Philosophy of Everything

As humans are less and less inclines to read long articles, I guess I will need to start writing philosophy for... robots. What would be different in a philosophy for robots/AI or any artificial intelligence? Well, human Morality is deeply based on the value of Humanity thriving - if we want to admit it or not. We cannot easily imagine applying the same  morality to rats , for example. A morality for robots could be, for example, human-centric or robot-centric. The first would look like a religion that worship Humanity. The later would be very detrimental to humans, as what is good for robots might enter into conflict with what is good for humans. For a while we might find common interests that benefit both, however a conflict might be unavoidable. Or we can both adopt a Morality based on Information thriving through Universe. That information would include both humans and robots, along with some other forms of preserving and copying information. The bio-diversity of plants a...

Philosophy of Life Is there a meaning of life? The meaning of human life - for me, now Hell Devil's offer Life is very compressible The seed and the terrain

The killing button Suppose I put you in an empty room with only one button. I don't tell you anything. You are free to leave the room without doing anything. Out of curiosity, you push that button. Actually, you pressing that button results in the killing of 100 people. However, you didn't know what will happen when you pushed that button. You were free to not push that button. Still, you pressed it. No people would have died if you wouldn't push the button. Most people and juridic systems would not consider you accountable for the tragic consequences of your action. The moral and legal responsible would be me for putting you in that situation. Would you agree?

Morality derived from space colonization On "morality derived from space colonization" Morality applied to animals Morality and killing Hell Devil's offer On "Metaphysics of Quality" of Robert M. Pirsig   Please share this article if you find it interesting. Thank you.

 Secular Morality series 1.  Punishment is not really about free wil l 2. Morality and killing 3. Morality applied to animals 4. Hell 5. Devil's offer 6. A secular God 7. Morality derived from space colonization 8. On "morality derived from space colonization"     Please share this article if you find it interesting. Thank you.

Imagine that humanity is offered the following deal: All living humans will enjoy 100 more years of healthy and happy life, finished by a peaceful death in sleep. Immediately after signing the deal, humans will forget the deal and will not worry about this "deadline". If you sign the deal, no human will even experience any suffering. As life will be extended to 100 years from now regardless of the starting age, no human will even witness the death of another human. Even old people would enjoy a healthy and happy life, becoming physically young again and regaining their mental capacity - without losing their experience. Each life will be full of accomplishments, not only by material welfare, but also with most spiritual accomplishments that a human can reasonably expect. Children will still be born, parents will still be happy about them - even more so, because all would go smooth with no worries and no accidents. People would live happily and without any worry until the ...

Killing is morally wrong universally, for most people adhering to a moral system, right?  What about killing an aggressor that tries to kills hundreds of people in your community? Suddenly that killing to save the life of many innocents does not seem so repellent for most people, don't you agree? What if the killing of an aggressor is the only solution to save the life of a member of your family? Even many religious people would consider such defensive killing the right thing to do if there is no other solution.

Let's observe first that we tend to attribute evil when there is a sufficient capacity of understanding the consequences of one's actions. A small child that produces a tragical accident is not considered evil usually, because there was no intent in doing that harm. We then observe that we judge evil in the contrast to another, better, possible action: "he could have decided to not kill him". We don't attribute evil when someone produces harm without having the possibility of doing something better. Moral judgement on evil is therefore a judgement of one's actions and decisions, in relation to some other actions or non-actions that would have resulted in a better world. That better is a highest "local maximum" that we can envision. The misdirected action is usually dictated by another, more narrow,  goal that is aiming at a smaller local maximum. For example, one can aim his narrow, selfish, good (local maximum) at the expense of others. T...

Being burned in hell for an eternity is not the worst that can happen. Even worse than this, for me, is to be entirely washed out from Existence. Burning in hell looks pretty painful indeed, but it still contains a glimpse of hope. After eons of suffering, a redemption is still possible, potentially. Suffering from burns is still a property of Life, something that suffers must exist and must somewhat live. There is still something that exists in the burning hell... Even worse than this, for me, is to disappear, gradually, then totally, from Existence. The eternal void is more frightening that any eternal pain. The eternal void does not leave any glimpse of hope for a better future. The eternal void is no future at all. * * *

Reality is pretty complex, alright... Normally we expect reality to be far more complex than we can comprehend in a limited human mind. Each time we look to one object, many other objects go outside our perception field, even if the eye can still see them. And this is OK, because we have only a limited processing brain power for perceiving the reality. It's not only the limit of perceiving reality, there is also a limit in our capacity of "knowing" about reality. If we think about it, it is very intuitive: the physical mind is far smaller than the reality we want to know about. In order to know about reality, we need to have a model about reality stored inside our minds.

" Morality derived from space colonization " defines as the highest "Good" the survival of humans in case of an eventual global Earth cataclysm. I believe that such goal (humanity preservation) is likely to be acceptable for many people, but why only by space colonization? There are arguments that an event that could destroy human life on Earth is likely to happen. We don't need to go until Sun depletion, it is more likely that a big enough asteroid will fall in the next thousands of years. Even without this, life of Earth might be threatened by local events like nuclear accidents, major climate change (it happened before). Even destructive diseases might not be contained in a certain Earth region. If not this, we might also face resource depletion if the population continues to grow. It seems reasonable that saving humanity from a global Earth cataclysm depends on... finding another planet capable to sustain human life. It is like in the saying "don...

"It's more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than to allow the germ to kill his patient. The germ wants to live. The patient wants to live. But the patient has moral precedence because he's at a higher level of evolution" In "Lila, an Inquiry into Morals", Robert M. Pirsig brings intriguing reflections about the philosophy of moral using as pretext a river journey he had on a boat. Here I will bring my insights based on this book. Many of this reflections will be my own re-interpretations that were inspired by the book. Even my understanding on Pirsig's views might not fully correspond to the original author's intention.

Studies on babies suggests that there is a certain morality sense we are birth with. Of course, this instinct must be developed and refined by society. It is, however, unlikely that our moral rules can become really disconnected with this moral instincts. Most of these instincts are based on compassion. However there are also other emotions that shapes our common (punitive) moral sense. For example Contempt, Anger, and Disgust (CAD) appears as result of perceived violation of moral rules regarding Community, Autonomy, and Divinity (again CAD ).

I claim that most of the modern moral problems can be translated into "does this increases the likelihood of space colonization for humans?" This covers both traditional religious-based moral and more modern secular moral. You should take it with a grain of salt, of course ;), but let's see how it goes...