And what are the required circumstances for that to happen? — Echarmion

It can happen at anytime to anyone however it is usually brought out in extreme situations where the agent is 'out of their depth' and can no-longer rely on their experienced based knowledge.

When we act in character we are following deterministic influences, when we act out of character or make acts of true greatness I believe we are acting from freewill.

You are describing a form of true freedom accomplished through strict discipline.You are free of the niggling voice of worry telling you that you still need to do this or that thing you didn't do so the freedom you have is of much higher quality.

We also need to define what we mean by free; unrestricted? unconstrained? uncoerced?

We are part of the causal chain but the human mind is different than an inanimate object. Causality has influence over our thoughts but the mind has the power to cause things itself. Agent causation takes a massive amount of effort and will so most of the time we don't bother with it, but there are times when people do actually exercise true free will.

Remember using causation to explain things is really just invidious selection to provide an explanation, this is not the same thing as 'the cause'.

Where do you live?

In Britain until the mid '80's it was free. University was free and students received a grant that was enough to scrape by on. I believe that it is free in many European countries until today. The open University and distance learning degrees allow you to study at your own convenience apart from exams.
Birkbeck University of London has such a course in philosophy but it isn't free.

I am not sure whether Descartes took the God continuation as seriously as we think. His achievement is the cogito. This can only be challenged by asking why a thought needs to have a thinker. If thoughts can exist without a thinker then Rene is lost, however most of us can accept the need for a thinker.

The God argument may have merely been a means of gaining sponsorship to write his thesis. He received funding to prove God but his main interest was proving doubt.

The agents involved behind the veil of ignorance are perfectly aware of necessity and how laws will effect society. They just don't know what their position in that society will be and so cannot know how the laws will effect them personally.

The only way subjective criteria to work is for all similar moral agents to have similar moral agendas. Then there would be a universal code. — Mww

That's what Rawls is trying to achieve with his original position. Complete ignorance of how we will be effected by the laws we make is supposed to provide a similar agenda.

And what's wrong with being a Kantian? Anyway with Scanlon I wonder how he accommodates for what we can accept as 'reasonable'. The criteria seem too subjective to work as a universal code.

I like that opinion. The pdf's are for Theory of Justce by Rawls and Utilitarianism and Contractualism by Scanlon.

I think that the veil makes people think impartially, any weakening of it allows some form of personal bias to enter the equation.

Are you aware of the 'tolerance objection' by Williams? Cultural relativism isn't relativism before it meets another culture and after it meets another culture is merely showing moral tolerance of the other culture, not actual relativism. Also relativism in general was robustly attacked by Stevenson with Emotivism.

Anyway read the pdf's and get back to me.

“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

Thanks, great post. Can you shed some light on the objection that such a society would have to run secretly? With only a few philosophers knowing of the utilitarian principle behind it?

Why did not you do this? Now read it and if you have some question, start with that. — tim wood

Thanks for your great copy & paste skills there Tim. I have read the literature but can't get my head around it, I need someone to 'unpack' it for me.

Are you referring to creativity? — TheMadFool

Perhaps a form of 'original creativity', Perhaps a 'conscience'. The property of being Human is hard to define but cannot be ignored.

https://youtu.be/aejWas9R_0E

I agree that a lot of our learning is also just remembering symbols that we don't really understand in themselves, only in connection with other symbols. I believe that a weak level of comprehension is possible for AI, indeed we are almost there now.

The scenario that we will create a strong AI that will be smarter than humans though I think is a bit far fetched. AI could be taught to 'do philosophy' but not to 'make philosophy'.

Truth always suffers from too much analysis. (Frank Herbert)

Computers don't learn things they remember them, like a child memorizing a poem or a math formula or a rude word in a foreign language. I like your distinction about apprehending patterns, I think that explains the chin room, the computer apprehends rather than comprehends.

By replacing them with knowledge. Beliefs can be manipulated, knowledge can't.

I guess this points toward the topic often debated here over whether the Cartesian duality is identical to the one used by Kant and the other "Idealists." — Valentinus

I wouldn't say that they are identical but they do all share the Cartesian super-premise and begin from the semi-solipsistic point that all we have certain knowledge of is our mind or at least ideas. I am not sure that this only applies to idealist, it is also an empirical problem. Hume also concluded that ideas are the only thing that we know.

I will say that it is an a priori epistemological claim.

Determinism of intelligent agents is a fallacy. We experience many so called deterministic events involving non-thinking substance but thinking, animate things are not affected by causality in the same way.

Suicide is a good example of freewill. We have evolutionary programming to protect our own lives, yet in extreme situations people can override this programming, this is freewill. Any conscious made against inclination is also usually a representation of freewill.

Yes we are influenced by causality and determinism, no we are not helpless victims to these forces.

Humans are the first animals known to have what we call morals. — TheMadFool

This is speculative knowledge. There are some traits of what we called morality in the natural world. What does it matter being first? The question is are we 'only'.

Morality has, ironically, evolved in the apex predator on Earth - humans — TheMadFool

Wrong, we evolved into the apex predator long before we understood morals.

Veganism is not automatically moral, some very bad people indeed have been vegans or have held some other important moral positions. Wasting any food is more immoral than eating animals, animal products have become so cheap that they are regularly wasted. I think that factory farmed meat / eggs / milk is immoral, eating a little bit of meat and not being vegan isn't immoral and being vegan doesn't make you moral.

That seems strange because ideas of objects do have a temporal spatial real existence according to Berkeley in some of his writing. I cannot help but assume that in a real world of real objects that exist in time and space because they are perceived, that my mind must also be present somehow.

But where does this mind reside? Where is my mind? Where is God's mind?

What is your 'charitable' opinion?

Would it be more immoral to lie to people that "it makes them crazy, rapists, and killers?" — Drek

It does ;) But seriously morality considers your action with regards to others before yourself. If your pot smoking negatively effects others then there is a case that it may be 'immoral'. If you are only smoking a bit then don't confuse illegal with immoral. Legality is a question of geography in this instance (I know that morality is also a matter of geography but if you are in the states the moral code doesn't vary from state to state like the legality of Mj).

If determinism is meant to be the the future being caused by the past then yes it is self refuting. We can never know the future, certain elements we can predict with varying degrees of accuracy but the future is not beholden on the past. The past has no 'power' we could ever know over the future just as the cause has no power we could ever know over the effect.

i read it and was reminded of the story that when seen scientifically bee's can't fly. The caveat there was comparing bee's to airplanes dynamics assuming that bee's fly 'fixed wing' like planes which they obviously don't.

Nils Loc
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I stopped dreaming (or being able to recall them) along time ago. — Nils Loc

Cut back on the weed bro.

Re my usage, it's not possible for someone to have an "objective view"--that's an oxymoron on my usage. — Terrapin Station

A view that recognises it's origins are subjective and does as much as it can to isolate their own subjectivity from the view is about as objective as we can be. It may not be truly objective in your sense but it does usually provide us with a very different angle than we would have without taking into account our own subjectivity.

There is such a thing as a just war, but not a moral one. — Rank Amateur

In almost all systems of morality justice is considered one of it's the most important foundations. Perhaps this is a mistake and justice has little to do with it. Justice requires resort to the law and law is a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those that administer the laws. In which case it could be argued that the connection between justice and morality is more tenuous than it at first seems.

Indeed this is one of the main objections to consequentialist theories of morality. Justice needs to be fair in order to be moral.

Causal determination doesn't mean that the effect is under the power of the cause. To say that a cause necessitates is to say that a cause causes. Even if our behavior can be predicted with some accuracy that doesn't entail that it is constrained.

Determinism seems to be proposing a tautology.

yes but Kant talks about lying promises, which are deliberate deceptions to the detriment of the person being deceived and to the advantage of the deceiver. He also makes it clear that perfect honesty is only required of yes / no questions.

If the lie had been told only injured one person but saved the lives of many others would that make the lie moral?

In the case of the money, I am back to my point. Giving the benefit of the doubt to situation that no other alternative existed, than the father is facing a moral dilemma and is forced to chose the lesser of evils. Not sure that is any more or less semantic than ends justifying means. But to me, at least it is an important distinction. — Rank Amateur

So is choosing the lesser of two evils immoral?

I not only think that some lies are permissible, in some cases I think it's much better to lie than to be honest. — Terrapin Station

I think this is because as adults we have an unspoken agreement that many of our questions are not expected to be answered with honesty. This is so much part of our mentality that when we really want an honest answer we stipulate it in the question, 'Do you honestly think that these red diamond encrusted boots look good on me?' rather than just ask 'What do you think about these boots?'

If we all agree that it is preferable to lie about somethings, sometimes then those type of lies become a universal law. It works when we all do it, not just when one or a few of us do it.

At least in my amateur mind - i am not sure I understand the distinction — Rank Amateur

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It is a hard one to get and I suppose you don't have to accept it either. Kant is saying (in my opinion) that making a lying promise (one you know that you won't keep) can never be moral for any reason. He doesn't say that it is immoral, only that it cannot be moral. I am not sure that Kant implies that not acting morally equates to acting immorally, but I might be wrong.

If I borrowed a sum of money from you to buy life saving medicine for my child, knowing that I couldn't repay you, would you consider the act to have been immoral? The act was definitely wrong but I am not sure that Kant would have seen it as immoral.