Why are paradoxes considered profound?

@Cyracuz,

The "self" is a member of different groups with conflicting membership rules.
The "self as father and husband" has a responsibility for the continued welfare of his family including his own health. The "self as a member of a humanity" has a responsibility for the care of non-family members perhaps at the risk of his own health. (Consider other scenarios of priests hearing confessions of criminals, or Germans hiding fugitives from Nazis at the risk of their own family).

2 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

You didn't answer my question.

0 Replies

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

The "self" is a member of different groups with conflicting membership rules.
The "self as father and husband" has a responsibility for the continued welfare of his family including his own health. The "self as a member of a humanity" has a responsibility for the care of non-family members perhaps at the risk of his own health. (Consider other scenarios of priests hearing confessions of criminals, or Germans hiding fugitives from Nazis at the risk of their own family).

...energy gain can be both particular and social...not easy to manage..

What you are saying is that moral dilemmas with no easy resolution exist, which they do, reason why there is from young age moral indoctrinating principles precisely trying to control conflicts between instinct of self preservation and social collective interest...in there you have the justification for "Religions" and "Gods" at large ! (tackle that !)

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

No. What I am saying is that "moral issues" defy the simplistic logical analysis which you seem to ascribe to them. The antithesis of "simplistic" is "profound" not merely "complex". Profundity indicates an error in simplistic analysis rather than a matter of degree of application.

1 Reply

@fresco,

Thanks, fresco. I was thinking along those lines, just wanted to make sure I understood you. I guess a decision of moral action then becomes a matter of deciding which group membership holds the highest value to the person faced with the choice.

0 Replies

@fresco,

I suppose your use of "profound" very much means stuff like, irreducible complexity, emergent phenomena, and magic effects at large...
...look Fresco you are entitled to your view, and I am in favour of diversity of opinion in a democracy...at this point seams rather pointless trying to reconcile perspectives which after so detailed explanation is clear are not reconcilable at all !

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

just to reply to Cyr´s simplified caricature, "killing the villagers", fellow humans produces an hypothetical "mirror effect" chain reaction, which can destabilize social cohesion...so its not a viable hypothesis after all...as I said before, extreme measures like resorting to mass murder are only viable in case of Darwinian survival, in the limits, they hardly can represent any gain in energy efficiency when they attack the very core of cohesion they are trying to preserve !

The "killing the villagers, simplified caricature" is not a hypothesis. That stuff happens you know. I guess the people responsible follow your kind of moral evaluation.
Your attempt to wiggle your way out of this one is just a bunch of obscure nonsense designed to disguise the fact that this theory of yours cannot begin to account for moral choices.
But then again, it's pretty much what I expected from you.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

First the hypothesis concerned the mirror effect not the killing, learn to read !
Second, its precisely because it happens that Moral indoctrinating principles are so strongly defended and tout by religions...

...you are the last person even on this group capable of appreciating my creative thinking...and that, you can bet your sorrow ass, is nothing but the absolute truth too the matter !!!

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

The point is that fluctuating or shifting paradigms are the epistemological norm. Absolute reliance on one ....call it "mechanicality" if you like....is as doomed as any other attempt at absolutism, religious or otherwise.

1 Reply

@fresco,

...and yet is curious I don´t see your willingness to a paradigm shift anywhere in the horizon...ironically your "methodology" resists analysis and for such no dialogue can be entertained with it ! Wink

0 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

I was going to say that you can believe what you want, but I don't have to, because you're going to do that anyway.
I think that if a theory can explain the workings of a problem, but cannot be applied directly to the problem, to solve it, that theory is worthless.

0 Replies

@The Pentacle Queen,

The Pentacle Queen wrote:

Is Fil a girl or a boy?

You're asking the wrong questions. The right question to ask is: "Why do I care who Fil is and what he says when I clearly think he's a troll?" If you think he's a troll, put him on ignore. Trolls thrive on attention, negative or positive. Your best move against trolls---any trolls--- is to withdraw the attention they crave. While I make no judgment whether Fil is a troll or not, you are rewarding him right now if he is. What good do you think that's going to do?

1 Reply

@Thomas,

...you are the paradigmatic example of an old fart pissing on a vacuum of ideas...kenneth used to show how blissfully ignorant and mediocre you are...yes I remember that distinctly ! Mr. Green

2 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

...my seeking of attention it is so great that I am announcing my immediate retreat from this forum from this very moment on...
It is evident that you don´t deserve the pleasure of my presence around nor do I need the pathetic educated ignorance displayed by 90% of the posts I must endure...
for all that I care you can all enjoy your mediocrity together...thankfully I am sufficiently appreciated elsewhere...

3 Replies

@Fil Albuquerque,

A statement like that seems specifically aimed towards hurting a person's feelings. You must be a very unhappy person to want to do that to someone. Now I just pity you...

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

...my seeking of attention it is so great that I am announcing my immediate retreat from this forum from this very moment on...

*happy face*

Quote:

It is evident that you don´t deserve the pleasure of my presence around nor do I need the pathetic educated ignorance displayed by 90% of the posts I must endure...
for all that I care you can all enjoy your mediocrity together

That just says it all...

0 Replies

@Cyracuz,

I think maybe Thomas being " physicist working in IT" might be able to handle it ! Smile

0 Replies

Well done, gang! Drunk

1 Reply

@JLNobody,

Here's perhaps a paradox. I'm not shy about voicing my opinion of Fil, but he did keep us talking... Still, two pages worth of posts to argue a simple point does get tiresome.

I've been thinking about these moral paradoxes, or dilemmas. They seem to be a bit different from the standard logical paradoxes, even though a moral dilemma isn't quite a paradox in the true sense of the word...

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Moral dilemmas can be "solved" by the acceptance of a a dis-unified "self". Self 1 has different allegiances to self2 and an internal debate ensues. But acceptance of that dis-unity implies the demise of set theoretic logic, because different aspects of self "thing the world differentially". Thus in the paradox..."the only truth is that there is no truth".... one aspect of self accepts a concept of "truth" and one does not. The transcendent position is to recognize both interactions with the world can be simultaneously "valid", but to ignore or "forget" that they are dependent on the dis-unified self.

Now a criticism of "catch-all" might be aimed at this analysis ( as per Fil), but I have countered with the acceptance of aspects of this principle from those scientists and philosophers who grasp the idea of paradigmatic shifts and observer-observed interaction. Merleau-Ponty for example (extending Heidegger's "at-handedness") rigorously analysed data on perceptual pathology following bodily injury, and concluded that only a Gestalt explanation of perception (e.g. duck-rabbit ambiguity scenario) was adequate in explaining the results. Mechanistic explanations, including neurological experiments on "phantom limbs" (another paradox) simply failed.

1 Reply

Why are paradoxes considered profound?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know