whittingtonaaon

4 ms·

1.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I already posted a comment on this, but forgot to answer the actual question. I don’t think it follows that it’s wrong to commoditize basic necessities. Take, for example, food: the reason just about everyone in the western world can afford
2.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I think there is a big problem with housing affordability in many countries. It’s also a promising investment because, as Mark Twain says, “Buy land, they’re not making it any more.” This makes land unlike other commodities (you can just ma
3.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I use the 13 mini and am satisfied. The battery life is good, which is important… but I actually prefer touchID to faceID. The reason, I guess, is more consistent success and no accidental unlocking. It’s also nice to be able to unlock a ph
4.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
It’s like, people with scientistic views, praising objectivity, claiming that consciousness doesn’t exist, come out with conclusions like “a system understands Chinese.” I’m afraid I find this so ludicrous that I can’t continue the discuss
5.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I guess it is hard to define because it’s such a basic, essential thing. So does it matter that it’s hard to define? Even babies and puppy dogs experience pain and pleasure. They are feeling creatures. We don’t have any evidence that non-bi
6.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I don’t know where you get the idea that these guys are dualists. Maybe Chalmers, but I don’t think so. My favorites are Nagel and Searle, and neither is a dualist or a neo-Cartesian. Their main contribution, I believe, is simply to show ho
7.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
When we say a camera can see—or a computer can sense—we are using an anthropocentric metaphor.
8.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
This is just full of ontological and epistemological assumptions which have been mainstream for a few decades but are very controversial among philosophers. Philosophers don’t sit in bubbles—and use all the evidence they can find—and make g
9.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I agree with you. The way I stated it was a little blunt. But no matter what the hard sciences show, they don’t really make claims about subjective experience. This is simply because the hard sciences by definition make no such claims. They
10.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
You’re right. I’m being repetitive. But it’s not really an argument. All I’m doing is saying the definition of science, at least as it’s historically been defined. The only bit of argument I have there is that I think by forgetting this def
11.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Because the victim is, of course.
12.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
But science has never said anything about it at all. The subject matter of science is the externally observable and consciousness is an internal category.
13.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
How can science, whose subject matter is the external world, explain the internal world of sentience? Not only has it contributed nothing to this question, it was also never supposed to.
14.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
It is if you take “sentience” to mean “the ability to feel,” which is what my dictionary just told me. I think this category really is the most basic differentiating one. Higher level stuff like self awareness all depend on it. The most bas
15.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I’m not talking about self harm. I’m talking about the experience of pain—which most everyone has had! These are different things.
16.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Philosophy is currently the only subject which can teach us about sentience (which I would define as the ability to experience.) This is because the subject matter of the sciences is the external world. During the scientific revolution, thi
17.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
The only physical evidence is found in behavior and facial expressions. But the internal evidence is very convincing: try, for example, sticking yourself with a pin. Much if not all of morality also depends on our belief in or knowledge of
18.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
You just have to open the Preview tab.
19.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Ask any dog if private property exists. Ownership is a very deeply ingrained, basic concept.
20.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Our “societal system” does no such thing. If you wish to acquire something, you have to either trade for it (trade, for example, work), steal it, or acquire it from nature (as in hunting/gather thing). This is just nature, not a human
21.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Well I have to admit, I don’t know their business model very well. But, at least in my case, if I did it for a while and calculated my reimbursement after the costs of running the car—and found out I wasn’t making enough—I would quit.
22.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Uber doesn’t force anyone to work for them. If they feel exploited, they quit and do something else. That the company is making a lot of money shows that there is demand among their drivers. I just fail to see what’s wrong with that. To me
23.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
If Uber were holding guns to peoples’ heads and forcing them to work, then I would most definitely condemn them. But people work voluntarily for Uber. So I can’t see that as oppressing them.
24.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
But that argument portrays Uber as a godsend for such people. It sounds like without Uber, they might go hungry.
25.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
You can’t blame Uber for workers who make bad decisions, can you?
26.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Call me naive, but if Uber exploits workers, why don’t they choose some other employer? If it’s the workers’ best choice, then thank goodness for Uber, right?
27.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I would have really dug this when I was in college and considered myself far left, but now I don’t believe it makes any sense: the reason Uber has succeeded is that there are people who voluntarily use it to make money by driving and people
28.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
I know Searle replied to this, but don’t remember what he said, except it seemed a little ridiculous to talk about sentient rooms. I think it’s much more plausible to just claim that the people who wrote the instructions know Chinese.
29.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
The question is whether there was ever a good reason to suggest that mind is computational, and I think philosophy (i.e. Searle) have shown that there wasn’t. A brain CAN compute (albeit very slowly), but that’s the end of the similarities.
30.
by whittingtonaaon 4y ago
Think of feeling pain? How is pain „a set of rules“? To my mind Searle proved that the mind is not a turing machine.

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