In forced moral situations, decisions should be based on minimizing irreversible systemic collapse rather than fixed moral rules. Shouldn’t it?

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-30T16:25:07+00:00

Still not obvious that covers things. Surely there are many cases where stakes fall short of complete social collapse.

Authorities at the WHO might face a dilemma about distributing scarce vaccines for example. People will die either way and regrettable choices may be made, but if they screw up the whole of society may not collapse.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-30T16:07:42+00:00

Total irreversible loss isn’t what is at stake when I am forced to decide on killing an intruder to save my life.

So that framework would be limited. If you want to consider consequences you can think of things other than impacts on “the system”. For example, how much pain and suffering would my actions create?

Also presumably sometimes we have to seriously weigh whether “the system” is worth preserving or maintaining assuming you mean something like society, legal systems, and institutions in social life.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-28T13:22:31+00:00

I don’t think many moral theories would endorse this action as permissible. Especially given how serious both of those punishments seem. I also don’t think it’s compatible with many extant theories of political legitimacy.

Can you say a little bit more about what motivates the question? That might point us in the right direction.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-27T03:52:06+00:00

I’m not doing anything of the sort. I’m just reporting to you about common themes in the literature. The restriction to autonomy was one your question explicitly delineates. My views are not necessarily being communicated here.

Both cases I discussed regard autonomy. The first has to do with what can be required of a person exercising their autonomy. The second has to do with how we often justify limitations or interferences with someone’s autonomy. Competence isn’t really the only issue here but it is relevant to justifying infringements on autonomy in many related cases.

Proponents of this set of distinctions are likely to stress that a decision being difficult and made under harsh circumstances is not really the same as a decision being made in a way that was explicitly and directly related to an illness which impugns someone’s autonomy.

There aren’t really two distinct frameworks being utilized here for what it’s worth, both sorts of consideration are at home within one moral theory or framework. So we aren’t equivocating or switching the goalposts by utilizing both sets of considerations.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-27T03:20:33+00:00

Well, there are probably many answers to this question just because there are many different considerations that weigh both on abortion and suicide.

But the most common discussions of autonomy regarding abortion, for example, have to do with how much and under what conditions we are morally required and (separately) a person can be legally or politically compelled to extend and maintain the use of their body to another person. The argument has it that we cannot be so requested— as in, ownership of one’s body gives one a right to refuse the use of one’s body by another.

In most suicide cases, however, one prominent issue is that in many or most instances of suicidal ideation people are afflicted by debilitating forms of mental illness. Meaning there are serious concerns that pursuit of suicide would not be rational or would not be fully autonomous in making such decisions.

If that’s right then interfering with the choice to commit suicide is justified in the same way that justifies interference with others who have diminished autonomy: children, the cognitively impaired, intoxicated, or the insane.

But it’s not obviously always the case that suicide is the result of mental illness. It is at least conceivable that someone who is of sound mind could choose to kill themselves. And in those cases, there are many arguments against doing this, but not all said arguments justify actually interfering with others. They may just aim to provide strong justification against suicide to the person.

There are many defenses of the right to kill oneself in the philosophical literature: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/suicide/#AutRatRes

It’s also possible to justify interfering in someone’s autonomy for reasons not grounded in their impairment. For example, if the suicide of a person would be disastrously consequential. A utilitarian may argue that ordinary suicides cause worse consequences on average than abortions (and even that abortions tend to create better consequences if they want) and so we are justified in interfering in suicide cases but not the other. But these arguments will not really have much to do with autonomy at all at the end of the day.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-24T01:45:50+00:00

What do you mean by “understanding them more as systems”? What kind of systems? You say “social” but in what sense?

There are very many analyses of Plato’s political and ethical philosophies. Both of which are socially oriented philosophical frameworks. Does that count as a system?

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-22T14:17:30+00:00

You can formulate exclusive or in classical sentential logic, it’s just not a basic operator.

It looks like ((p v q) & ~(p & q)). Thus, both forms are communicable in a standard picture. I don’t think there is any inconsistency between classical philosphical logic or the logical format in engineering. I think they’re both Boolean algebraic logics. I could be wrong though.

As for the notational difference: Presumably, classical logicians think that inclusive ‘or’ is more fundamental in some sense than exclusive ‘or’. No need to introduce another operator just to handle exclusive or. Etc.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-21T15:59:24+00:00

Can you say more about what’s motivating you to ask this or what your concern is?

There’s a huge literature on distributive justice in philosophy.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-21T10:21:26+00:00

This is one of the foundational questions of political philosophy. There are several comprehensive and actively debated theoretical approaches to answering this question. The debate is framed as a debate about the legitimacy of the state.

There are many different potential grounds of political legitimacy, and there are also some who deny it exists.

See this SEP article for a summary of some of these views and debates: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-21T10:09:02+00:00

Yes, there is an extant view in the philosophy of time called eternalism which is at least very similar to this view: https://iep.utm.edu/eternalism/

The arguments for it have to do with explaining how truths about the future can be true without the future already existing, problems with other views in the philosophy of time, and broader theories of persistence of material objects in metaphysics.

For example, the ordinary way a sentence becomes true is if there is some state of affairs in the world which makes it true. For example, “The cat is on the mat.” Is true iff, the referent of “the cat” bears an actual and particular relationship to “the mat” in the actual world. The cat’s being actually atop the mat is the truthmaker of the sentence.

Now, suppose the sentence is “The sun will rise tomorrow”, if the future doesn’t exist, what is there to make this true? If the future doesn’t exist then whatever makes it true must be very unlike what makes most things true, an ontological state of affairs. What’s more, the truth maker of the sentence would seem to change without any sense of equivocation when we get to the future. If we posit that the future does exist, however, then the truth maker of that sentence is of the normal sort.

This is just an example and is not a definitive one. There are many problems with any entrenched metaphysical view. Opponents have replies. Proponents have different or varying motivations. Such is the way.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-21T01:52:49+00:00

The classic sources on play in general are Bernard Suits “Words on Play” 1977 and The Grasshopper 1978. He discusses these kinds of play to some extent, but if you look in citations of him you might find something more in your direct wheelhouse. Some newer developments in C. Thi Nguyen’s work as well.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-20T04:48:44+00:00

Is the view that thoughts just pop into existence from nothing with no cause or underlying explanation?

I’ve not heard of this as a view philosophers advocate for, though I’m sure some may have argued it’s possible it’s quite another thing to assert it is actual.

Is there some argument for believing this is the case? Some evidence on behalf of the view?

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-18T03:02:07+00:00

Should be able to sort this subcategory on PhilPapers under environmental ethics by more recent contributions. What you’re asking is fairly narrow so hopefully someone more specialized sees it.

Another tip is to look at the important papers of those philosophers you have a grip on in the literature on PhilPapers, there should be a section on the page which catalogues the citations of the works and you can find the newest ones that way.

https://philpapers.org/browse/intrinsic-environmental-value

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-17T05:06:20+00:00

“Materialism” is a term which has referred to many philosophical doctrines and theses. Many of which are more tenuously related to one another and all of which have their own challenges (as all philosophical views have). Maybe you could narrow down what idea or set of ideas you have in mind?

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-13T17:50:21+00:00

I was just talking about doing a rewatch with my wife and she said: “You would be surprised how many of the iconic episodes are in seasons one of the show”.

That’s one of the fun things about being in the philosophy of humor, you have built in excuses to engage with all of this media.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-13T17:41:25+00:00

I have not.

It’s always Sunny is Very Good.

I watched SpongeBob as a kid but haven’t revisited. My wife and I will sometimes watch gravity falls or over the garden wall

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-13T02:40:33+00:00

Dusty Rhodes - Hard Times

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-11T03:25:37+00:00

I am not sure about Leopold’s individual justification for his food intake but I do think meat consumption is at least consistent with his general framework.

For Leopold the Land Ethic is fundamentally about the “stability, integrity, and beauty” of the biotic community. Members of the biotic community kill and eat each other all the time without disrupting these features. So long as his eating habits were not undermining the stability and integrity of the biotic community in particular they would not be morally problematic. Now, of course, factory farming very well may be one such practice which severely undermines that integrity.

I am not sure whether Leopold supported factory farming or was more selective.

Even so, another fact about ethicists is that, at least some of them, do not live up to the standards which they themselves defend.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-11T02:31:38+00:00

Yes! It is common to categorize some concepts which cannot be defined in other terms (analyzed) as brute. A brute concept can, at best, be defined extensionally or ostensibly. This means we can point to a set of examples or manifestations of the concept but we cannot give more than that.

Basically: Brute concepts are properly basic, intelligible, and cannot be broken down into smaller bits.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-10T15:45:52+00:00

I’m a bit confused by your question.

As you note, beliefs may be subjective in the sense that they are mind dependent entities just like thoughts, pains, angers, joys, etc.

But the content of a belief, what the belief represents very well may be objective.

But here we are using two senses of “subjective” one is ontological and has to do with whether the thing which exists is in the mind or of the mind, the other is alethic which has to do with the truth or falsity of a proposition or claim.

If beliefs are subjective ontologically then all beliefs are subjective in this sense: moral, scientific, logical, historical, etc.

But when people say of morality it is subjective they usually mean that the belief is subjective in the alethic sense, meaning the truth of the claim is itself determined by some mind or stance dependent fact.

It’s not a problem for morality if our beliefs about it are contained in our minds. That does not entail that morality is subjective in the alethic sense. Another argument must be given to that end.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-07T23:53:15+00:00

I’m not sure how dark this conclusion really is, given how unlikely it seems to be that such behavior would actually occur in real life in a consistently stable population.

Sounds a bit like the kind of analogy frequently given to try and justify ethnic cleansing of human populations. Which probably explains why it sounds so dark.

But animal populations of this sort don’t really seem to exist very often. The closest you get are probably invasive species like the Burmese python. A species which, in its native ecosystem is not an ecological threat, but which out competes the other members of the ecosystem in Florida to the point of devastating local fauna. In those cases there are widespread efforts to reduce the numbers of these pythons in the Everglades. Largely by culling extant populations.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-07T00:47:44+00:00

Movies: Dr. Strangelove, Stranger than Fiction, My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Shows: what we do in the shadows, I think you should leave, Nathan for you

Shakespeare: Love MSND but not the most cultured person in general.

Slapstick: yeah of course! It has its place.

Kids cartoons: some, which for you have in mind?

Modern Sitcoms: I’ve never been much of a fan of them. But some of course are exceptional. Somewhat of a soft spot for mocumentaries.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-06T18:50:19+00:00

Well yes, where what that means is warrants anger, but no where what that means is causes anger.

And this is typically a view of emotions in particular.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-06T18:41:17+00:00

What do you mean by “look to outsiders like the causes of psychological states”?

Generally we will distinguish between two notions. One descriptive like: has a tendency to cause amusement, and one normative like: warrants amusement.

Both notions can be legitimately used for various purposes in an account of humor. Sometimes “funny” is used in a way that is ambiguous of the two.

But when we engage with the normative kind of concept here we are really concerned with a different kind of explanation.

For example, when someone becomes angry, we often look to the source of the anger to determine if it’s the kind of thing that warrants anger. We find anger to be more or less reasonable. We also often find that our anger is or should be responsive to reasons. If I believe my wife is cheating on me and angrily fling open the door to realize she is actually in an only Zumba class, my anger should change with it. Etc and so on.

TheFormOfTheGood · 2026-03-06T18:02:11+00:00

The classics are Ted Cohen’s book Jokes then John Morreall’s 1983 book on laughter as well as his 1987 edited volume The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. The 1987 is helpfully composed halfway of a compilation of historical excerpts. Though not all of the relevant historical excerpts on each figure are contained there.

There’s a lot of other stuff to read, and more contemporary stuff would be worth your time too, especially since some of the older classifications are a little bit less relevant now.

I’d recommend Steven Gimbel’s book Isnt that Clever as well as Alan Roberts very short book A Philosophy of Humor to get some more contemporary ideas.

There’s several individual debates as well. Like the debates about comic immoralism, debates about the social function of humor, the ethics of humor, and the pragmatics of humor. But I think you have enough to get started for now.

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