http://forums.philosophyforums.com Active discussions in all fields of philosophy. en-us How is homosexuality related to Oedipus Complex? (This question might sound stupid) What about bisexuality? Does it have anything to do with Oedipus Complex? According to Freud, we are all innately bisexual. And we become heterosexual or homosexual due to how we are raised. http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/oedipus-complex-30118.html Fri, 09 May 2008 01:40:18 PDT http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/30118 Based on my definitions of morality and ethics (which I think are reasonable and typical) I don't understand how atheists can be moral/immoral - however, they can be ethical/unethical. Morality: An action is deemed as a general 'metaphysically' good/evil act based on info from the invisible dude with the big white invisible beard. This info on morality is meant to allow the max utility for the max amount of people Ethics: An action is deemed as rationally good/evil based on the resulting utility. Clearly morality and ethics overlap, but I just do not understand how most of the atheists I read/converse with seem to have this idea of general good, which I feel, they are confusing with individual good. Well...I kind of do, but that will be explained momentarily. Now I hope enough people read my post that they will attack my definition of morality. Perhaps one attack will question why morality has to be from god. My response would be that it would be logically impossible to otherwise know what action would be generally good in this situation. Now the tricky part, what is meant by generally good? I feel like when people talk about right/wrong and good/evil they look at it as explanations rather than just as devices which help us understand the world. By seeing them as explanations they become polarized into what religious morality is, and that is how I define "Good" in the aforementioned paragraph. It is also why I don't understand the viewpoints of many atheists who see their ideas as right/wrong. Anyways yadda yadda yadda only God or any omnipotent being would know what to do in a given situation to make it right/wrong. But, I think I still gave a fairly muddled idea of what 'good' is. Is it inherently good or extrinsically good? More clearly, the timeless question - is it good because God says its good or because it actually has some benefits? I hope good is both, because if it doesn't give utility it would mess with how i look at morality/ethics alot. I look at morality/ethics as a set of decisions illustrated as such: (d means decision) d2a... / d1a / \d2b... d1 d2c... \ / d1b \ d2c... For each decision there is a number of utility attached to it and at the end of the chain there is a total number of utility you have achieved. Theoretically, there is a maximum number of utility - and my viewpoint is based on the fact that I want to gain maximum utility. As I am not omnipotent I could not know how to get the maximum utility - only God would know (note - I know there is a problem here, if you bring it up I will address it). Thus, therefore and subsequently, the idea I mentioned earlier of a general good is the maximum amount of utility for all people - to me this is the home of morality. The idea of ethics is the decision tree on an individual scale, maximizing the utility of the individual or individual good. Please agree or disagree to this statement, most people (you!) subscribe to ethics/morals (whatever ones definition is) that are rational. Why are these ethics/morals rational - more to the point to what end is the rationality relating to? The end is that by taking upon said ethics/morals, your utility will be higher. This falls under my definition of ethics, and I believe most people, athiests/theists/agnostics, would agree to this. However, when a person who subscribes to my idea of ethics is put into a compromising situation his/her idea of good/evil may now shift. It may now shift into more of an understanding of good/evil - this understanding perhaps allows them to see their actions on a spectrum and depolarization occurs whereby certain actions may change their status from good to evil or from evil to good, for example: d1a)eat people / d1)I want to eat people \ d1b) don't eat people If this individual feels that after considering all factors his utility would be higher by eating people than, for this individual, eating people becomes good, whereas before it was evil. You can infer the rest of the problems that arise from this conclusion as this is highly theoretical and doesn't take into account a bunch of stuff, because then this post would be super long instead of just really long. Sorry for that, I never meant it to be this big. And I am not imposing my views on atheists/theists whatever you are, I just really don't understand how an atheist is anything but amoral. http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/atheism-amorality-30117.html Thu, 08 May 2008 23:47:58 PDT http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/30117 I always think that the thoughts in my head are moving much faster than how quickly I can talk. I then got to thinking about different languages. Spoken word is so far the quickest form of communicating thoughts and emotions onto another person. As monkeys evolved to wise humans, languages formed. All different kind of languages. I was curious if anyone knows which language is the quickest to communicate something? Say I wanted to describe the latest movie I saw. If my thoughts were the same and I was fluent in every language, which would be the quickest to portray what was in my mind? http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/what-is-the-quickest-language-30116.html Thu, 08 May 2008 23:11:55 PDT http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/30116 In 1886 Francis Ellingwood Abbot, a Unitarian theologian wrote in his 'Scientific Theism', [i]"Now all the established truths which are formulated in the multifarious propositions of science have been won by the use of Scientific Method. This method consists in essentially three distinct steps (1) observation and experiment, (2) hypothesis, (3) verification by fresh observation and experiment."[/i] Here we have the scientific method in its canonical form. From 1886 onwards, this schematic formulation became popular and, as we know, has remained so until today. As an aside, this method is often referred to as the Baconian method, although Bacon’s method as outlined his Novum Organum is completely different. Go figure. What can we say about this method? Can we agree with Abbot that it is the fountain head of all scientific knowledge? Thinking about it, isn’t this method just trial-and-error in disguise? Let’s say you 1) observe someone opening a door; 2) hypothesise that the door was opened by pressing the handle; 3) verify this in an experiment by jumping up and trying to catch the handle in your paws. So that’s my cat’s version of the scientific method. The process repeats until either the door opens or she gives up on the bathroom and pees in my shoe. If the canonical scientific method is nothing more than trial-and-error, should that lead me to admire it for being simple and philosophically unsophisticated? Or should I instead wonder why a method my cat uses is said to be the indispensable agent of scientific progress? /Chris Steinbach http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/my-cat-and-the-scientific-method-30115.html Thu, 08 May 2008 16:08:48 PDT http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/30115 I'm having a bit of trouble understanding some applications of modal logic to provability. Any explanation or help on these would be helpful. For reference BewPA means provable in PA. Take a "world" to be a model of PA and stipulate that a world A has access to a world B iff whenever BewPA(P) is true in A, P is true in B. 1. Show that a sentence BewPA(P) is true in a world A iff P is true in every world accessible from A. Going left to right (assuming BewPA is true in A), it seems to follow by definition of the accessibility relation that if BewPA(P) is true in a world A, P is true in every world accessible. I'm having a bit of trouble going right to left - If P is true in every world accessible from A, BewPA(P) is true in world A. I think the right strategy is to try to prove the contrapositive: If NOT BewPA(P) is true in world A, there is a world accessible from A where NOT P is true, but I'm not sure how to do this. Any help would be appreciated! Thank you! http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/modal-logic-and-provability-30112.html Thu, 08 May 2008 15:25:11 PDT http://forums.philosophyforums.com/thread/30112