Philosophy Wire: Calculating probabilities… Calculating pain…

A Dartmouth study on how we use reward information for making choices shows how humans and monkeys adopt their decision-making strategies depending on the uncertainty of information present. The results of this study illustrated that for a simple gamble to obtain a reward, when the magnitude or amount of the reward is known but the probability of the reward is unknown and must be learned, both species will switch their strategy from combining reward information in a multiplicative way (in which functions of reward probability and magnitude are multiplied to obtain the so-called subjective value) to comparing the attributes in an additive way to make a decision. [1] Rewards. Incentives. Probabilities. So unethical we have become. That we calculate everything. That we dream of benefits and outcomes. But nothing worth having is related to pleasure. For pleasure makes us attach to here and now. But ethics is transcendental. Don’t get me wrong. Ethics is indeed related to pleasure. But not in the way our coward soul thinks it does. Look at the benefits. Look at pleasure. Find where eudaimonia is. And turn around. And seek pain! Feel your self! Everything going black. Everything turning into light…

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Philosophy Wire: So beautiful! So ugly…

Ordinary people see beauty in complex mathematical arguments in the same way they can appreciate a beautiful landscape painting or a piano sonata. [1] People see beauty. And we think this is good. But this beauty is the devil. Speaking nice words to humans who are vulnerable to deception. Everything in order is beautiful. But the cosmos is chaos. Everything good is beautiful. But beauty is only useful in concealing pure evil. One must seek death to find life. One must seek dirt to stay clean. The world is raw and vulgar. And it takes a vulgar man to break it into pieces. There is nothing beautiful worth seeking. Except the things which are ugly. And just like that, among the garbage, you might discover a small piece of mirror. And see you…

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Philosophy Wire: Punishing children… Arrogant adults…

Children as young as three years old are willing to punish others' bad behavior, even at personal cost, finds a new study by psychology researchers at New York University. The work adds to growing evidence that human beings distinguish between right and wrong at a very young age and are willing to pay a personal cost to encourage positive behavior in others. [1]

We feel obliged to impose order.
We feel a duty to be good and nice.

But in a cosmos void of everything, how could this make any sense?

No, you do not have the power to punish.
How could you anyway?
And yet, here you are.
Sensing that power to punish…

Believing in it. Perhaps exactly because it shouldn’t be there in the first place!

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Philosophy Wire: Ethics without free will… No ethics at all…

A self-driving grocery delivery car that will sacrifice itself to save pedestrians. [1] We might think this is truly good. But it is exactly the opposite. There is no ethics without free will. Program a robot to do good. And you will only prove that it is as easy to program it to do harm…

Look at that car automatically avoiding people. How nice… 

Look at that Nazi following orders. How horrible… 

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FISH. BEACH. DEATH. (Inaction as a source of evil)

Beach. Children. Parents. Sun and joy. Some kids catch some small fish. They put them in a bucket of water. Eventually they forget about them for a while and some of the fish die. A little kid is crying. Parents intervene indifferently and put the rest of the fish back into the sea. And life on the beach continued. With play and laughter. Under the morning sun...

And yet, under that pleasant sun, something had died excruciatingly. Not because someone actively did something. But because someone was just indifferent and inactive. Now they were just some small fish. (Although this was certainly not a trivial matter for them if you asked them) Yet in another era this kind of indifference killed Jews. Or blacks. Today the same indifference kills Christians living right next to us. And we continue to play under the pleasant sun.

Forgetting that being good is not simply a state of "doing no harm". Being good requires energy and strength. Being good requires vigor and determination. On the contrary, evil is usually not some action (e.g. commit murder) but the omission to actively do good! One needs to take active action against temptation and evil in order to be good! "I do nothing" is not enough!

No, being good is not easy at all.

Oops!

The little fish !!!

Philosophy Wire: Brain malfunctions?

When brain lesions occur within the brain network responsible for morality and value-based decision-making, they can predispose a person toward criminal behavior, according to a research. [1] We tend to correlate malfunctions with immorality. But the world is not perfect. Neither is your mind. Or your brain. The cosmos is a dark place. And yet, it is in that darkness that the greatest good was born into. There is no point to seek morality in a perfectly functioning brain. There is no point to seek goodness in a perfectly functioning world. The best flowers, grow on dirt…

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Philosophy Wire: Morality and Rationality. An unlikely bond in the mind of modern unethical people…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2017-08-28]: While some people rely more on reason and evidence than others when deciding on their beliefs, a new report from psychologists at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Exeter suggests people can also come to see a reliance on reason and evidence as a moral issue - to see the rationality of another's beliefs as indicative of their morality. [1] We worship logic. We love evidence. And yet true love is based on nothing. True love is irrational. We tread on dangerous paths. And the road is already slippery.

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God is Dead. Along with some babies. The era of Enlightenment as an Era of Evil.

'We promised our little boy every single day that we would take him home',

said the mother of little Charlie. We want to give him a bath at home,

put him in a cot which he has never slept in but we are now being denied that.

We know what day our son is going to die but don't get a say in

how that will happen' [mother of Charlie - source]

An article written in the occasion of the Charlie Gard case...

The cosmos is an evil place.

This is the harsh reality today. And anyone not admitting it, is either lucky enough to have temporarily avoided that evil, stupid or part of that evil.

We live in the age of death. Not death in the sense of physically dying. This was always the case. And all we had to do was to accept it. But a spiritual death.

We are in the age of euthanasia justified by the notion of "human dignity". As if all those people who die every passing minute have non. We live in the age of killing babies, where the murder is named "termination" and the "right to my body" is misinterpreted as a right to destroy another person into pieces and suck him into a vacuum only because you prefer drinking mojitos at Mykonos without anyone annoying you. We live in the age of childless leaders, who prefer to adopt dogs rather than human children who suffer. We live in the age of society destroying the notion of family, thus sentencing the souls of young child into a life of misery, just in order to be regarded as "progressive". And this happens at the same time when pedophilia is starting to be considered acceptable in the name of the "enlightenment" of our "modern" society. We live in the age of hospitals and courts deciding who lives and who dies, all in the name of some nicely named "right". We live in the era where people believe in science, which in turns believes humans as spiritual beings do not exist...

God is dead.

He used to Be among us. But we killed him.
Because we were part of Him as well.
And we could thus kill Him with our own actions if we wished so.

God is dead.

And no, this is not something to celebrate about.
Charlie is in his cot now. Don't cry anymore...

Philosophy Wire: Small lies… Big lies…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2017-06-09]: Telling small lies desensitizes our brains to the associated negative emotions and may encourage us to tell bigger lies in future, reveals new research. [1] Τhe brain appears to adapt to the dishonesty. [2] Small fake smiles to your coworkers in the morning. An indifferent “All good” when people ask us “How are you?” in the morning. The first steps towards hell…

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Philosophy Wire: Ad hominem arguments. The only possible way of arguing?

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2017-04-22]:

Theory says that we should not use “Ad hominem” arguments for any discussion. It is not “proper”. It is not “right”. But why is that? Why shouldn’t you refer to the persons associated with an argument in order to say something about the argument?

Every argument has the goal to have an impact on the real world, an impact on our lives. After all, we speak our mind only in order to persuade others that we are “right”, that the others are “wrong”. That if you follow our way of thinking then something “good” will happen, as opposed to following the opposite way of thinking. So speaking about the people who are related to that specific way of thinking is totally related to the argument (this is almost a… tautology) and has a very specific value: surely it does not prove the argument right or wrong, but it surely shows how the proponents of that argument use it in their lives (thus, the power of the argument in changing our lives). Wouldn’t you want to listen to a Christian speaking about how he practices his faith in everyday life? Wouldn’t you want to listen to an atheist speaking about how he lives by his atheistic beliefs (everything is random, without purpose, we are just machines/ moving lifeless meat etc => we can do anything, there is no point in anything, there is no good/ evil, killing someone and breaking a rock are similar events etc) every day?

Wouldn’t you like to know about the unethicality of the life of Russell, who had the nerve to speak about ethics? Wouldn’t you like to know about the ethics of the life of Jesus, who has been under attack like he is the most unethical person in the human history?

Perhaps after all the ad hominem argument is the best way to argue in favor or against a specific theory. After all, what matters is the impact in real life. Give me an interesting theory and we will just have a nice discussion analyzing it. Show me how you live and you will have given me the greatest theory without giving me any theory at all…

Ad hominem then.
To the person.
Because only the person and its life matters…

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Philosophy Wire: What can be proved? Not the things which matter anyway…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2017-02-21]: One should be a good and ethical person. Difficult to prove why. And that is why being good is so important. The most important things in life cannot be proved by nature. The truth does not need proof. But we need the truth more than ever. A truth which cannot fit in the small little boxes we have built with logic in our small little heads. Search for untenable. The unproven. The crazy. There you will find certainty. Safety. Logic...

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Philosophy Wire: Democracy: The perfect excuse for immorality. [OR: Against the opinion of the many]

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2017-02-17]: In the age of democracy people live by the axiom that “The view of the many should prevail”. But can a society be built on such a value? Can morality be founded on such an axiom? Can you claim to have ethical values (axioms) if these values are subject to the “opinion of the many”? For a moral code to be effective, it must be attributed to, and vested in, a non-human source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself. Democracy. The perfect excuse for lack of ethics…

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Philosophy Wire: Wickedness. Evil. Virtue. Will. [Christianity = The DIFFICULT path]

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2017-02-09]: Hannah Arendt said that to do great evil one does not need to be someone special. Even the most common people can become the biggest criminals. The case of Nazis showed this clearly. It needs strong will to be good. And the lack of will (free will) is the beginning of the road or evil. One only has to just surrender to his passions to become bad. One must make true effort to stay good. This is something all those who speak with ease against religion with the logic that it is chosen by the people for relief need to remember. No, Christianity does not teach the EASY path. It teaches the DIFFICULT path! You feel nothing but relief when you know and truly understand that you have to be in a constant struggle against evil.

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Philosophy Wire: Poly-marriages. Egoism. Ethical decline.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2016-11-22]: Many wonder if “poly” marriages/ Polyamorous relationships need to be recognized by modern society. [1] We are afraid to love few. And we act like Christ: We “love” them all, we want them all. But many in this case equals to no one. Divide your “love” to an infinite number of people and you will get zero. This is where we are going to. This is where we are. Selfish. Nihilists. Animals. Pretending we are humans.

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Philosophy Wire: Children from 3 parents. A road. A bench. A ball…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2015-03-04]: Despite warnings that a new ethical threshold was being crossed, British lawmakers on Tuesday voted to allow the in vitro creation of babies using the DNA of three people, a procedure that could prevent the inheritance of genetic diseases. [1] Is it something good? Is it something bad? How could it be good? How could it be bad? Aren’t we all children of everyone? The woman passing by the road. The man sitting on the bench. The kid playing with a ball next to you. They are all your parents. And your children. In a universe with no time. Where everything just is…

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Philosophy Wire: Humans and Animals. Two different things...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-10-30]: Human sense of fairness evolved to favor long-term cooperation, primate study suggests. [1] We believe we are the same as the animals. We believe we are not moral. We believe we are not free to behave as we like. But we are. And we can indeed be immoral animals. If we believe it too much...

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Philosophy Wire: Robots. Ethics. Moira.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-10-25]: A robot which becomes "paralyzed" and stops moving when it needs to make a decision concerning a serious ethical dilemma. But we may think this is the case. In fact, this is the wisest decision. Moira comes back. More determined than ever to fulfill her mission.

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Philosophy Wire: Assisted deat... sorry I meant fertilization...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-08-30]: Fertility clinics scan for the strongest embryo. [1] For sure there are some chromosomical abnormalities which lead to death even before birth [2], but how logical is to kill an embryo because it WILL get sick? If despite the checks it is born and gets ill, will you kill it then? We strive to become animales. And with the help of science we will achieve it soon enough...

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: People, groups, friends, ethics.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-07-24]: People in groups tend to be less moral. [1] You must be alone to be good with others. The nicest person in the world had only enemies or students, but no friends...

(c) Philosophy WIRES - Commenting world news from philosophy's perspective…

Philosophy Wire: Algorithms, life, ethics.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-06-22]:

It happens quickly—more quickly than you, being human, can fully process.

A front tire blows, and your autonomous SUV swerves. But rather than veering left, into the opposing lane of traffic, the robotic vehicle steers right. Brakes engage, the system tries to correct itself, but there’s too much momentum. Like a cornball stunt in a bad action movie, you are over the cliff, in free fall.
Your robot, the one you paid good money for, has chosen to kill you. Better that, its collision-response algorithms decided, than a high-speed, head-on collision with a smaller, non-robotic compact. There were two people in that car, to your one. The math couldn’t be simpler.
This, roughly speaking, is the problem presented by Patrick Lin, an associate philosophy professor and director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University. [1]

Ethics and science do not go together.
Decide what you really want.
Is it so important to have "science"?
Can your life be more complete with something else?
Every life is valuable.
And we cannot choose who will leave and who wont.
Algorithms.
Analysis.
Data.
What do that all matter when we cannot understand the basics of life?

We are gods.
Because we can choose to just Be.
And no algorithm will ever understand that...

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