Zeus' Ethics Quiz

I don't want your money rsaccountrader, but come reply all the same.

 

[Fendle]

rsaccounttrader sent me 1k usd 10/10

 

[Rsaccounttrader]

Too easy. If you did not exist you could not ask your question:
To ask a question implies some thing to do the asking, and that thing must necessarily exist in order for the question to have been asked. The question was asked, therefore the questioner exists.

Not quite.
I could attack this from a "I cannot prove I exist" standpoint, but that is not what I asked; I asked for you to prove I exist.
What if "you" are just imagining that I asked the question. Then there is no need for that to be that "thing" in the first place.

That's not even beyond a reasonable doubt, it's deductively certain:
1. A question cannot be asked without the existence of a questioner. (Non-existence cannot create existence.)
2. A question has been asked.
3. A questioner exists.

I can imagine someone asking a question, and the question is therefore asked (albeit by my imagination), but the questioner need not exist.

Just use common sense: the smartest philosophers would not still be debating this if the answer were clear...
There's a reason rationalist philosophy is a branch, and not the branch, of philosophy.

 

Not quite.
I could attack this from a "I cannot prove I exist" standpoint, but that is not what I asked; I asked for you to prove I exist.

And I did prove you exit, irrefutably. Or more specifically, you proved you exist and I pointed to that proof.

What if "you" are just imagining that I asked the question. Then there is no need for that to be that "thing" in the first place.

If you are a figment of my imagination, then you still exist. You exist as a figment of my imagination. A question cannot be raised without some thing to raise it.


More about this:
If you suppose that the world is a figment of your imagination then there is no point to having a debate, or asking a question. You would have to hold two contradictory ideas at once and believe them both 100% in order to have a debate with yourself. But if you can do this then there is no logic and there can be no debate. Hence the second you assume that a debate is possible, you have already assumed a whole plethora of things about the ontology and metaphysics of the universe. And you will find naturally that attempting to refute these primaries (existence, consciousness, identity) will only result in performative contradiction.

I can imagine someone asking a question, and the question is therefore asked (albeit by my imagination), but the questioner need not exist.

The questioner is simply defined as the thing asking a question. If that is part of your brain, then it still exists. The principle point is that something which exists (i.e. the question) cannot come from something that does not. Therefore the act of asking a question definitively proves the existence of the thing doing the asking.

Just use common sense: the smartest philosophers would not still be debating this if the answer were clear...
There's a reason rationalist philosophy is a branch, and not the branch, of philosophy.

Ha! Firstly this is an appeal to authority and secondly I don't think you've read philosophy very widely if you honestly believe this sophist drivel is still unresolved after 4000 years of debating it.

 

[Heeatz]

tl;dr sythe wins go donate $1000

 

[Yenthe666]

tl;dr sythe wins go donate $1000

For sure.

 

[Syed]

god bless you virgins

 

Still waiting for an rsaccounttrader response here.

 

[Rsaccounttrader]

If you are a figment of my imagination, then you still exist. You exist as a figment of my imagination. A question cannot be raised without some thing to raise it.

This is not what I meant when I said "prove I exist". Of course, the very action of identifying an "I", and defining it as such, creates existence for the "I", if only as an idea. I am not debating that point.
What I am pondering, and what I want you to show, is if it is provable that I am an independent, conscious entity that is commonly defined as a "human being". That's where the money lies, and that's what no one, including yourself, has been able to satisfactorily prove as of yet.

Ha! Firstly this is an appeal to authority and secondly I don't think you've read philosophy very widely if you honestly believe this sophist drivel is still unresolved after 4000 years of debating it.

Plenty of Enlightenment philosophers have questioned whether it is possible to prove if we exist (to prove that we have a conscious, reflective abilities, senses, and other characteristics that we associate with human beings). They have also pondered over the value of existence.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/

 

This is not what I meant when I said "prove I exist". Of course, the very action of identifying an "I", and defining it as such, creates existence for the "I", if only as an idea. I am not debating that point.
What I am pondering, and what I want you to show, is if it is provable that I am an independent, conscious entity that is commonly defined as a "human being". That's where the money lies, and that's what no one, including yourself, has been able to satisfactorily prove as of yet.

Moving the goal posts fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts#Logical_fallacy

And in order to engage in a debate you first need to assume you are talking to an independent, conscious entity. I've already gone over why this is.

All I need to do is point at the fact you are debating and the matter is settled: --

Independence: To debate with a figment of one's own imagination is impossible, as this requires you to believe two contradictory positions completely. But if you are able to hold two contradictory positions completely then debate and logic are impossible. Hence if you are engaged in debating then you are independent of your opponent. If you are not independent then you cannot be debating.

Consciousness: To engage in debate one must possess the faculty of awareness; awareness of one's self and one's opponent, and of the arguments being transmitted to and from. A corpse, a rock, or a grain of dust have no faculty of awareness and thus cannot engage in debate.

You are debating, therefore you are independent and conscious. As soon as you attempt to refute this you will validate it further. It is a performative contradiction to argue that you are not conscious or independent. The putting forward of an argument requires that you are both. (More on this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_contradiction )

Plenty of Enlightenment philosophers have questioned whether it is possible to prove if we exist (to prove that we have a conscious, reflective abilities, senses, and other characteristics that we associate with human beings). They have also pondered over the value of existence.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/

And they are all terrible. Go read some proper rationalist philosophy. Start with Ayn Rand and work your way from there.

 

[Emperor Nero]

tl;dr: The government sucks, we should have no taxes, let everyone buy their own justice as a commodity in a privatized justice system.

 

tl;dr: The government sucks, we should have no taxes, let everyone buy their own justice as a commodity in a privatized justice system.

Lol you already have a privatized justice system. Just its owned by the same crooks that run the government. Same ones that say "pay or go to jail at the point of a gun" whenever they need money from you; whether its to build roads, pay your neighbour to be a meth addict, invade foreign countries and slaughter civilians, run a huge centralized heathcare ponzi scheme, or bailout countless insolvent banks, it's always the same: Pay or you go to jail. Sometimes they even change the tone: "come to war and kill people, or you go to jail."

Look at what happened to Aaron Swartz, Kim Dotcom, Julian Assange and the Pirate-Bay guys, and tell me you think the "justice system" (more like "just us") is run neutrally for the profit of all.

 

Le bump. Rsaccountrader...

 

[Rsaccounttrader]

Sorry, im the middle of midterm studying.

I wouldn't say I moved the goal posts, but I admit I failed to properly define what I meant by "I", which I defined above.

I disagree with the fact that I must be an independent, conscious entity to be engaged in debate. Internal conflicts are possible; imagination is possible. There is no way to prove you are not imagining me to be a human, and therefore there is no way to declare I am an independent, conscious entity.
Additionally, you cannot declare my debating as a performative contradiction, as if you do not know that I exist independently, then you cannot prove I am debating.

Therefore, why treat me as a human? Why care about my feelings if you do not know they exist?

This is why assumptions must be made before ethics is considered, and hence, one fundamental reason why ethics is subjective.

 

I disagree with the fact that I must be an independent, conscious entity to be engaged in debate. [...]

I'm sorry, but who are you disagreeing with? The act of disagreeing presupposes someone to disagree with.

Again you contradict yourself by action. The act of disagreement requires someone to disagree with (independence) and something to disagree about (and therefore a consciousness to be conscious of that something).

Thus you must already accept independence and consciousness on both ends in order to put forward a disagreement.

Again you are getting caught in performative contradictions: It's like you called me up to tell me the phones don't work. If the phones didn't work then your message would never be delivered, if they do work then your message is false. The exact same logic works here too.


This time read the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_contradiction


I must also say that I don't think you have a very great deal of respect for reason if you allow yourself to be cut-off at the knees by accepting easily refutable contradictions (like "nothing can be proven to exist") as basic tenets of philosophy.

 

[Schoolboy Q]

ANSWERS

A) l
b) k
c) p
d) e
e) q
f)z
g) y

 

[Rsaccounttrader]

I'm sorry, but who are you disagreeing with? The act of disagreeing presupposes someone to disagree with.

Again you contradict yourself by action.

I read the wikipedia page. Again, this time read what I said in the above post. Internal, intellectual conflict is possible. You may be imagining my existence and therefore my question.
You must prove I am actually acting (as an independent actor) before you claim I am contradicting myself.
You put trust in your senses, you put trust in your ability to determine what is real and what is just inside your head, but you have no ability to know if that trust is well placed.

I must also say that I don't think you have a very great deal of respect for reason if you allow yourself to be cut-off at the knees by accepting easily refutable contradictions (like "nothing can be proven to exist") as basic tenets of philosophy.

Well, I do not let this hinder my philosophical thinking. I still am very interested in politics and ethics, as I make the assumption that other people are real, and do exist as independent, conscious entities.
I make this assumption as I put epistemological trust in my senses, and my ability to determine what is real and what is internally imagined. Again, I have no ability to prove I am correctly placing my trust.

 

[mage3158]

And in order to engage in a debate you first need to assume you are talking to an independent, conscious entity. I've already gone over why this is.

So those spiders I was talking to on DPH WERE REAL, HOLY SHIT.

 

I read the wikipedia page. Again, this time read what I said in the above post.

If you start with a logical contradiction (as a premise) then all I have to do is focus on that to refute your argument. I don't need to consider anything else.

Internal, intellectual conflict is possible. You may be imagining my existence and therefore my question.

I still don't think you understand.

It's not a debate if you're talking to yourself. In order to debate you have to be talking to someone else.

You must prove I am actually acting (as an independent actor) before you claim I am contradicting myself.

You contradict yourself as soon as you disagree. Either you are disagreeing with yourself = contradiction, or you are disagreeing with someone else = contradiction. You don't seem to get that both sides of your argument lead to logical contradiction.

Let me elaborate:

If you are a figment of my imagination then every argument you put forward is a logical contradiction, because in order to disagree with me, you are requiring that I hold two opposing logical arguments and believe both of them at the same time -- if this is possible, then logic is not possible.

You cannot successfully argue that logic is a valid means of acquiring knowledge AND that you are a figment of my imagination. It is one or the other. If you are a figment of my imagination then you cannot use logic to prove it (see above.) If you are not a figment of my imagination then arguing that you are is a falsehood. Either way your statement is necessarily false.

Performative contradictions are a tricky concept but you will get them eventually.

You've asked me to logically prove you exist and are conscious. I've done that by pointing out that you are debating, and in order for a debate to be possible you must exist and be conscious. You then attempt to argue that you do not exist or that you are the same entity as myself. But I only need to point out that if logic is possible then you must be independent. If logic is not possible then nothing can be proved, and it doesn't make sense to ask for proof.

Well, I do not let this hinder my philosophical thinking. I still am very interested in politics and ethics, as I make the assumption that other people are real, and do exist as independent, conscious entities.

In this case your entire philosophy is based on floating abstractions linked to nothing. You have no primaries, no principles, no coherent chain of reasoning back to concretes. All you are doing is symbol manipulation and pointless noodling.

I make this assumption as I put epistemological trust in my senses, and my ability to determine what is real and what is internally imagined. Again, I have no ability to prove I am correctly placing my trust.

It's not an assumption. It is axiomatically certain. I'll post it again:

Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.

Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it . . . Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

-Ayn Rand


If you refuse to accept basic axioms (i.e. irrefutable statements) like existence exists then you inevitably base your entire chain or reasoning on fallacies.

Axiom:

An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.

 

[SuF]

I can not doubt that I exist. I can doubt that everyone else exists.