Do you care about what will happen to human beings in a hundred, thousand, or million years? — jamalrob
Sap, how do you quote people like that? Share your wisdom.
I do care about human beings into the future, the farther out, the less I care. I have kids, you see, and I actually do care what happens to them and my grandkids once I have them. It's understandable that Benkei might care less about the future based upon his avatar that shows him to be a scraggly hippy downing a beer with his kid in his lap. It's hard to care about tomorrow when you've given up on today.
Carrots,
G — Hanover
And is optimism aligned with such a concern, whereas pessimism is associated with a lack of it—or vice versa? — jamalrob
Even if we imagine someone in a detailed way and build up a view of their lives, then someone who fits the exact description comes into existence 100 years later. Our thoughts can not have been referring to them and any empathy we have felt could not have been directed at them.An ant is crawling on a patch of sand. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line that it traces curves and recrosses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill. Has the ant traced a picture of Winston Churchill, a picture that depicts Churchill?
Most people would say, on a little reflection, that it has not. The ant, after all, has never seen Churchill, Or even a picture of Churchill, arid it had no intention of depicting Churchill. It simply traced a line (and even that was unintentional), a line that we can 'see as' a picture of Churchill. — Putnam
Do you care about what will happen to human beings in a hundred, thousand, or million years? — jamalrob
Hey AaronR, Putnams point is about reference. He thinks that there needs to be the correct causal connection between the picture and Churchill such that for the picture to refer to Churchill, Churchill's existence itself must have had some influence. A closer example to what we are talking about could be if I write a book with characters that were supposed to exist 100 years from now. In 105 years time Jason finds the book and thinks 'this is an exact description of my mate John'. He may present the book to John as a book about him, but after they check the author, shmik (2015) they'll likely conclude that the book can't be referring to John, because the author never knew (of) John i.e there was no causal connection between John's existence and the words in the book.I think the problem with Putnam's argument is that whether or not the line traced in the sand depicts Churchill is not entirely (or even at all) determined by whether or not the ant intended it to be such a depiction, because it is at least partly dependent on the subjective evaluation of other creatures. Abstract art functions on pretty much exactly this possibility. — Aaron R
The problem is not that these individuals in the future literally are fictional characters rather that we cannot refer to them. So when think we are talking about them (as individuals) we are really just talking about and feeling empathy towards fictional characters, as we fail to refer.But I can both think about and direct my empathy toward fictional characters, can't I? Isn't that one of the very things that makes reading fictional stories so compelling? — Aaron R
The problem is not that these individuals in the future literally are fictional characters rather that we cannot refer to them. So when think we are talking about them (as individuals) we are really just talking about and feeling empathy towards fictional characters, as we fail to refer. — shmik
In your initial post you had stated in reference to the actual denizens of future generations that "we cannot actually refer to them (as beings)...we can care about them in the same way that we can care about the characters in Harry Potter". I think it is interesting to consider whether, in order for your statements to be true, they must not do the very thing they claim to be impossible, namely, refer to the set of actual individuals that our statements allegedly cannot refer to. — Aaron R
I agree that we don't care about them in the exact same way that we care about fictional character from Harry Potter. When I wrote that I was anticipating the response 'if they are fictional how can we care about them'. A much closer comparison would be if I told you a news story. I show a picture and tell you about a child that was forced into marriage at the age of 11. The Husband was alcoholic and abusive etc. We can feel empathetic towards this child even if unknown to us the news story is a complete fiction, something I just made up. We think we are feeling empathetic to an actual person but we are not.I would argue that the main difference is that I can take actions today that have causal implications for the well-being of the denizens of future generations in a way that is obviously not possible with respect to fictional characters like Harry Potter (and therefore we might also feel responsible for what happens to those individuals in a way we wouldn't with respect to fictional characters). — Aaron R
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