As the mod, if I want that [censored] to be long, it's gonna be long (NC Thre

[Paxosmotic]

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I think I might play poker again. Damn that itch.

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YAY!

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wb, please stay off my table, kthx

whatchu been doin?

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You know... pretty much nothing, which is why I'm thinking of coming back. When I quit I imagined myself doing all sorts of other things, but I don't. I mean I do stuff, but the cliche "I opened the front door and the sun bathed me in light" moment never happened. So I dunno.

I'm gonna have like 3,000 questions about coming back. Wook you think you'd be okay with me posting a question megathread? Stuff like getting rakeback, how to deposit, etc?

[DrModern]

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There you go. You just "define away" the problem. If you just do the very small additional step and link an intuitive account of "social existence" with a little Habermas, you get close to a point where even referring to those who deny themselves to discourse becomes a problem. If you go this all the way to the end, those who don't enter rational discourse, don't even exist.

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Why should reference to them become a problem? Surely I can still refer to the person if he refuses to talk to me. Surely I can refer to a person who does not exist. Or do I misunderstand you?

I take it that what you're questioning is my essentialism about personhood, i.e. that you have to be a rational agent--open to discourse, etc.--in order to count as a person at all. I'm pretty comfortable with that, actually. It's a holdover from Aristotle, basically, but I can't really see any better criterion for counting someone as a person than rationality. But then you say:

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And the notion of rationality involved? Does every human being just find that notion magically within himself? Categorical imperative or some such? That's getting pretty universalistic again very fast...

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Isn't rationality--the ability to engage in discourse with other human beings, a willingness to be subject to logic, and an awareness of choiceworthiness in an action (e.g. the notion of EV providing a clear means of deciding between two actions in poker)--integral to the concept of a person? How else do we make sense of what it means to be a person? How else are we different from dogs and the like?

Yes, this is all like Kantian freedom (though we needn't invoke categorical imperatives yet, as far I can see).

[bravos1]

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There you go. You just "define away" the problem. If you just do the very small additional step and link an intuitive account of "social existence" with a little Habermas, you get close to a point where even referring to those who deny themselves to discourse becomes a problem. If you go this all the way to the end, those who don't enter rational discourse, don't even exist.

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Why should reference to them become a problem? Surely I can still refer to the person if he refuses to talk to me. Surely I can refer to a person who does not exist. Or do I misunderstand you?

I take it that what you're questioning is my essentialism about personhood, i.e. that you have to be a rational agent--open to discourse, etc.--in order to count as a person at all. I'm pretty comfortable with that, actually. It's a holdover from Aristotle, basically, but I can't really see any better criterion for counting someone as a person than rationality. But then you say:

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And the notion of rationality involved? Does every human being just find that notion magically within himself? Categorical imperative or some such? That's getting pretty universalistic again very fast...

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Isn't rationality--the ability to engage in discourse with other human beings, a willingness to be subject to logic, and an awareness of choiceworthiness in an action (e.g. the notion of EV providing a clear means of deciding between two actions in poker)--integral to the concept of a person? How else do we make sense of what it means to be a person? How else are we different from dogs and the like?

Yes, this is all like Kantian freedom (though we needn't invoke categorical imperatives yet, as far I can see).

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All I can say is that I am REALLY happy that I picked a useful major in college and don't spew drivel like this... [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[fretelöo]

Ben,

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I take it that what you're questioning is my essentialism about personhood, i.e. that you have to be a rational agent in order to count as a person at all. I'm pretty comfortable with that, actually. It's a holdover from Aristotle, basically, but I can't really see any better criterion for counting someone as a person than rationality.

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Well, you're probably right. The only problem - and that usually gets overlooked - is that there are mentally disabled and such, which is usually assumed NOT to be overlooked, because there are counters.
One normal response would be something like "Well, let's not count an exception to the rule (idiot vs. rational being) as an argument against the primitiveness of rationality to our human "substance" (if you want)."

But that's pretty interesing. So, on the one hand you want to take rationality as the criterion, but for those for whom (who or whom?) it doesn't work, you invoke other criteria that assure, that they're still counted as part of the "group". Those other criteria ultimately melting down to "well, he's still a human being, even if a bit stupid". Which comes down to "His DNA is sufficiently similar to ours" which is so blatantly a position that we don't have to talk about it further.

So, in effect, you come up with rationality, because you see the danger that most other criteria are quite arbitrary, but for those for who rationality as a criterion fails, you reinvoke those arbitrary criterions which - in the end - come down to "looks".

Rational is something we humans are but rationality is not what we "are". [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[DrModern]

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All I can say is that I am REALLY happy that I picked a useful major in college and don't spew dribble like this...

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This is kind of a rant, just to warn you.

I've never really understood why everyone thinks it's so cool to talk about how philosophy is useless or deride philosophical writings and thought. Wouldn't you say that Aristotle was a great thinker? Do you think John Locke's ideas were important in the foundations of American democracy?

Different people have different aptitudes and interests. Do you enjoy reading fiction sometimes? Do you think that the authors of those books were wasting their time or spewing dribble just because their writing doesn't necessarily earn them a ton of money or connect with something practical?

Do you not think philosophical questions are intersting? Do you never wonder about the nature of the world, or about how we ought to behave towards others?

I don't hate on what you do, sir.

[fretelöo]

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How else do we make sense of what it means to be a person? How else are we different from dogs and the like?

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How different do you want to be? Why do you want to be so different? (serious questions)

Bravos,

see, there are those that compose operas and write poems and create monumental works of literature, and there are those who make sure the ATM spits out a Franklin every time I want. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[DrModern]

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Ben,

Well, you're probably right. The only problem - and that usually gets overlooked - is that there are mentally disabled and such, which is usually assumed NOT to be overlooked, because there are counters.
One normal response would be something like "Well, let's not count an exception to the rule (idiot vs. rational being) as an argument against the primitiveness of rationality to our human "substance" (if you want)."

But that's pretty interesing. So, on the one hand you want to take rationality as the criterion, but for those for whom (who or whom?) it doesn't work, you invoke other criteria that assure, that they're still counted as part of the "group". Those other criteria ultimately melting down to "well, he's still a human being, even if a bit stupid". Which comes down to "His DNA is sufficiently similar to ours" which is so blatantly a position that we don't have to talk about it further.

So, in effect, you come up with rationality, because you see the danger that most other criteria are quite arbitrary, but for those for who rationality as a criterion fails, you reinvoke those arbitrary criterions which - in the end - come down to "looks".

Rational is something we humans are but rationality is not what we "are". [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Yeah, this is an interesting problem. It's one that I personally have been thinking about a good bit just recently, actually. The biologically oriented secondary criterion you mentioned indeed suffers a problem of superficiality. We want to count the severely mentally hanicapped as people, and to count newborn babies as people, but since, ipso facto, these do not yet meet the rationality criterion, our intuitions and theory conflict.

So we postulate some biological secondary criterion, say relating to DNA or the like, which ultimately, as you say, comes down to looks. I mean, don't scientists say that chimps have 98% of the same DNA as us? That's pretty close, yet we still want to exclude them.

This lead to think that we could abandon the secondary criterion altogether, and keep just the rationality one--only personhood for the severely mentally handicapped and for newborns is preserved in terms of relations to rational persons. These have relations to us, and, in the case of children, have the potential to become like us.

[bravos1]

It's not that I do not appreciate those that do things like composing, or writing, or the likes....

I was referring to the esoteric dogma being spewed in such a generalistic avenue.

[DrModern]

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How else do we make sense of what it means to be a person? How else are we different from dogs and the like?

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How different do you want to be? Why do you want to be so different? (serious questions)

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A good answer to this would take more than I could get into here. Also, I have to go to class now. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[DrModern]

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It's not that I do not appreciate those that do things like composing, or writing, or the likes....

I was referring to the esoteric dogma being spewed in such a generalistic avenue.

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LOL O.K. Sometimes people go on and on about computers and science here too, though. Anyway, yeah, maybe we'll take it to PMs next time.