You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

zookeeper

['Member']Joined: August 18, 2016 at 21:11Last active: November 19, 2022 at 10:56None discussions73 comments

Comments

You lie. If I was hammering toothpicks under your fingernails, you would not believe that there's nothing wrong about it and that there's no reason to...
November 19, 2022 at 11:07
You got it all backwards! As soon as we have the capacity, we must extinguish all known life and try to minimize the chances of it arising again. Howe...
August 01, 2020 at 16:29
That's what I hold to be true, more or less. Pretty straightforward antinatalism argument. However, you seem to approach this from an anthropocentric ...
July 23, 2020 at 06:01
I don't know Bill so all I can do is guess, but for me it's easy to find questions I would myself deem unanswerable. Subjects like ethics and politics...
July 15, 2020 at 08:36
I don't think "stopping the spread of harmful ideas" can really work at least in the liberal western culture. This is a culture that I think idolizes ...
July 14, 2020 at 06:55
Of course. So, what do you think of the ethics of it?
July 12, 2020 at 08:55
Too prone to abuse, too irreversible when it turns out a prisoner was innocent after all, too unfair due to variability (some would have easier/worse ...
July 04, 2020 at 14:05
Despite living far from the US and not really having discussed BLM with many people, one problem I expect a lot of people to have is simply that they ...
July 02, 2020 at 12:11
Of course, I agree about people generally holding a massive double standard with regards to treatment of animals, but I'll try to have something else ...
June 28, 2020 at 15:17
Objectively, it is. But I wouldn't know anything about that.
June 27, 2020 at 10:52
Sure, animals would seem to have fewer reasons to be sad and fewer requirements to be happy. Is that reason to assume they tend to be less sad than a ...
June 24, 2020 at 18:05
A) And just how often is that? Animals starve, freeze, bleed and drown to death all the time. B) Some animals have simple needs, some also have social...
June 24, 2020 at 13:36
Oh, for sure. I think it wasn't long ago that some study did, if not outright prove, but at least strongly suggest that in prehistoric times only very...
June 21, 2020 at 20:39
I'm afraid I can't tell what that means, but I'll wager a guess: genes that increase promiscuity in men don't actually end up propagating through the ...
June 20, 2020 at 22:12
Well, I don't see how what I've said would be mutually exclusive with gene-centric evolution.
June 20, 2020 at 21:59
Because reproduction is free for a male, and costly and dangerous (and in the worst case, fatal) for a female? From the point of view of spreading the...
June 20, 2020 at 21:41
Men can have a practically unlimited amount of children, women can carry at best one child per year. Plus, after birth, only the woman is physically n...
June 20, 2020 at 21:10
What do you mean it appears? D and E don't follow from A, B and C. The common explanation is that there's more variability among men than there is amo...
June 20, 2020 at 20:27
I'm inclined to say that I don't understand this whole objectification thing. Sure, I can read the words about seeing another person as merely an obje...
June 18, 2020 at 21:34
But it isn't necessarily that kind of framing. Locking your car/bike/house makes you a less likely victim of theft, even though the responsibility wou...
June 15, 2020 at 19:14
If the anaesthetic also made you experience time more slowly, at which point would that change your assessment that you'd be fine with it? If the surg...
June 12, 2020 at 19:59
I'm under the impression that it has been studied and that pain does show up on EEG and such, and if true, that would seem to place your scenario main...
June 12, 2020 at 19:56
It matters as much as any other pain. You won't (presumably) remember any pain once you're dead, either, yet that doesn't make your worldly suffering ...
June 12, 2020 at 19:18
I don't see how that actually follows. I feel like I can imagine what it's like to be a psychopath the same way I can imagine, well, perhaps any other...
June 02, 2020 at 20:19
What I would really, really like is to block myself from seeing the threads of a particular category entirely. Some of the active threads there are fu...
May 31, 2020 at 21:22
If humans have an intrinsic need to categorize, then gender might have been a really simple and convenient way to categorize others (and oneself), see...
May 31, 2020 at 13:34
I would choose the one claiming to be sane, of course. There is no way to deduce the "right" answer (at best, one can arbitrarily choose a theory abou...
May 20, 2020 at 14:10
It's not an inconsistency unless one believes that beetles and cows are capable of equal amounts of suffering, or that their lives somehow matter equa...
May 14, 2020 at 22:06
So just to clarify: you personally value the lives and suffering of, say, a beetle and a cow equally (or, alternatively, that you believe a beetle and...
May 14, 2020 at 21:48
You specifically said that the alternative to animals suffering on farms is the animals suffering in the wild. And it's obviously not, since those ani...
May 14, 2020 at 20:53
But practically no one ever suggests such a thing. The alternative to suffering of farmed animals is obviously not freeing them to starve in the wild,...
May 14, 2020 at 16:08
Why do you find that strange? There is no actual contradiction there, after all. In my experience, most animal rights people tend to agree that nature...
May 14, 2020 at 10:24
I appreciate the span of your reply, but I believe you misunderstood my question. :grin: If we humans stop breeding and go extinct, non-human sufferin...
May 10, 2020 at 12:43
Assuming that, through some kind of argumentative miracle, we could convince all of humanity of negative utilitarianism and antinatalism, what would y...
May 10, 2020 at 08:07
Fair enough, experience was a poor choice of word. Substitute "experience" with "intuit", "view", "feel about" or something along those lines.
May 09, 2020 at 10:30
The asymmetry is not an argument, it's a description of how we humans experience pain and pleasure. Your purported contradiction is not a contradictio...
May 09, 2020 at 06:59
Yes. Sadly, it is tricky to actually try to apply in real life. The only currently foreseeable way to achieve extinction of life even just on our plan...
May 06, 2020 at 22:23
I think that tends to be a counterargument to the idea that homosexuality is a choice and people can decide to stop being gay if they really want to. ...
February 23, 2017 at 16:38
Indeed, punishmentless doesn't have to mean being soft, idealistic and non-interventionist.
February 13, 2017 at 22:09
You might find it interesting to read up on some basics of evolution. It's the thing which tends to answer those kind of questions quite comprehensive...
February 13, 2017 at 18:52
I don't see what the fundamental problem would be in trying to get rid of punishment. Not having punishment doesn't mean the system would, for example...
February 13, 2017 at 17:43
This sounds very much like the argument that the universe must have been designed for humans (or, if you prefer, known terrestrial life in general) be...
February 10, 2017 at 10:39
Sorry for being dense, but what do you mean by solving? Are you hoping to find an explanation of why such a situation couldn't occur, or an explanatio...
February 09, 2017 at 16:36
What do you mean, why? What sort of answer are you looking for? Do you want an explanation from the angle of developmental psychology about how most p...
January 05, 2017 at 10:56
I wouldn't call it hypocricy, lack of sincerity or even political correctness if someone isn't interested in hearing just about anyone's opinions abou...
January 03, 2017 at 21:16
Maybe the common usage really isn't very good then. If you have, for example, a brilliant scientist making great discoveries and providing heaps of ut...
December 25, 2016 at 22:22
That doesn't seem to make any logical sense, though. The being can't for example just create some another being and try to pass it off as autonomous a...
December 16, 2016 at 23:02
Well that was a pleasant surprise! I picked Sweden because my country wasn't in the list, and my guesses got me to #1 in the ranking, with Sweden at #...
December 15, 2016 at 17:41
Pretty much no one ever asserts that something is true because someone says it is. Someone who believes that crooked politicians run a pedophile ring ...
December 06, 2016 at 17:54
Seems to me that it shows why advice that one shouldn't believe things just because someone says is far from a complete solution, no?
December 05, 2016 at 21:52