Jim

I was born on the dark side of the moon, I grew up in the land of Oz, spent some time in Alcatraz, then was reincarnated as Winston Churchill’s bull dog, then spent some time roaming the galaxy looking for people more intelligent than Earth-dolphins (never found it) and most recently I was reincarnated as a toothbrush. Being a to…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Davis wrote:
they are.

Then it’s not surprising that the CI hasn’t caught on.

And so passes one more duck and so goes yet another dodge.

jakelafort wrote:
In essence those whites who thought themselves better than blacks (almost all of them) had a special creation bias.

And yet it’s totally reasonable for men to make more than women?

daughterofkarl wrote:
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a Search for Who We Are

Hey. THanks for the recommendation. I have a pretty enormous reading list but I will put the book on it. Sometimes older books can explain general concepts and I find older books also add a lot more humanity and an intersting narrative. For example Desmond Morris’s…[Read more]

Yes they teach other their adopted sign language.

I’ve looked into this. The only source I can find is that one ape learnt signs by watching another ape sign with another ape. I cannot find any source which shows them expressing emotions other than saying good or bad. However I’ll look into it more. If they can express not just emotions but…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
The two are unrelated.

Oh but they are. I’m happy to answer your question once you answer mine. I understand if it takes a few days…it’s not at all an easy task!

Simon thanks for making a comparison. Now please give me the list of the 15 in order, and I will be pleased as punch to give you several examples.

1000 words. That’s impressive. All done with extensive training by other humans. Did the ape then teach the other apes 1000 signs? Did they start communicating through that language? Did they express to one another their fears and concerns, appologise and forive? Did they find a way to release their anguish?

A dog doing some funny tricks tells us…[Read more]

So an ape learns 100 signs instead of 20 and you can train a dog to do some unremarkable  tricks and, that is even remotely comparable to human intelligence, cognitive structures and sentience…how?

Simon Paynton wrote:
I would have thought that’s a pointless exercise.

Oh crap. Is that a duck and dodge of the height of Dr. Bob’s stupidity? Thats so pathetic Simon it makes me want to spew intellectual vomit. Are you that insecure with your own dubious claims that you won’t follow through. You said comparing individual moral acts and c…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
It is not fair or reasonable to abnegate the inner turmoil of other species based on criteria used to evaluate humans.

Jake it seems like you want to have it both ways. First…we shouldn’t compare them to humans. But then you compare them with human mental problems. I’m very confused here.

Secondly, no one is denying how close…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
@davis – can you give an example of where the Categorical Imperative is used in real life?

Not until you put those 15 questionable actions in order. I’ll tell you after you do that.

_Robert_ wrote:
Thanks Davis. I have committed just about everything on your list at least one time except for waterboarding of course. The last one was my favorite. I needed stuff for the confessional you know.

You haven’t lived until you extract unreliable information from a perhaps innocent person through torture you could claim isn’t really t…[Read more]

Objective methods don’t work.

@Robert. Indeed. One thing I very much like about deontological moral systems, is that you become the law maker. No one needs to dictate laws to you. The only challenge is how seriously you take your own moral rules. Under some versions of deontological morality, there is no better or worse crime (in theory), only b…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
robots acting with “good intentions”?

It does remind me of “Data” in Star Trek, who seems the only character that follows the rules to its most difficult rendering (often in danger to him) and his final sacrafice. The few times he breaks those rules (like rescuing the little girl on a Vulcanic planet) he does it by h…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
@davis – “hierarchies” – what I mean is, we can compare any two crimes and usually, one will be worse than another.

Great. Could you please at least list those 15 unfavorable acts from worst to least worse???

Simon Paynton wrote:
I think it is fairly straightforward to work out a hierarchy of imperatives

First of all. Please stop referring to imperatives as a set of moral laws. The CI is independent of moral laws, to put it very briefly: it is a tool used to understand, test, apply and make sense of moral laws. It is not a moral law nor a generator…[Read more]

@Reg re:CI

That’s a fairly reasonable summary. The CI is a tool in deontological ethics. Without it, your own moral laws that you devise would be fairly meaningless. But you can easily form your moral laws well before the CI comes into it. And in any case, despite it being called “categorical” and an “imperative”, it is just a tool, not an ab…[Read more]

Threshold deontology is a series of theoretical approaches to moral conflicts. It is not a theory. The Stanford article tries to discuss the many approaches to deontological ethics, but don’t confuse that with a long article of authors who are known, read, discussed or taken seriously. I cannot find a single book with an author who directly posits…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Davis if i were to make a joke then using your criteria Earle and Trump are incapable of internalizing pain.

LOL Trump cares too much about what people think of him, he never forgets an insult, he relives hurtful episodes in his mind from decades ago, he blames those for his pain who had nothing to do with it, whines “that’s n…[Read more]