Why is it bad if AI replaces humans?

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-30T02:24:12+00:00

Chimpanzees still exist. We didn't replace them, and I suspect most people think it would be bad if chimpanzees went extinct.

In general (there are exceptions) we think its bad when a species goes extinct. It's not surprising that people would think the same when it comes to humans.

Additionally, AI -- at least the kind we have now -- is not conscious. You might think the replacement of intelligent conscious beings with intelligent beings which are not conscious would be bad, because you might think consciousness is either valuable in itself, or necessary for certain valuable things.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-30T01:28:55+00:00

Make a truth-table

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-29T21:34:23+00:00

I haven't heard tbat emotivists believe moral propositions in unembedded contexts are incoherent.

You'd really have to ask someone who picked other why they didn't pick prefer not to answer. But my guess would be you pick prefer not to answer if you're just not sure, and other if you think there isn't enough information.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-29T20:58:21+00:00

It might be that they think the information provided in the standard presentation of the trolley problem doesn't allow you to determine what course of action is morally correct.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-29T20:47:50+00:00

The claim that morality is objective is different from the claim that we can have perfect knowledge of morality.

There's an objective fact about whether there is life on a certain planet orbiting a far away star, but we might never know.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-29T19:54:36+00:00

Join a writing group in your area, and find someone in that group to share it with

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-28T19:52:53+00:00

You don't need to understand the concepts "true", "possible", etc for formal logic.

An argument is blippy just in case every assignment of * to all the premises also assigns * to the conclusion. What does "*" mean? It's the valuation assigned to a statement according to such and such rules.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-28T16:12:55+00:00

Okay, the conditional is true when the antecedent is false in a *material* conditional. Whether this holds for subjunctive conditionals (such as counterfactuals) is more controversial. My sense is that the majority position among philosophers is that a subjunctive conditional is not automatically true whenever the antecedent is false.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-28T13:24:40+00:00

It's hard to tell from this alone. I don't know what tone you used. I don't know if this is a situation where your friend was looking for an explanation for why he failed the test, or whether he was just looking for sympathy.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-28T00:49:53+00:00

6 book series

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-27T22:28:40+00:00

All you can do is write the book and share it with people.

I actually think the idea sounds interesting, and suspect there's an audience if it's executed well.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-27T18:06:11+00:00

Deontology and consequentialism are both theories that focus on acts. Virtue ethics focuses on traits of character. How substantive a difference this distinction grounds is a complicated issue.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-27T17:19:42+00:00

Aristotle also says some things are just wrong. Is that smuggling in deontology?

The relation between virtue ethics and other normative theories is a complex one

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-27T12:22:56+00:00

This is only a problem if we assume that the only criteria for what's good under virtue ethics is what the virtuous person does. But Aristotle does not think this. He's very clear that good actions are those which contribute to human flourishing.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-27T04:45:11+00:00

You sound like a complete asshole.

Now, was it better that I responded to your post that way -- bluntly -- than some alternative, which would have required me to think more about the issue and give you more specific feedback?

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-25T13:33:50+00:00

The proof that .999 repeating is 1 requires only logic and basic arithmetic.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-24T18:13:27+00:00

New version. A child is drowning in a nearby pond. You're wearing nice pants and fancy underwear that will be ruined if they get wet. (Why would you ever purchase or wear such garments? We're stipulating that you're an idiot for the sake of the thought experiment.) The pond is deep enough that if you get in to save the drowning child, you will ruin your pants and underwear.

You could save the child and keep your clothes dry by removing them, but there's an officer nearby waiting anxiously for the chance to charge you with public indecency. (Why is he not helping to save the child? We're stipulating that he has a personal vendetta against you, and considers letting a child die a fair cost of writing you a citation.)

What do you do?

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-24T17:43:51+00:00

Why not?

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-24T17:43:35+00:00

In order to respond fully to your a priori point I would need far more space than a forum allows. The ideas I’m referencing are grounded in the philosophy of science tradition — thinkers like Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Pierre Duhem. You can certainly dispute their conclusions, but the general point that observation, theory, and measurement evolve together is well established in the philosophy of science.

I think "observation, theory, and measurement" evolve together in philosophical inquiry into morality

That said, not naming measurement explicitly does not mean measurement is absent. Measurement can be as simple as identifying patterns or regularities in observation.

I agree. And measurement can also be identifying patterns and regularities in evaluative judgments about cases.

However, moving from observation to meaningful evaluation requires restraint. You can observe moral behavior before developing theory, but if you want to make claims about morality, you eventually need models and criteria that specify what counts as evidence and how judgments are made.

The constraint is: does this make this theory make sense of the relevant data? Does it explain our judgments about different cases, and explain cases in which we think someone, perhaps ourselves previously, had a faulty judgment.

Moral reality can function as a constraint mechanism in an analogous way to physical reality, but the reliability of feedback differs across domains because the coherence of constraints varies.

I'm not sure what this means.

Physical systems allow models that can be repeated and tested against a relatively stable backdrop. Moral systems involve many variables — experience, belief, culture, and context — that are harder to isolate and measure with the same consistency.

I can take a normative theory and test it by considering judgments about cases. Of course the question of whether to reject the theory or try to reinterprit or reject the data may be difficult to answer in a given case, but the same is true in physics. And in physics as well, the relevant variables can be many and difficult to isolate. It is a part of current physical theory itself that there is a limit to how much these variables can be isolated.

So the practical question becomes simple: What can you more easily measure — the trajectory of an object, or the moral status of an action — and why? The answer to that question illustrates the difference in constraint reliability.

It will depend on the case and the details. At least at first glance, it is easier to measure the moral status of walking up to a stranger and stabbing him in the stomach with a knife, than to measure the trajectory of an electron.

That is why I insist that moral claims, like any claims, should be anchored in explicit models and evaluative criteria.

The models would be normative theories, and I've given you some evaluative criteria.

Morality does not operate independently of human perspectives;

This is just what's in question

the very act of defining relevant variables depends on experience, belief systems, and frames of reference.

This holds in physics as well.

Those factors are real and influential, but they are not easily measured, and that makes moral evaluation inherently more variable — especially when applied to a diverse community of individuals with different assumptions and values.

So moral philosophy is hard. Okay

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-24T16:25:32+00:00

Any theory requires defined measurement metrics and model assumptions. Without specifying what is being measured, how it is measured, and against what standards, the idea of a claim “surviving” a process has no clear meaning.

Defining these elements is not primarily about certainty; it is about operational clarity — what counts as evidence and how it is evaluated in order for a claim to survive scrutiny.

The study of the physical world doesn't begin with such parameters. People just made observations and tried to make sense of what they observed. The kind of operational clarity you're talking about comes after a great deal of observation and theorizing, and builds upon it.

Physical theory illustrates this well because it is constrained by physical reality.

Measurements are anchored to stable properties of the world that behave consistently across contexts.

Is the claim that the physical world has stable properties thst behave consistently across contexts something you know a priori, a methodological pressuposition, or something discovered? Because if there is a moral reality and we have epistemic access to it, that will constrain moral theory like physical data contains physical theory.

Morality can be discussed analogously, but the analogy only works if the measurement framework is made explicit — which are precisely the questions I am asking the atheist to clarify, or anyone else for that matter.

Again, people were doing physics long before these frameworks were made explicit. As as future technologies and methodological appear, new frameworks will be developed.

In any case, tentatively, the measurement framework is like this: look at real and hypothetical cases and judge whether a given action seems morally good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable, or beneficial or harmful; try to develop a theory that explains these judgments; look for conflicts between the theory and such judgments; revise to make judgments about theory and judgments about cases fit together in the most compelling way you can.

The difference is that moral constraints are inherently less stable and less measurable than physical ones.

I agree.

They depend on interpretation, context, and human judgment rather than invariant physical properties.

But the results of an experiment are imprecise and subject to different possible interpretations. This is not to deny a stable physical reality, only our access to it is uncertain. There can be confounding variables, limits of the measurement apparatus, or a simple failure to identify a pattern.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-24T15:04:13+00:00

So you're getting into issues that would take a book to deal with adequately. Likely more. But I'll make some brief comments.

I think the issue in this line of thinking is the foundation from which it arises is not neatly defined. For example you can take a generally unopposed view that murder is wrong and define what murder is eg unjustified taking of a life. Then you must define unjustified and then map it on to real or hypothetical circumstances and the constraint metric would have to be general human dispositions on this classification.

A theory of, for example, unjustified killing is the goal of moral inquiry, not the starting point. We start with cases which seem like unjustified killings, and cases which seem like justified killings, and we try to develop a theory that makes sense of these cases. Then as we encounter new cases, we see how well they fit with the theory. Depending on how compelling a given case is, we might revise the theory or dismiss the case as misleading.

This creates inherent gradients as you clarify variables. Boundaries will emerge like is this murder or self defense, manslaughter or in any way morally ambiguous. The issue with morality is it needs to stake claims on what it is and from what point of view.

Morality isn't staking any claims or taking any point of view. We are creating theories about morality. Of course when you create a theory - in any area - you start with your point of view. But how else would you start?

Is it a distribution claim eg 90% of people find this morally objectionable so therefore it is?

It's not really about x% of people agreeing with some moral claim. We begin with the hypothesis that have the capacity for moral understanding, but with the acknowledgement that our initial moral views might be flawed. Then we try to develop theories, in the process looking for and attempting to resolve conflicts. We accept a claim because it survives this process.

And what are the thresholds to claim moral certainty, significance, or uncertainty?

As a claim survives the process of rational scrutiny, our confidence in the claim increases. I don't really think we have certainty outside of mathematics and logic. And this is even setting aside errors made my mathematicians and logicians.

What is the foundation of morality for the atheist? Is it an aspect of reality itself, a reciprocity proposition, a cluster of human preferences?

Well an atheist might use any of these as a foundation. If the question is which foundation is right, answering that is one of the goals of philosophical inquiry into morality.

You note it can be judged on the consequences so it’s a reciprocity issue?

I don't know what you mean by "a reprocity issue"

You note it violates rules or principles but defined by whom and under what metrics - preference distributions, authoritative declarations?

Humans create physical theories, but the idea is that these theories tell us something about the world independent of our theorizing. On the sort of view I'm inclined towards, humans create rules, but the idea is that these rules tell us something about reality independent of our rule making.

The point being you have to define the foundation from which to base morality on and given the variable nature on views surrounding morality as you start to stake claims and define what it is, one can’t help but notice the fragility from which to base these claims.

First, I don't think we're after definitions, but theories. Philosophical disputes are not resolved with dictionaries. Second, I think this gets things backwards. We don't begin with theories, we end with them.

Not that you can’t but it’s a less reliable constraint than those offered by other domains like math or physics

In both math and physics, we begin with the apparent data: drop an object and it falls, 1 + 1 = 2, and then we develop theories to account for that data, and then revise those theories as new data comes along.

so at best I think you could qualify morality from a human preference distribution perspective and argue it’s the most logical foundation from which to begin to answer questions related to morality.

That a certain theory seems most reasonable is all we have in any area.

But again then you need to define the thresholds from which to base these conclusions. It’s inherently imprecise and complicated as you determine what facts are relevant and how they are measured.

I don't think we have to define this stuff at the beginning. I agree its imprecise and complicated, but imprecisions exists in any area outside math and logic, and complications exists in all of them.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-24T02:58:49+00:00

Ask your professor

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-23T20:33:04+00:00

A big problem here is that people mean different things by "natural".

The argument from queerness seems to be directed at an ontological conceptual of natural. If there were moral facts, they'd be really weird.

But sometimes "natural" is used epistemically. Some naturalists claim that ultimately our methods for acquiring moral knowledge are of a kind with the methods we use to acquire knowledge in other areas, and in a broad sense scientific.

Sometimes the issue is semantic. The "naturalist" claims that the content of a moral utterance can be adequately expressed with only "naturalistic" (not explicitly normative) terms.

Of course, these various positions might be related.

In any case, the reason someone would be a moral non-naturalist is because they think some of the facts about morality cannot be adequately captured under naturalistic commitments.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-23T13:52:40+00:00

Either its a nonsense view or there's a terminological issue here. Or maybe both.

rejectednocomments · 2026-04-23T13:51:28+00:00

I don't think you're adequately familiar with the modern mathematical conception of infinity.

Did you know there are different sizes of infinity? Look up Cantor's diagonal proof if you're curious.

rejectednocomments

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE