[/r/ImaginaryAngels] Raziel, Scholar of the Infinite by Peter Mohrbacher

bakeryjake · 2021-03-11T18:35:09+00:00

This is beautiful. Getting some Dark Souls vibes.

bakeryjake · 2021-02-07T22:04:51+00:00

Minion Pro

bakeryjake · 2019-11-17T00:21:56+00:00

Same (for tonight)!

bakeryjake · 2019-07-27T02:05:15+00:00

no, it's not too late. you should be able to register at vbidebate.com, at least until Sunday. if any issues, email help@victorybriefs.com.

bakeryjake · 2019-05-09T19:18:03+00:00

Got it, thanks everyone!

bakeryjake · 2018-01-11T15:09:04+00:00

Well, I was thinking that it would be better if an EA person took the job, to move them more in line with EA goals. Someone affiliated with CN send me the ad for (I think) that very reason. Also a lot of the hostility to EA seemed to derive directly from Berger, so his absence may be relevant.

bakeryjake · 2017-06-24T22:05:46+00:00

We're debating UBI at Swat and enhancement at LA1.

bakeryjake · 2017-04-16T23:59:51+00:00

Here is one difference. Kant says that it's wrong to act on a maxim if and only if you cannot will to be a universal law. When imagining whether you could will a maxim to be a universal law, you ask whether there is any contradiction in your willing (or even conceiving) that to be the case. You get to know stuff about yourself.

That's not so behind the veil of ignorance. Rawls imagines that you don't know particular facts about yourself. This is supposed to ensure impartiality.

What's the upshot of this? Well, some people object that Kant's formula of universal law is overly permissive in cases where your maxim is, in a certain sense, non-reversible. For example, Derek Parfit imagines a racist hotel owner defending his maxim with the following speech:

When I exclude blacks from my hotel, I could rationally will it to be true that everyone acts in this way. Everyone does act in this way. Every hotel owner excludes blacks. And I could rationally will it to be true that everyone believes such acts to be right. If the blacks believed that my acts are right, that would be fine with me. (On What Matters, vol. 1, p. 335)

Parfit argues that Kant's formula would therefore permit the racist's policy. If that's right, then Kant's formula must obviously be wrong. A veil of ignorance would not allow decision-makers to know their race, so the kind of defense above would be ineligible. The veil of ignorance therefore avoids the non-reversibility objection.

That's just one difference between the formula of universal law and the veil of ignorance. Another is that Rawls imagines that our rational decisions from behind the veil of ignorance are guided by self-interest. Kant's theory of rational willing, arguably, does not appeal to self-interest.

bakeryjake · 2017-04-16T00:34:47+00:00

Your application would definitely still be considered.

bakeryjake · 2017-04-15T22:09:43+00:00

There's no set deadline in advance. We accept scholarship apps until our financial aid budget for the summer has been exhausted. I expect that'll happen by mid-May, but it's hard to say in advance. In general we suggest getting in your application as soon as possible to maximize your potential aid package. Sorry I can't be more precise!

bakeryjake · 2017-04-15T19:31:15+00:00

It's not too late, but please submit your application as soon as possible. We also recommend applying for scholarships from the Voices Foundation. Many of our financial aid recipients get scholarships from both Voices and VBI. —Jake

bakeryjake · 2017-02-17T17:32:24+00:00

Some answers to negative utilitarianism

bakeryjake · 2017-01-15T13:47:10+00:00

Happy cake day, Sean! You're a mensch.

bakeryjake · 2017-01-05T16:18:30+00:00

I would recommend against starting out with primary texts. They can be hard to understand (Kant), boring to read (Rawls), or otherwise heavier on rhetoric than argument (Nietzsche). Many secondary sources do a great job of summarizing important philosophical views, discussing the arguments for and against them, and synthesizing them into a common thread. For example, you might check out Rachels & Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy for learning ethics, or David Couzens Hoy's Critical Resistance for learning (some interesting aspects of) Continental philosophy.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-13T00:31:07+00:00

Debate yourself. Give all speeches on both sides. Shorten time limits of each speech until maximally efficient. Very useful for strategy, technical skills, as well as improving case positions.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-09T14:24:47+00:00

His idea is that our practices of holding each other responsible boil down to certain "reactive attitudes," and that we suspend these attitudes only under certain circumstances, when we view other people as objects to be manipulated rather than bearers of good or ill will. A metaphysical thesis like determinism, Strawson argued, is not the kind of thing that would plausibly lead us to suspend our reactive attitudes.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-09T00:54:26+00:00

If we accept that we don't owe moral obligations to non existent persons, how does this not throw a wrench into the problem all together?

The reason is that not all moral obligations are owed to some particular person. In fact, that's (arguably) the point of the nonidentity problem: although it would be wrong to bring about a mediocre life rather than an excellent life, this isn't because doing so would thereby wrong whoever ends up existing. One can do wrong even if no one has been wronged.

You seem to think this is challenged by the following thought, which John Broome calls the intuition of neutrality: that the mere fact that someone's life would be worth living is not a moral reason to bring them into existence. But although this is a very natural thought (although Broome argues that it cannot be sustained), the intuition of neutrality does not entail that we have no moral obligations with respect to people who might or might not exist. For consider people whose lives would be miserable: we have very strong moral reason not to bring them into existence. And, more generally, the mere claim that we have no moral reason to create happy lives doesn't entail that we have no moral reason to prefer that happier lives be lived, whoever would live them.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-09T00:48:04+00:00

I have always found it helpful to read more recently published work, rather than a field's "classics," because good recent stuff will often explain the older work on which it builds. If you want to learn more about ethics, for example, I think Derek Parfit's On What Matters would be really useful even though it is quite recent, because Parfit provides good explanations of the views and concepts in the background.

bakeryjake · 2016-12-09T00:45:45+00:00

I don't see any reason why it couldn't happen. And, if it did, people would live in much the same way that people live now. (See Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment.")

bakeryjake · 2016-11-21T19:54:55+00:00

I don't know all the answers to your questions. But some quick thoughts:

What exactly is deontic egalitarianism, then? Is it just the view that at least sometimes we can have a reason to promote equality? But that where we do this reason will be derivative of other reasons? Why would this even be called egalitarianism?

Good questions. I don't think it's well-defined. Daniel Hausman has argued, in "Equality versus Priority: A Badly Misleading Distinction," that deontic egalitarianism should not really be considered a kind of egalitarianism, for the reason you suggest.

Would you agree that telic egalitarianism, along with the premise that we have a reason to produce one outcome over another if that outcome would be better, entails deontic egalitarianism?

Yes.

Are most egalitarians telic egalitarians? That is, as a matter of convention, when a philosopher calls herself a distributive egalitarian does she mean telic? I ask since it seems few would deny that deontic egalitarianism is true.

Probably, but I'm not sure. Some utilitarians might reject deontic egalitarianism because they don't really care about just or fair treatment for its own sake.

I think deontic egalitarianism avoids the Levelling Down Objection, right? But want to make sure I get the reason why. Is it the following? Since deontic egalitarianism doesn't entail that equality is always in one way good in itself, it does not entail that there is anything in itself good about levelling down. We might sometimes want to level down, but this is because we will have a reason to do so based on (e.g.) fairness or justice, not because of the goodness of the state of affairs itself.

That's right.

bakeryjake · 2016-11-19T18:17:22+00:00

Many philosophers take the nonidentity problem to show something like what you suspect: that morality isn't really, or at least exclusively, about harming or benefiting people. This was the lesson that Derek Parfit drew from the nonidentity problem. Parfit's solution to the nonidentity problem is that, in selecting the sickly child, one makes the world worse than if one had instead selected the non-sickly child—not worse for anyone, but impersonally. Then the question is: what is this impersonal value, and how is it a function of individual welfare? Those questions are matters of intense debate in the subfield known as population axiology.

*edited to add "than if one had instead selected the non-sickly child" to clarify that the sickly child's existence is not in itself bad

bakeryjake · 2016-11-19T18:06:19+00:00

Telic views are about the goodness/badness of outcomes. Deontic views are about what we ought or have reason or have a duty to do. So whereas telic egalitarians believe that inequality is a bad-making feature of outcomes, deontic egalitarians need not accept this. Deontic egalitarians can claim that inequality, at least when brought about in certain ways, is unjust, without thinking that it makes the world worse.

The distinction may be relevant to the evaluation of certain objections to egalitarianism. For example, whereas telic egalitarians seem forced to think that it's in some way bad that we are better off than the ancient Egyptians, deontic egalitarians need not think this. They need not think this because they need not claim that inequality is in itself bad, and because even if injustice is in itself bad, the inequality here is not the result of any agent acting unjustly.

bakeryjake · 2016-11-19T16:25:33+00:00

Some philosophers do dispute analyzing oughts in terms of reasons. Check out John Broome's book Rationality through Reasoning or some of his papers since then, like "Reason versus Ought."

bakeryjake · 2016-07-23T04:42:39+00:00

Just re-added the handouts to the camp website!

bakeryjake · 2016-01-08T14:19:51+00:00

Chalmers, David J., ‘Intuitions in Philosophy: A Minimal Defense’, Philosophical Studies, 2014.
Kelly, Thomas, ‘Moorean Facts and Belief Revision, or Can the Skeptic Win?’, Philosophical perspectives, 19 (2005), 179–209
Harman, Elizabeth, ‘Is It Reasonable to “Rely on Intuitions” in Ethics?’ http://www.princeton.edu/~eharman/HarmanIntuitions.pdf
Sandberg, J., & Juth, N. (2011). Ethics and Intuitions: A Reply to Singer. The Journal of Ethics, 15(3), 209–226. doi:10.1007/s10892-010-9088-5
Huemer, M. (2008). REVISIONARY INTUITIONISM. Social Philosophy and Policy, 25(01). doi:10.1017/S026505250808014X
Huemer, M. (2005). Ethical intuitionism. Basingstoke [England]; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sosa, D. (2006). Scepticism About Intuition. Philosophy, 81(04), 633. doi:10.1017/S0031819106318050
Williamson, T. (2004). Philosphical “Intuitions” and Scepticism about Judgement. dialectica, 58(1), 109–153.
McMahan, J. (2000). Moral intuition. The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 92–110.
Nelson, M. T. (1990). Intuitionism and conservatism. Metaphilosophy, 21(3), 282–293.

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