loqi comments on Quantifying ethicality of human actions - Less Wrong
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Comments (58)
Pythagoras isn't really consulted in this regard except by those doing work in Ancient History of Philosophy. Also, I don't really know what the first sentence means. Honestly, in some of these cases maybe arguments could be made in favor of the writer's assertions but a lot of these claims are so unclear and unusual that anyone new to these issues would come away with wrong ideas.
"Methods of Aristotle" goes undefined throughout. This really could mean nearly anything. But whatever the interpretation I know of no insightful way to distinguish neoclassical economics from Islamic or feminist economic by referencing Aristotle.
Wtf? I'm not an expert in Islamic or Feminist economics but... they reject the law of the excluded middle? They deny that all propositions are either true or not true? Maybe there is a keen insight here, if so someone explain it to me. I reads like a non-sequitur.
They're not.
The Eightfold Path is neither an ordinal nor cardinal set of priorities- its a conceptual division. And I have no idea how one would use it as a framework in this regard.
No. The Enlightenment took us from one major tradition (Thomistic Scholasticism) to three or four different theories (utilitarianism, Kantianism, natural rights, self-interest/ contractualism). While there was certainly diversity among scholastics (some favoring Plato, Some Thomas/Aristotle etc.) there was little to no inventiveness in moral philosophy, every theory was just a different way of relating morality to the Christian God.
You could see it that way but you would be seeing it wrong. I can explain in detail why this is wrong if need be. Suffice to say that the CI tells you to do different things in some circumstances and is motivated by an entirely different set of concerns than the Golden Rule. Also, the CI has nothing to do with the "impacts" of one's actions.
Anyway, those are the areas I feel most confident commenting on. Others might have more to say.
I could be mistaken, but I think that's just imported postmodern claptrap: "Truth is relative. What's true for me might not be true for someone else. Therefore some propositions are both true and not true." Not exactly keen or insightful.
No, there are good reasons to reject the law of excluded middle other than that particular flavor of relativism. I think the jury's still out on whether anything of worth can come out of paraconsistent logic (or intuitionism that disallows the law for infinite sets, or other such logics) but trying to reject the principle of explosion and resolving the liar's paradox seem like the sorts of things a professional logician might reasonably spend time on.
I completely agree. But do you think it's reasonable for economists to reject the results of other economists on the grounds that the result depends on the law of the excluded middle?
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't have a problem with an intuitionist/constructivist economist who rejected the formal deductive validity of proof that relied on the LoXM. But it wouldn't follow from that that the predictions the other economist were wrong, and frankly thats the criteria by which economic theories should be evaluated anyway since perfect deductive validity isn't important when your axioms aren't always true either.
As a point of historical curiosity, I'd be interested to know if there ever was an explicitly constructivist economist.
Does this guy count?
Er, this constructivism not this one.
Of course there are. If I understand the abstract correctly, this paper argues for a particular formalization of game theory (often a branch of economics) on the grounds that the players (intuitionistically) play strategies that are computable from only a bounded amount of lookahead.
www.math.wisc.edu/~lempp/conf/wroc/stecher.pdf
Not sure that justifies an "Of course there are", but very nice find.
Rule 34!
If I couldn't find one, I'd have been compelled to become one.