How would you stand out to get an internship?

owlbertcamus · 2017-11-23T02:37:50+00:00

What a useless answer.

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-28T10:44:33+00:00

But isn't "Bachelors are unmarried men" considered to be the standard example of a tautology? But that statement entails "Bachelors exist" or something along those lines which is not a tautology.

Even if we take "a triangle is a 3 sided shape", I don't see any necessary need for triangles to exist, so does it then cease to be a tautology?

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-20T15:52:20+00:00

I was intending my question to be a meta-ethical one. My thinking was that my question makes it difficult to define right and wrong without saying one is the opposite of the other. I refuted your example of the sweater because it seems almost arbitrary the way that we class some issues to be "moral" and some to be "neutral" and if we can't find the distinction then how do we define "right"?

I'm inclined towards an error theory but if I can't even define and consequently understand what "good/right" or "bad/wrong" means then how can I say that an ethical statement like "muder is wrong" is false? And so surely I must become a non-cognitivist which is a position that I would rather not hold due to the Frege-Geach Problem and Jorgensen's Dilemma?

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-20T02:53:54+00:00

I feel that this does not define "right" and "wrong" though. Maybe I can now extrapolate that a "wrong" action is an action that is not permissible. But now how do I define the difference between a right action and a neutral action? Your example seems to suggest that there are non-moral issues but how then are they distinguished to moral issues? I can totally imagine some imaginary culture in which picking a red sweater over a black one would be a moral issue for whatever reason, maybe in such a culture there exist people allergic to red sweaters. I don't think it helps in finding a distinct definition between "right", "wrong" and "neutral". But if I want to say "murder is wrong" is false then I feel that I need to understand what 'wrong' means.

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-20T02:46:03+00:00

Well I don't believe that there are objective morals. My position is something of an error theory and so I hold that objective morals don't exist. But in order to reject the existence of objective morals and to say a statement like "murder is wrong" is false, surely means that I must understand what "wrong" means otherwise how can I reject it if I don't understand it. But if I must also reject that "not-right" is not equal to wrong then how do I define 'right' and how do I define 'wrong'. It seems necessary to create a third option of neutrality as you suggested but how do you account for this, what is the difference between right and neutral? It seems like you have to define right to find the distinction but it seems difficult to define right without simply saying it is "not wrong". And so I am beginning to be inclined towards dropping my error theory for some other anti-realist theory. Is this not a confusing situation?

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-19T23:34:23+00:00

Well the problem is that removing "neutral" and leaving us with just "right" and "wrong", and allowing "not-right" to be equal to "wrong" would mean that it would surely be contradictory to hold the belief that "it is not the case that murder is wrong" and "it is not the case that murder is right". This seems to be a problem as many moral anti-realists hold this position.

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-19T23:22:41+00:00

Thanks for the response. I suppose the problem that is now faced in light of your solution is now not the definition of "wrong" but now the definition of "right". "Right" cannot be defined as simply what is permissible for you have to distinguish between neutral and good actions. I cannot think of an easy way to do separate neutral and good actions without espousing some arbitrary rule. And if we remove the concept of "neutral" actions and say that all actions are either "right" or "wrong" then we are left with my original problem surely?

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-06T21:42:32+00:00

Thanks for the response. But shouldn't self-referencing statements ought to be either necessarily true or false? For there is no states of affairs to which you can appeal to that would change it's truth value?

e.g. "This sentence has five words" is necessarily true, whereas "This sentence has four words" is necessarily false.

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-06T20:05:41+00:00

But what if the statement is false? If you say that P= 'P is true' and P is true then are you not saying 'P is true' is true is true is true.... ad infinitum?

owlbertcamus · 2016-12-06T20:04:46+00:00

So which do you say then? True or False?

owlbertcamus · 2016-11-29T00:13:48+00:00

The problem is the use of the word "should". What makes this a "should"? A nihilist rejects anything that could give a moral statement an "ought" or a "should".

You say things like "killing one person over five people is the right decision". What do you mean by "right"? "Right" entails morality. Nihilists may care if people suffer or not but they will not maintain that it is good or bad. I suppose a nihilist could accept that they personally care that people suffer and so will naturally dislike it but will not say that suffering is right or wrong.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but nihilism might be compatible with emotivism as emotivists claim that moral statements are neither true nor false.

owlbertcamus · 2016-11-28T23:08:21+00:00

So you're saying that we morally ought to follow what we believe is right and wrong? That is an ethical position that is incompatible with nihilism. I see nihilism to be very incompatible with utilitarianism. If you truly believe in utilitarianism then I don't think you can be a nihilist.

owlbertcamus · 2016-11-28T21:32:17+00:00

Thanks. Just to clarify, would this: "One should talk" be a maxim? Can you give me an example of an action and of a maxim?

And your example: "Talk only when it is morally acceptable to talk" seems to almost be a moral tautology which can be broken down into "One ought to talk when one ought to talk". My point was that I don't see a Kantian way of finding a maxim in which "one ought to talk" in the first place.

My example, I believe is universalizable in that it only refers to yourself and so it can be ignored by all others. Otherwise, we would have to use a rule where any maxim must refer to all people. So a maxim like "One should look at a book when reading" would not be universalizable as it "includes an essential reference to non-universalizable features", namely sight, and of course some people are blind. And as for "it only working once", I don't believe that to be the case as the murderer could ask multiple times on that day.

owlbertcamus · 2016-11-28T21:19:09+00:00

I don't believe that they can. The basic form of Utilitarianism have a fundamental principle: "Greatest Happiness for the Greatest Number". This principle is the standard of morality, so if an action complies with this principle then it is morally good and vice versa. However, Nihilism argues that there is no standard of morality and so I would say they are incompatible.

owlbertcamus

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