the word is solicitous but its definition doesn't sound like it matches the hint given.

SO a statistical average? And that provides an ought here?

Are you sure that's a good argument? How do we go from "you don't have a hand" to "You ought have a hand"? — Banno

Pardon me, but I didn't think you meant morally when you asked that question.

And why is the word normal in quotes? Is this a bad thing now to have normal standards? I think the anatomists speak without invoking the moral ought. If you were told that this baby has a tail, and according to the normal human anatomy, having a tail is an anomaly, why is that a moral/ought stance? I'd say, the doctor would probably tell the parents to get the tail removed. But then if the parents elected not to have it removed, then it should be respected.

I'm not quite sure this warranted a thread, but, perhaps showing my hand, you are vastly underestimating hte liberality of people in general about sex. You more than likely have friends who are absolute freaks, swingers, kinksters etc... but they respect you and so do not intrude on your lifestyle with theirs. A huge number of people are in this position. — AmadeusD

:sweat: lol.

For 'square' type of people I wonder how they ever 'do the do' and actually have sex. I think of very reserved Brits such as Richard Dawkins, or just the idea of the 'stiff upper lip' Brit in general and think 'how did they ever manage to loosen up enough to have sex?' — unimportant

Believe me, there are uptight introverts whose sex acts match their own personality. Are you a quiet personality and don't interact much? Then the way you are in bed with another person would mirror that.

Is there a defensibly “normal” human body? — Banno

The study of human anatomy is where to start. If you're missing an appendix since birth, that's not normal. But getting your appendix removed later on doesn't cause any anomaly in bodily functions. In the end, you'd be missing an appendix but that's because you had it removed.