Freedom, knowledge, responsibility and ethicss
ilya_sha...@yahoo.com
what intelligence is about:
Freedom - meaningful freedom, meaning freedom of thought and freedom of
inspiration and freedom of study and freedom of feeling and freedom of
experience - is precondition for any morality that can mean anything.
The only context within which ethics can live is the context of
freedom; where man is free to make choices not out of fear of
consequence - which choices are not moral in any meaningful way but
rather choices based in self-interest manipulated into artificial
forms- but simply because the choices he makes are the right thing to
do. A choice based on fear of artificial consequence or anticipation of
another one is not a free choice nor an ethical choice, but a coerced
choice. And that coercion ruins any ethics - ability to choose based on
things being right or wrong - that a man can have.
The same freedom is further a precondition for these two twin virtues:
Knowledge and responsibility. It is not possible to have responsible
action without wisdom and knowledge - without knowing the full range of
consequences of one's actions and, knowing that full range of
consequences, being able to act in a manner that's informed, and that
therefore has a chance of being responsible. It is not possible to have
responsibility without wisdom and knowledge, for when one lacks such
things one does not know the consequences of one's actions and thus
cannot act in a calculated fashion that computes the good results,
computes the bad results, and chooses to act in a responsible manner -
a manner designed to maximize the first and minimize the last. The
responsibility agenda can therefore not exist within the context of
wisdom and knowledge; for any action that dares to brand itself
responsible must first be informed - informed by knowledge of what are
good consequences; knowledge of what are bad consequences; ability to
anticipate both, and therefore make a responsible choice.
It is easy to show that responsibility is prerequisite further for
ethical action. It is only when one takes responsibility for one's
actions and computes them properly and proceeds in an informed and
deliberate manner that one has a chance of acting ethically - acting in
a way that is based on
deliberate choice to do what is right and good. An uninformed and
irresponsible action has no
chance of being ethical, because one does not know the consequences of
his actions as they affect the world and the next man. Therefore
responsibility - and its prerequisite knowledge and wisdom - are a
prerequisite for morality.
Knowledge and wisdom, on their part, can only exist within the context
of freedom. It is only by being open to worldviews, systems of wisdom,
discoveries and lifestyles outside of one's own that one can truly
acquire true wisdom and understanding of the world and its inhabitants.
That requires this: Freedom of information and freedom of thought and
freedom of experience. An ideological indoctrination is not a way to
transmit wisdom or knowledge; it's a way to transmit an ideology. A
communitarian indoctrination is not a way to transmit wisdom or
knowledge; it's a way to perpetuate a lifestyle - one out of many
designed in the history of the world. It is only within the context of
freedom of information, freedom of inspiration, freedom of examination
and exploration, and of course through freedom of experience -
including freedom of experiencing lifestyles and mindsets different
from ones of the school and home and community - that true wisdom and
knowledge can be gathered. Which means this:
That freedom is prerequisite for wisdom and knowledge
That wisdom and knowledge is prerequisite for responsibility
And that responsibility is a prerequisite for ethics.
By transitive logic,
Freedom is a prerequisite for ethics (as was previously shown
separately).
That freedom is a prerequisite for responsibility, follows by
transitive logic: That freedom is required for knowledge, and knowledge
for responsibility.
Now tell me that I am stupid.
http://ibshambat.blogspot.com
Ilya Shambat.
Buddha...@gmail.com
Freedom, responsibility and morality all are relative terms... don't
even dare to use term logic with it. Logic is about universal things,
true is true and false is false.
Does nature care about anything but survival and reproduction? Those
are only two absoulte thing, rest all is just opinon of evolved human
brain.
-Gautam
William Blake Jr.
Buddha...@gmail.com wrote:
> You are talking in so absolute term :-)
> Freedom, responsibility and morality all are relative terms... don't
> even dare to use term logic with it. Logic is about universal things,
> true is true and false is false.
>
> Does nature care about anything but survival and reproduction? Those
> are only two absoulte thing, rest all is just opinon of evolved human
> brain.
Oh, I think nature cares about a thing or two besides these.
Otherwise a tree wouldn't have fallen in the bastard's yard.
Brian Fletcher
<Buddha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1153020159.3...@35g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> You are talking in so absolute term :-)
> Freedom, responsibility and morality all are relative terms... don't
> even dare to use term logic with it. Logic is about universal things,
> true is true and false is false.
>
> Does nature care about anything but survival and reproduction? Those
> are only two absoulte thing, rest all is just opinon of evolved human
> brain.
>
> -Gautam
Why do you suggest that anything at all is outside nature ?
BOfL
Buddha...@gmail.com
with nature. Why only human being commit suicide? It's becasue of their
wacked thinking. For nature survival is first instict. We go against
nature.
%
<Buddha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1153072419.5...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
Brian Fletcher
<Buddha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1153072419.5...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> Because evolved human mind forms belief system which has nothing to do
> with nature. Why only human being commit suicide? It's becasue of their
> wacked thinking. For nature survival is first instict. We go against
> nature.
Belief systems to humans are as natural as 'flight formation' is to geese. A
natural phenomena.
Suicide is a distorted way of asserting choice in the face of what seems
like 'overwhealming odds'.
Unless the spiritual (NOT religious) meaning of life is realised, it is
understandable why you would take such a view. In other words, very natural.
BOfL
Brian Fletcher
"%" <per...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:KMCdnc4rG7aHHSfZ...@giganews.com...
> tell this to the lemmings
Mon Deu, it speaks......
hi
the Danimal
> All this done by pure mathematical logic, for those who think that's
> what intelligence is about:
If that is true, you should be able to rewrite this article
more compactly in mathematical symbols. You could
do that on, say, a Wiki site.
> Freedom - meaningful freedom, meaning freedom of thought and freedom of
> inspiration and freedom of study and freedom of feeling and freedom of
> experience -
You seem to limit your definition of "freedom" to mental activity.
Mental activity is of interest primarily to the person who thinks.
Others cannot experience that person's mental activity, so
they care primarily about how that person acts. (By "act" I
refer to gross muscular actions; thought is also an action,
but the external effects of thought alone are almost
imperceptible, which is a good thing when you are undressing
a woman (who doesn't like you) with your eyes.)
Given that no effective technology exists to permit total control
over another person's thoughts, one can argue that mental
activity is, for the moment at least, still "free" in the sense
of being largely free from outside, purposive interference by
others.
However, mental activity appears to be adequately accounted for
by underlying physical brain activity, and the brain is a
machine which fully obeys the laws of nature and is therefore
deterministic. Not deterministic in the "meaningful" sense
that anyone can predict exactly what another person (or even
himself) will think next, but deterministic in the sense that
given a sufficiently accurate set of values describing the current
state of the Universe, it would be possible in principle to predict
all the future states, including what a given person will think next.
In any case, since you appear to define "freedom" to be "freedom
of mental activity," please give some examples of people who
lack this freedom. That is, give some examples of people whose
thoughts are dictated by others.
(Physical injury can degrade or destroy brain activity, and with
it the freedom to think, but I suspect that is not the threat to
freedom you are concerned with in your essay.)
> is precondition for any morality that can mean anything.
What do you mean by "mean"?
And what is the point of your claim? Thought is the last
bastion of apparent human freedom. While others can certainly
influence your thoughts, they cannot dictate what you think
as easily as they can dictate what you do.
A government can destroy your ability to think at all
(for example, by damaging your brain with drugs or
surgery), but no government has yet figured out how to
dictate a person's belief system. For example, the CIA
is not able to reliably transform its al Qaeda detainees
into fervent admirers of President Bush.
In contrast, the CIA can detain people in secret prison
camps and tightly control their gross muscular actions.
> The only context within which ethics can live is the context of
> freedom; where man is free to make choices not out of fear of
> consequence - which choices are not moral in any meaningful way but
> rather choices based in self-interest manipulated into artificial
> forms- but simply because the choices he makes are the right thing to
> do. A choice based on fear of artificial consequence or anticipation of
> another one is not a free choice nor an ethical choice, but a coerced
> choice. And that coercion ruins any ethics - ability to choose based on
> things being right or wrong - that a man can have.
The above paragraph reads like patent nonsense---where does
one begin?
1. What does it mean for ethics to "live"? All ethical systems
are social constructs. The context in which they "live" is a
set of human brains. Other social constructs such as languages,
art, music, political systems, and so on work the same way.
People invent them and sustain them, so they need people
to "live."
2. Since you defined "freedom" as freedom of thought, and
since there are as yet no effective technologies for
directed thought control by others, it appears that the context
you deem necessary for ethics is under no threat. If you're
looking for more pointless exercises, I suggest that you found
a Society for the Preservation of Plate Tectonics.
3. All actions have consequences. A person contemplating an
action may desire some consequences more than others. Given
that humans have some ability to learn from experience (both
individual and collective) and anticipate some of the consequences
of some of their actions, it is unlikely that a thinking person
could avoid letting his anticipation of consequences influence
his choice of action. To say this "ruins" a system of ethics is
absurd. The whole basis for ethics is our ability to associate
probable consequences with our actions. An action is "right"
if it has a sufficient probability of leading to a set of
consequences we consider, on balance, sufficiently desirable.
For example, why is drunk driving "wrong"? Because it increases
a driver's chance of harming self or others. But suppose
automobile technology improves enough to make cars
impossible even for drunks to crash. Then drunk driving will be
less "wrong." It won't be any more wrong than getting drunk
in the comfort of one's home, or at a bar---actions which are
still legal, in contrast to drunk driving which is not. Getting
drunk might still be "wrong," because it may still create
possibilities for harm, but as humans manage to reduce the
probabilities of such harm, they make drunkenness less
"wrong."
> The same freedom is further a precondition for these two twin virtues:
> Knowledge and responsibility. It is not possible to have responsible
> action without wisdom and knowledge - without knowing the full range of
> consequences of one's actions and, knowing that full range of
> consequences, being able to act in a manner that's informed, and that
> therefore has a chance of being responsible.
Now you are contradicting yourself, because knowledge of
the probable consequences of an action coerces the actor's
choice.
> It is not possible to have
> responsibility without wisdom and knowledge, for when one lacks such
> things one does not know the consequences of one's actions and thus
> cannot act in a calculated fashion that computes the good results,
> computes the bad results, and chooses to act in a responsible manner -
> a manner designed to maximize the first and minimize the last. The
> responsibility agenda can therefore not exist within the context of
> wisdom and knowledge; for any action that dares to brand itself
> responsible must first be informed - informed by knowledge of what are
> good consequences; knowledge of what are bad consequences; ability to
> anticipate both, and therefore make a responsible choice.
You're simply using different words that sound nicer to you
than "coercion" to describe the same process.
That's just a garbled restatement of Utilitarianism, and you
contradict your earlier denouncement of coercion.
Accounting for the probable consequences of one's actions
means being coerced by one's knowledge.
The only way to avoid this kind of coercion is to be a mindless
actor, like an animal which acts purely by instinct (the human
counterpart would be to act purely by emotion).
But even there, the instinctive (emotional) behavior is being
coerced by natural selection, which shaped the instinct as
a result of the impact (consequences) of various behaviors
on survival and reproduction.
> By transitive logic,
> Freedom is a prerequisite for ethics (as was previously shown
> separately).
You showed no such thing. There are no anthropogenic
threats to freedom of thought (other than the destruction of
a person's ability to think at all), and therefore your use of
the word "freedom" is meaningless here. Barring brain
damage, we always have freedom of thought in the everyday
sense (even though such freedom is in a sense illusory,
given that our brains are part of the Universe and therefore
deterministic).
A quasi-exception would be influencing a person's thoughts
through peer pressure, repetition, advertising, mob psychology,
etc., and this is of course what cultures do, and why cultures
can exist. But this kind of thought control is not nearly as
reliable as a society's ability to control a person's actions,
such as for example by jailing him.
Actions, at least in the gross physical observable sense,
are never "free" because they are never
free from consequences. Everything we do affects something,
and we cannot escape the consequences of our actions.
(OK, one can argue, correctly, that thoughts are actions
as well, and therefore even thoughts alone should have
external consequences; however, these consequences are
so slight as to be virtually undetectable. It is far and away
more effective to perform actions with our muscles---that's
how we create obvious consequences.)
> That freedom is a prerequisite for responsibility, follows by
> transitive logic: That freedom is required for knowledge, and knowledge
> for responsibility.
>
> Now tell me that I am stupid.
I don't know if you are stupid, but you appear not to recognize
your dual self-contradictions:
1. You initially defined freedom in terms of mental activities.
Then you abruptly lurched into talking about physical (i.e.,
gross muscular) actions.
2. You decried coercion as a basis for behavioral choice; then
you renamed it as knowledge and responsibility and praised it.
-- the Danimal
Buddha...@gmail.com
William Blake Jr.
said, are not the things I've said at all.
Mathematical symbols? OK.
A (Freedom - meaning freedom of thought, exploration, etc.) - is a
prerequisite for
B (Knowledge) - which is a prerequisite for
C (Responsibility and Ethics).
By transitive rule, A is a prerequisite for C.
This has nothing to do with utilitarianism, glorification of
obstruction, or anything else. What I'm saying, is that knowledge -
true knowledge - can only be obtained when people are free to explore,
think for themselves, experience life in many manifestations (otherwise
the knowledge is prefabricated and incomplete).
Furthermore, knowledge is a prerequisite for responsibility and ethics,
because only when one understands the world does he know the full range
of consequences of his actions, and only then - when he understands the
full range of consequences of his actions - can he act in a manner that
is informed and can take responsibility for the result.
And it is only then likewise that he can act ethically, because ethics
means doing the right thing - and doing the right thing can only exist
when one knows who and what gets affected by his actions, and how.
Therefore, then, freedom of mind, exploration, experience is a
prerequisite for responsibility and ethics.
Now that's nothing like utilitarianism or anything of the sort. This is
taking up those who use the responsibility tape to attack those who
seek experience, without realizing that without experience and
exploration there cannot be knowledge, and without knowledge there
cannot be responsibility and ethics!
Once again, A (freedom) is necessary for B (knowledge), which is
necessary for C (responsibility and ethics).
Do you understand now what I am saying?
http://ibshambat.blogspot.com
Ilya Shambat.
the Danimal
> Dan, this is ridiculous! The things you're describing me as having
> said, are not the things I've said at all.
On the contrary, unlike you, I actually know how to format a
Usenet post, and anyone who wishes may scroll back to my
message and see how I responded to what your wrote, point
by point.
I'm not afraid to let that evidence stand on its own merit, and
here you are trying to sweep it all away with your clumsy
newbie-like top-posting.
> Mathematical symbols? OK.
>
> A (Freedom - meaning freedom of thought, exploration, etc.) - is a
> prerequisite for
> B (Knowledge) - which is a prerequisite for
> C (Responsibility and Ethics).
How is freedom of thought a prerequisite for knowledge?
Knowledge also entails giving up some freedom of thought,
to constrain one's thoughts to those things consistent
with the knowledge. Once you have knowledge, your
thinking becomes less free, because now there are many
potential thoughts you can no longer entertain, as they
are nonsense in light of the knowledge.
For example, after we learn about the law of gravity, we
are no longer free to think seriously about making mountains
rise from the ground and hang magically high in the air.
Complete freedom of thought doesn't lead to knowledge.
It leads to fiction, or to religion.
The pursuit of knowledge means giving up freedom of thought
and subjecting one's thoughts to the constraints of reality.
> By transitive rule, A is a prerequisite for C.
>
> This has nothing to do with utilitarianism,
Anybody who wants to refute that claim need only
read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
As soon as you start yapping about knowledge of consequences
as the basis for ethics, you are yapping about utilitarianism.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not sure of too many
approaches to ethics that make more sense. The problem is
that we can never know the full consequences of our actions,
so a logically complete utilitarian system of ethics just isn't
possible.
For example, if you could have assassinated Hitler in 1938,
would you? Maybe you would have spared 6 million Jews.
Killing Hitler might have changed the course of history,
but who could possibly predict whether the result would
have turned out to be better? Some military historians claim
that Germany lost WWII only *because* of Hitler's meddling
with his generals, and that had a more militarily astute
dictator taken Hitler's place, the Third Reich might
still be terrorizing people today.
I read somewhere that when Hitler started WWII in 1939,
he had only a 50% chance of winning. If he had waited
until 1942, his odds of victory might have been 80%. If he
had waited until 1944, 90%. Or something like that. The
reason is that Hitler started the war before Germany's
rearmament and weapons development programs were
far enough along. By the time German super-weapons
like the jet aircraft and ballistic missile came along, the
Allies were already bombing the crap out of Germany
and cutting off fuel supplies.
France and Britain were of course re-arming along with
Germany in the 1930's, but the U.S.A. was basically
snoozing along, allowing Germany to build up its lead.
But Hitler did not exploit this opportunity to get far
enough ahead in weapons to make himself un-catchable
by the U.S.A.
> glorification of
> obstruction, or anything else. What I'm saying, is that knowledge -
> true knowledge - can only be obtained when people are free to explore,
> think for themselves, experience life in many manifestations (otherwise
> the knowledge is prefabricated and incomplete).
But nobody has time to re-create, through experience, the
sum of past human experience that originally led to the
knowledge currently in books and so on. There just isn't
time in one lifespan to reproduce all the original observations,
experiments, insights, and so on. We cannot all repeat Darwin's
voyages of discovery, grind our own telescope lenses like
Galileo, repeat all the great experiments, etc. Instead we
take the shortcut of learning mostly just the final results,
and repeating just enough experiments to convince
ourselves we could, if we really needed to, confirm all
the rest of the results. We have to trust the system to weed
out the gross errors.
> Furthermore, knowledge is a prerequisite for responsibility and ethics,
> because only when one understands the world does he know the full range
> of consequences of his actions, and only then - when he understands the
> full range of consequences of his actions - can he act in a manner that
> is informed and can take responsibility for the result.
Sure, and this means he is being coerced by his knowledge
of the consequences.
For example, if I ignorantly place my hand on a hot stove
burner, the searing pain I feel will henceforth coerce me
not to do that again.
> And it is only then likewise that he can act ethically, because ethics
> means doing the right thing - and doing the right thing can only exist
> when one knows who and what gets affected by his actions, and how.
What is "doing the right thing"?
You seem to assume everyone knows what "the right thing"
is in a given situation, or that there is one right thing.
What happens when two people have the same knowledge and
are equally aware of the full range of consequences for each choice
available to them, and yet each one chooses a different action?
Would at most one of them be "right"?
That is, do you recognize a possibility that "doing the right thing"
might actually be different for two people?
You also ignore the impossibility of ever knowing the full range
of consequences for our actions. For example, when you look
at a group of children, you can't tell which of them, if any, might
grow up to the next Hitler. If you could have killed Hitler as a
child, you might have spared millions of lives later (or maybe not---
nobody can be sure how much of history depends on what one
powerful man did, vs. how much broad social trends did; but given
that lots of Germans tried to assassinate Hitler, it seems not
all Germans bought his ideas).
The only way to know the full range of consequences of our
actions would be to have a complete deterministic knowledge
of the Universe, which is to say we would have to be omniscient.
Therefore, if ethics requires knowing the full range of consequences
of our actions, there can be no ethics, because we cannot
know the full range of consequences.
> Therefore, then, freedom of mind, exploration, experience is a
> prerequisite for responsibility and ethics.
No, you have not shown that freedom of thought is a prerequisite
for knowledge. It's trivially easy to demonstrate the opposite:
suppose we take the knowledge you developed through your
freedom of thought, and we force it onto someone else. It's
still knowledge, right? The mere act of forcing truth onto someone
does not change it into something else.
If we torture people until they confess that the Earth is not
flat, that does not make the Earth flat.
Truth is truth, no matter how a person comes by it, whether
he obtains it via whatever you consider "freedom of thought"
or whether he has it crammed down his throat.
> Now that's nothing like utilitarianism or anything of the sort. This is
> taking up those who use the responsibility tape to attack those who
> seek experience, without realizing that without experience and
> exploration there cannot be knowledge, and without knowledge there
> cannot be responsibility and ethics!
But if one person already has knowledge, then nobody else
needs to repeat whatever exploration the person with the
knowledge had to do.
For example, I don't have to actually go to the Grand Canyon
to tell you lots of facts about it.
Everybody knows LOTS more things than they could ever hope
to check out firsthand. There just isn't time. We have to trust
the system at some point to weed out the false reports. We can't
all afford to climb Mount Everest to see what that's like.
We can't all repeat Captain Joseph Kittinger's parachute jump
from 102,000 feet altitude.
> Once again, A (freedom) is necessary for B (knowledge),
Wrong, as I easily demonstrated.
> which is
> necessary for C (responsibility and ethics).
Not even that is true. You can brainwash people to be responsible
and behave ethically even if they lack the relevant knowledge.
For example, you can teach a kid not to play with matches
even if he doesn't know all the details of combustion, fluid
dynamics, mass transfer, reaction kinetics, etc., that would
explain what happens when a house burns.
All the kid has to do is absorb the lesson from his culture
(parents, etc.) that playing with matches is "wrong." The
kid will absorb this lesson if he hears it repeated often
enough from people he looks up to. He doesn't actually have
to burn down houses himself to develop this sense of
ethics.
Most people have no idea where their sense of right and
wrong originated. They just mindlessly absorbed it from
their culture. That's what humans are (apparently) genetically
programmed to do: absorb a culture from their peers.
Nobody (well, hardly anybody) has time to analyze everything
he considers right and wrong and try to apply Utilitiarian
principles to it.
> Do you understand now what I am saying?
I understand that you are wrong.
I also understand that you top-posted, which means you
ignored what I wrote, and instead of seriously responding to
any points I made, you started over with a fresh slate and
pontificated again.
I understand what you are saying: you are saying you have
no intention of actually discussing anything, because that
would involve listening to someone else occasionally.
Evidently your freedom of thought does not extend to
considering what someone else has to say.
-- the Danimal