Synthesis forthcoming?

Found this interesting and pretty insightful descriptive work on the Experimental Philosophy blog about what I had been thinking about for quite some time - that in creating a formal normative framework for ethics we will need to emcompass both the ends and the means.

strangely reminds me of the general Hegelian formula of:

Thesis + Antithesis = SYNTHESIS.

check it out here:
Experimental Philosophy - Of Trolleyology and Pedophilic Princes: The Psychological Inseparability of Acts and Consequences

An interesting question:

assuming that psychology and the cognitive sciences have in fact managed to locate the factors in our brain affecting our behavior and quantify it in terms of numbers and statistics - a probability. This number can be used to show if we are likely to commit crimes.

Do we then capture people who have a high propensity to commit crime even if they had not done so? Since by this statistic they are projected to commit crimes in the future, do we preempt this and just capture everyone who has criminal tendencies?

Ideality vs Reality

(From my Notebook)

I recently listened to a podcast on Plato's Cave by Simon Blackburn which raised several key issues (not necessarily intended by the speaker) in my mind again regarding ideals and reality.

In the Republic, Plato writes of the Philosopher-King, one who by virtue of his enlightened state of thought and knowledge deserves to be the undisputed ruler of the City State. Yet Plato, through the revived mouth of  Socrates, says that it in fact does not matter if such a person is real or not. It does not matter if he had existed, is existing or will exist in the future at all. It is, as one might put it, a completely utopian vision. Indeed, to become Philosopher-King one needs to attain all human knowledge which is attainable; Even in the 21st Century we aren't exactly quite sure of where those limits lie.

This separation of ideals and reality is especially important in my opinion. Too often we are faced with too many false dichotomies; when idealized theories (such as Immanuel Kant's deontological world - the kingdom of ends) come face to face with naturalistic theories like Hume's emotivism/intersubjectivism. These theories are then forced to pit against one another when it should be obvious that they belong to different realms to begin with. Ideal theories work themselves out in a different stage, one which arguably does not relate to our world. /Naturalistic/psychological theories on the other hand describe (at least, it attempts to describe) the world as it is, how human morality works in fact.What does this mean?

In my opinion, there will never be an end to moral debates purely because there will always be people believing in ideality as compared to reality. The debate between utilitarian/kantian ethics and emotivist/psychological systems of morality will never end as long as people continue to mistake what is with what ought to be.

To that end, what does normative ethics have to offer? Since it is contingent on a reality so bizarre from ours there seem to be no point in talking about it. Yet, if we simply abandon ideal normativity then the whole enterprise of ethics will begin to seem moot. Indeed, normative ethics seem to be all that is in philosophy now. But that is not the case. Because ideals provide a rational space for us to project what our lives could be if we acted in that way (as opposed to continuing the act how we act). Science is about induction, hence all it really does is show how things has always been. Yet, this does not mean that we should always be this way (the naturalistic fallacy). We can change and improve; This is the role of ethics in my view.

But first we must clear up the fog that surround ethical debates. Using ideal theories to debate with psychological theories about what is will always show psychological theories to be the triumphant one, simply because psychological theories show how things always have been. It is a past-projecting theory. But that should not be the role of modern ethics. While knowing what is helps us to project ideals, our role ultimately should separate itself from psychology.

1ST...(oh wait.)

Hi, I am Eugene, a pre-university teenager from Singapore who just loves to read philosophy. (I am actually intending to read philosophy in university, still waiting for offers and keeping fingers crossed though.) I current serve, involuntarily, in the Army, and this fuels me with a lot of thoughts about just how much free will we got.

In the future I will be posting pseudo-philosophical stuff. Why pseudo? Because I only had around 2 years of studies in philosophy during High School (epistemology, morals and philosophy of science/social science) and thus can scarcely be called a knowledgeable person on this subject matter when there are so many other professionals out there. But this is sort of a dumping ground for my thoughts, and thus all criticisms should be made in light of this.