Donald Trump

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Heh.

From nbc4:

Trump left out of Google search for presidential candidates

Google said it was a bug but now that they were busted have been advised of the problem, they fixed it.

Michael

[SteveWolfer]

14 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Apply to whom and by whom?

The people who lost their livelihoods because international trade deals sucked manufacturing plants out of their cities? You mean they are fine when a candidate talks principles in the correct language but they stay broke? 

Apply to things political, by everyone who believes that individual rights are the basis for political philosophy.

Michael, if you no longer believe that those are the principles that should be used to judge good from bad in the political context, what principles do you adopt?  Because politicians have said one thing and done another, do we throw out all talking?

Trump isn't going to get rid of any of the international trade deals - he is going to re-negotiate them.  Is that free trade or just (hopefully) better non-free trade?  And if they are heavy into tariffs, they will be bad. 

But then that is just me, making judgments based upon principles.

[SteveWolfer]

6 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Google said it was a bug but now that they were busted have been advised of the problem, they fixed it.

This kind of thing is a huge problem.  We let generations of our best and brightest come out of the 'best' of universities with their heads filled with social justice progressive bullshit.  This goes back to the late 1800s... Each generation just a little farther to the left - somehow we stayed blind to what was happening and now we are in real trouble and I don't think we can fix it in less than a number of generations.  Journalists, talking heads, politicians, professors, writers, Hollywood people, and now even the heads, top people, and technical staff of big corporations like Google, Facebook, Yahoo... they are all sinking into 'The ends justify the means' approach to their social-justice/global-warming/globalism jihad.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

7 minutes ago, SteveWolfer said:

Apply to things political, by everyone who believes that individual rights are the basis for political philosophy.

Steve,

I believe individual rights are one set of the bases for political philosophy. I also believe a culture where people harbor goodwill toward each other is just as critical.

Here's a thought experiment for you. I've mentioned it several times over the years and it's borne the test of time.

Suppose you take a group of hardened criminals out of a high-security prison, take them to a deserted island, give them a constitution enumerating a bill of rights and a political structure, enough money and resources to set up a community, then tell them they are on their own and leave. What do you think you will find after six months when you return?

Over half dead and gang warfare among the rest, that's what. And maybe an uncomprehending stare when one of them asks, "Constitution? What constitution?"

This shows clearly to me that peace does not come about by individual rights alone, not even individual rights come about by individual rights alone.

What's missing? People who want to be good and guide themselves according to individual rights. People have to want it. And that means morality. People have to want to be good (for the most part) before individual rights will mean anything to them.

There's more. Morality is like food. You don't eat just once, then you're done. You have to eat again after you digest the food. Ditto for wanting to be good. You don't learn a principle, then you're done. Ever hear of the success rate of New Year's Resolutions?  You get tired, tempted, irritated and so on. The next thing you know, you are doing things you never thought you would. So, before you get to that point, you need to stop and get a handle on your morals again.

This is one of the biggest reasons for churches I can think of. People need periodic tune-ups to their morality for the society they live in to exist in peace. If they don't have some method of getting these tune-ups (churches, lectures, stories, books, etc.), no syllogism on earth will make them act good or observe any individual right when they get to hankering to violate it.

So when I talk about an abstraction like government, I'm not just seeing disembodied principles in my mind that connect to each other through words and pretty sentences. I'm not just seeing logical purity. I'm also seeing an image of living human beings in all their complicated glory, their beauty and their ugly sides, their precious fragile minds that are so powerful when let loose in the right way and so messy when they go haywire...

Why do you think there are some people I love on OL who are socialists? It's not because I think socialism is a good idea. It's because they try to be good. And we work on the ideas. Give me a person like that any day over a Randian who is a neurotic control freak. Have you noticed that these types are not around here? I don't moderate them, but they can't stand this place. When they come, they don't last long. I agree with most of their ideas, but they are such assholes, I don't want to be anywhere near them and they feel it. They don't want to be good. They want to be obeyed at root. And they don't get much compliance on OL when they mouth off, so they go elsewhere.

(btw - This is not you, so please don't read anything like that into this. You're one of the good guys. I'm merely explaining how I see the importance of goodwill in addition to philosophy. Also, I like Randians in general. Just not the control freaks.  )

You can talk AT people or you can talk TO them. When you talk AT them, you keep things in the abstract. But then you make the mistake of creating structures that have very little to do with life. When you talk TO them, you integrate the abstract with the actual. Ideas and life--their specific lives--blend.

Michael

[SteveWolfer]

23 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Here's a thought experiment for you. I've mentioned it several times over the years and it's borne the test of time.

Suppose you take a group of hardened criminals out of a high-security prison, take them to a deserted island, give them a constitution enumerating a bill of rights and a political structure, enough money and resources to set up a community, then tell them they are on their own and leave. What do you think you will find after six months when you return?

Over half dead and gang warfare among the rest, that's what. And maybe an uncomprehending stare when one of them asks, "Constitution? What constitution?"

This shows clearly to me that peace does not come about by individual rights alone, not even individual rights come about by individual rights alone.

You could also take a pack of vicious dogs and give them the constitution on a deserted island.  That would be identical to the criminals because there would not be that one missing thing: A significant number of the population that understand what it means to observe the law (we're assuming good laws).

You are doing a kind of switch.  You are switching the concept of a constitution for the implementation of a constitutional government which requires an ongoing effort by knowledgeable people.  That is like saying, "hey, a constitution is just a piece of paper.  I'm giving you a piece of paper... see, it didn't help."

28 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

People have to want to be good (for the most part) before individual rights will mean anything to them.

Yes, but that doesn't tell the whole story.  What does "be good" mean?  Without a specific moral philosophy it is meaningless.  And there are some people who want to "be good" but because they are steeping in socialism or altruism, they abhor individual rights.

 

31 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I'm ... explaining how I see the importance of goodwill in addition to philosophy

We are in complete agreement here, and in other aspects of what you explaining.  I lump it under the heading of psychology (as theory) and "goodwill" is a reasonable descriptor (as practice).  The intersection of philosophy (or abstract beliefs in general) and psychology is a fascinating area and both underrated in its effect, today and throughout history, and rarely paid the attention it deserves.

 

35 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

You can talk AT people or you can talk TO them. When you talk AT them, you keep things in the abstract.

I tend to talk to myself in these posts, as a way of working out what I believe and how best to express it, but I try to stay tightly in the context of talking TO the person.  I always have the hope of informing or persuading, but I've been to enough rodeos to know that isn't a good reason to spend much time at a keyboard.  (Like that cartoon of a guy hunched over his keyboard typing like crazy, and his wife says, "Are you coming to bed?" and he answers, "Later.  There's someone on the Internet that is wrong.")

Sometimes I give in to the urge to fight 'evil' on the internet.  I'm a little more graceful about it now, but it probably won't go away as long as I remain judgmental to some degree and believe in the importance of ideas.

I think that talking AT someone is failing in an attempt to put your ideas in their language.  Like that video you posted today where the Asian Communist was yelling at that black guy.  All rhetoric just louder volume.  I'd say that keeping things in the abstract (where they start floating) is seeing the value as being more in a set of words or thoughts than in their meaning or purpose.

[KorbenDallas]

1 hour ago, SteveWolfer said:

The intersection of philosophy (or abstract beliefs in general) and psychology is a fascinating area and both underrated in its effect, today and throughout history, and rarely paid the attention it deserves.

Steve I'm plucking this out because I wanted to comment on it on its own.  Once a person adopts a philosophy, I like to say that psychology is philosophy in motion.  So perhaps that would be the practical side.  But abstractly, I like to think psychology falls under ethics (not ignoring metaphysics->epistemology->ethics).  Thought I'd run this by you..

[SteveWolfer]

Just now, KorbenDallas said:

I like to say that psychology is philosophy in motion

Yes, there is a lot of meaning in that.  The philosophy one chooses will have a lot of say in one's psychology.  And there are levels of psychology.  We each have accepted some epistemological beliefs and they will have an effect on our psychology.

But it works the other way as well.  There are some psychological paths a person takes that will make some philosophies much more appealing than others.

As Branden would have said, we have a reciprocal cause-effect going on.

4 minutes ago, KorbenDallas said:

I like to think psychology falls under ethics (not ignoring metaphysics->epistemology->ethics). 

I'd have to chew on that for a while. 

In terms of knowledge hierarchy I see that metaphysics->epistemology provide a base for human nature.  With human nature there are different perspectives: biology would be one.  Psychology would be another.  While at the level of human nature, there is a layer that separates (and joins) human nature to psychology and that is the philosophy of psychology.  And that needs to take general principles from the philosophy of science and particularize them as to apply to a philosophy of psychology.

metaphysics->epistemology->philosophy of science->philosophy of psychology->psychology

Psychology gets split up into lots of subareas - motivational psychology, clinical psychology, animal psychology, etc.

There is clearly a joining of some sort between psychology and ethic in that virtues are character traits (both of ethics and from psychological choices).  Ethics applies to acts and acts arise out motivation.  Ethics is about values as well and those are formed in our minds as well as examined objectively relative to human nature. 

There is a reciprocal causality between ethical acts and psychology.  And act can have a psychological effect based upon our held ethical beliefs are, and the kind of things we hold as ethical will effect our psychology (self image for example).

That's what comes to mind... don't know if it is anything like what you were thinking.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, SteveWolfer said:

Yes, but that doesn't tell the whole story.  What does "be good" mean?

Steve,

Of course it doesn't tell the whole story. If you reread what I wrote, you will see that I said it tells you half the story, not the whole story.

As to what does "do good" mean, frankly, if someone is not interested in working on being good, it doesn't matter. That person is going to fuck up time and time again. So to me, what being good means is a secondary question, not a primary one.

Wanting to exercise your volition to achieve great heights, happiness, etc., precedes the rules. 

As to others, since my urge to control others is weak, I prefer to let most people act according to their own wanting. I don't tell them to want to be good. I let them show it. I don't tell them what to think. I offer what I think and trust them to use their best thinking to internalize it. Most people in my experience want to be good and like to think.

If I detect they are into mind games or something like that, I move on (or take other measures when it's destroying my stuff). That's also their wanting and not my business. I just don't have to be part of it when it's shit.

But to not leave the issue of the good dangling, let's put this on the level of a child. Good starts out to an infant by meaning obey the adult and follow the curiousity. Then, as regards others, it gradually morphs into having common decency, where it stays for a long time. Note that it does not morph into a theoretical set of principles. That comes later.

I believe common decency has to be at the root of any ethical system, even Rand's, before that system can be used to build character. Memorizing a bunch of rules and acting on them like a robot does not make anyone develop good character.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, SteveWolfer said:

You could also take a pack of vicious dogs and give them the constitution on a deserted island.  That would be identical to the criminals because there would not be that one missing thing: A significant number of the population that understand what it means to observe the law (we're assuming good laws).

Steve,

You just made my point. When people don't want to be good, no concept, no piece of paper, no discussion, no rule, no law no anything will make them observe individual rights on their own. Individual rights only work when the majority of the population strives to be good. They are lost when the majority of a society turns immoral. History keeps showing this over and over (to the limited extent individual rights existed in previous civilizations).

1 hour ago, SteveWolfer said:

You are doing a kind of switch.  You are switching the concept of a constitution for the implementation of a constitutional government which requires an ongoing effort by knowledgeable people.  That is like saying, "hey, a constitution is just a piece of paper.  I'm giving you a piece of paper... see, it didn't help."

I disagree. There is no switch at all.

If you take a bunch of people of goodwill who keep striving to be good and give them a solid rational constitution, even if they are not knowledgeable, they will make it work. Hell, they will take a bad constitution and fix it and make it work.

 

Michael

[SteveWolfer]

2 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

As to what does "do good" mean, frankly, if someone is not interested in working on being good, it doesn't matter. That person is going to fuck up time and time again. So to me, what being good means is a secondary question, not a primary one.

This is very true.  And an important point... but it is in the area of intentions, or psychology.  And I had to take a moment to follow you, because what we discuss on these forums are ideas and we put them in different categories, like epistemology, politics, ethics, etc.  We need the categories, and we need to chew on the ideas, and to use logic.  That is such a common experience her on a forum, that it takes a minute to shift and say, "Michael isn't discussing what the answer to "is such and such is right" but rather he is talking about the person who will be thinking and acting.

I'd say that we have to pin down a context to say if 'being good' is a secondary or a primary question.  If we are on the forum and chewing on ideas of how to implement a proper, oh say, legal system.  Then the question of what is good has to have some common agreement.... unless it comes to something that make a population decide to 'be good' or not 'be good' in which case primary and secondary switch.  Context is king.

10 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Good starts out to an infant by meaning obey the adult and follow the curiousity. Then, as regards others, it gradually morphs into having common decency, where it stays for a long time. Note that it does not morph into a theoretical set of principles. That comes later.

Well, there is actually a period of learning that is in conflict some natural impulses.  Mom has to say things like, "Tommy, little sisters are not for hitting!"  And for Tommy that lesson, if it is learned, becomes a principle that he will follow because he wants to "be good" - until he had that principle, he might have thought smacking little sister was good.  "Morphing" into common decency is nearly always helped along.

Addressing the principles on a "theoretical" level - as theory - is totally different.  We do that here.  It is optional in our culture, but questionable how advanced (in good ways) our culture can become without it being a common stage of development.)

And adding self-awareness of how principled one might be is also on a different levels and comes later (if ever).  It has levels within it -  really good people are those who have done a lot of this.

[SteveWolfer]

11 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Individual rights only work when the majority of the population strives to be good.

Yes, but you missed my point. 

The people also have to understand individual rights - not a deep theoretical level, but as general rules that they accept.  "Understanding" precedes "being good". 

I'm using "being good" because it is "wanting to be good" put into action - if it just stays a want it is impotent.

"Understanding" precedes "being good" because there has to be an understanding of what being good means. 

Here are the alternatives:
- People can understand and not be good. 
- People can not understand and attempting to be good may be futile or misdirected. (good intentions aren't enough)
- People can not understand and not be good (total disaster). 
- People can understand and be good (success!)

[SteveWolfer]

23 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

If you take a bunch of people of goodwill who keep striving to be good and give them a solid rational constitution, even if they are not knowledgeable, they will make it work. Hell, they will take a bad constitution and fix it and make it work.

There are socialists of goodwill.  What will they do with a rational constitution?  And no matter who they are, and no matter what the constitution says, they will have to understand it, then they will have to come to some degree of common agreement as to what would be good so they can decide how to implement it, or how to change it before that.

Striving to be good is terribly important.  It almost always contains being honest, but that is because we understand that it is good to be honest.  Yet there are people who are otherwise good, but will decide that some lies in the field of politics are okay because otherwise they can't do what they understand to be the right thing.

[Brant Gaede]

12 minutes ago, SteveWolfer said:

There are socialists of goodwill.  What will they do with a rational constitution?  And no matter who they are, and no matter what the constitution says, they will have to understand it, then they will have to come to some degree of common agreement as to what would be good so they can decide how to implement it, or how to change it before that.

Striving to be good is terribly important.  It almost always contains being honest, but that is because we understand that it is good to be honest.  Yet there are people who are otherwise good, but will decide that some lies in the field of politics are okay because otherwise they can't do what they understand to be the right thing.

Goodwill to whom for what or why?

--Brant

[SteveWolfer]

13 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Goodwill to whom for what or why?

Goodwill is a feeling state and/or the evaluation of the motivation behind an act.  As such it isn't about an objective good.  It can be discussed as such, like I am now, without having a specific person, or act, or motivation in mind.  Let me give you some examples.

A young person goes off to college and she is told that the very best thing we can do with health care is to have it be universal and that way everyone will be able to have health care and people won't be dying on the streets.  She is told that it will only cost a very small amount more in the economy and the rich won't even notice the difference and for the poor it will make a difference between life and death.

She believes this.  Why?  Because she has never been given any understanding of principles that would let her see the fallacies AND because she is a person of goodwill. 

The person who taught that class was a teaching assistant who is an earnest young fellow that is a true believer in socialized medicine and he knows that some of what he told was outright exaggerations, but he believes that it is a good cause and he is a person that wants to do good.  He told some exaggerations even though he is a person of goodwill. 

His full professor is an asshole, to put it bluntly.  Years of blanking out, years of playing university politics, years of trying to boost his self-esteem by feeling superior to others have left him with a nasty bitter sense of life.  Generally speaking, he isn't a person of goodwill, but he might feel goodwill towards his dog or kids for the context of taking care of them, maybe he loves them (whom, for what, or why).

[Wolf DeVoon]

3 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

Goodwill is a feeling state

?

Less Kantian, please. Goodwill is a balance sheet item reflecting acquisition. If it's intangible, it gets posted as goodwill. Eyewash unless it is reflected in share price (competitive value) or a private transaction in which a premium is received. There is no goodwill outside an economic context in which extra value is recognized.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Trump just posted the following on Facebook:

 

Quote

TRUMP CAMPAIGN STATEMENT ON CLINTON'S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

Hillary Clinton’s speech was an insulting collection of clichés and recycled rhetoric. She spent the evening talking down to the American people she’s looked down on her whole life.

Hillary Clinton talks about unity, about E Pluribus Unum, but her globalist agenda denies American citizens the protections to which they are all entitled – tearing us apart. Her radical amnesty plan will take jobs, resources and benefits from the most vulnerable citizens of the United States and give them to the citizens of other countries. Her refusal to even say the words ‘Radical Islam’, or to mention her disaster in Libya, or her corrupt email scheme, all show how little she cares about the safety of the American people.

It’s a speech delivered from a fantasy universe, not the reality we live in today.

Hillary Clinton says America is stronger together. But in Hillary Clinton’s America, millions of people are left out in the cold. She only stands together with the donors and special interests who’ve bankrolled her entire life. Excluded from Hillary Clinton’s America are the suffering people living in our inner cities, or the victims of open borders and drug cartels, or the people who’ve lost their jobs because of the Clintons’ trade deals, or any hardworking person who doesn’t have enough money to get a seat at Hillary Clinton’s table.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

11 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

"Understanding" precedes "being good".

Steve,

I disagree. They have to go hand in hand.

How many scientists understand what they do, but are petty nasty little people who don't mind when their work is used for destructive purposes? In fact, some get off on it. 

The same observation holds for people understanding political and/or economic philosophy.

The mastermind villain is one of the traditional archetypes. They understand, but they are full of bad will. If you want to think Rand, think Ellsworth Toohey. He understood everything perfectly, but no amount of understanding was going to make him want to be good.

Goodwill + good principles = good society.

Remove either and the equation falls to crap.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's what Clinton is facing on her own side.

Not good...

Michael

[SteveWolfer]

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I disagree. They ["understanding" and "being good"] have to go hand in hand.

Michael,

In practice I don't think we are far apart.  I keep resisting because of the sense that "good" is being taken as something that can exist in some intrinsic way that has nothing to do with understanding - that morality as a code of values where there can be widely differing views of what is good, can somehow be abstracted as a separate, psychological entity. 

I think our disagreement arises from subtleties of context shifts between psychology and epistemology (on one hand) and between theory and practice (on the other hand).  Any way, it isn't something I want to pursue since I don't see it as something that needs to be stamped out, or anything that would lead people down the wrong path.
--------------------------------

Didn't you like this:

14 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

Here are the alternatives:
- People can understand and not be good. 
- People can not understand and attempting to be good may be futile or misdirected. (good intentions aren't enough)
- People can not understand and not be good (total disaster). 
- People can understand and be good (success!)

 

[SteveWolfer]

34 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Here's what Clinton is facing on her own side.

I love it!  Unrest on the Progressive plantation.  The video maker, O'Keefe, did a great job of pretending to be a Hillary supporter.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

53 minutes ago, SteveWolfer said:

Didn't you like this:

15 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

Here are the alternatives:
- People can understand and not be good. 
- People can not understand and attempting to be good may be futile or misdirected. (good intentions aren't enough)
- People can not understand and not be good (total disaster). 
- People can understand and be good (success!)

 

Steve,

It's a quibble but I don't like that volition is ignored is your alternatives except for the second. This comes off as relegating volition to relative unimportance when philosophy comes in, but volition can be considered when it fails (No. 2).  

My position is that both understanding and intention are equally important. Organically, it's like asking which is more important, you heart or your lungs. Chop off any one and see what happens. (thud...  )

You might notice that I consider volition to be a part of goodwill since I almost use them as synonyms in this context.

I believe for someone to want to be good and carry that desire through all the the ups and downs of awareness, he or she has to choose that, then act on that choice. Volition. It doesn't happen automatically and it doesn't happen just because someone knows stuff. A person can be good-natured, but as I mentioned, he can get tired, irritated, be in pain, become tempted, etc., then get mean or worse--snap.

Hell, it's already proven that willpower runs on calories, so if there is caloric depletion, a person might do something bad he regrets later because the subconscious urge was too strong for his willpower to hold it in check, even though he knew it was wrong. That is, unless he has made the choice to be good and does his periodic moral tune-ups. Then he has enough neural pathways created so he does not act on a sudden flood of neurochemicals (i.e., a strong subconscious urge) when his prefrontal neocortex and other parts of his brain are depleted of calories. Instead he steps away and postpones action while he gets some rest and food. He cools down.

Since goodwill is one half of my equation for a successful social structure, I find any ideological consideration of rights for people who refuse to make that choice futile. 

For those folks, enter law enforcement...

And if the majority refuse to make that choice, enter a strongarm dictator...

You cannot make a system work where individual rights get divorced from human nature--all of human nature, which means understanding and intent.

Michael

[SteveWolfer]

13 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I don't like that volition is ignored

I never put anything out where I intend or imply an absence of volition - that's just not me.  If something I've written reads that way, it just means that you aren't understanding it as I intended it, and maybe because I didn't write it clearly enough.

For example: "People can understand and not be good" could have been written as "People can understand and choose not be good."  That is how I understood it because I take volition for granted - it is part of human nature - it is who we are - it is at the heart of motivational psychology - of self-esteem.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

44 minutes ago, SteveWolfer said:

For example: "People can understand and not be good" could have been written as "People can understand and choose not be good."

Steve,

I like that construction a lot better.

I can see building the differences between the different philosophic and religious moral systems on top of that and successfully weeding out what works and what doesn't. That makes ideas truly for living on earth and less about abstract constructions qua abstract constructions.

I recently read a bunch of religious books starting with the King James version of the Bible. No particular reason other than I got tired of talking about things when I hadn't even read them. 

Anyway, as we were discussing this angle of volition and understanding, it occurred to me that morality in ancient Judaism was based on intent, also. The entire basis of Jewish morality is obey God. If He says something is good, it is good. If He says it is bad, it is bad. That is the standard. However. There is the following commandment early on (Deuteronomy 6-5): "... thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." Jesus later called this the greatest of all commandments, with "love thy neighbor as thyself" coming in second.

In this context, "love" means "choose to love." Practically, you cannot command anyone to love anything. That's not an on-off switch an outsider can flip. You can command them to choose to love in exchange for [fill in the blank]. I should go further and say "choose to try to love."

This is probably one of the reasons the Judeo-Christian morality has been with us so long. The source is clear (agree or disagree) and you are called on to choose it, giving that choice the best and most you can muster. And that offer is made in such a manner it is attractive enough that lots of people do it.

If Ayn Rand is correct when she said that individual rights are moral principles taken to the social realm (I, for one, like that), there has to be a mechanism for the individual to choose those morals as the good, and by extension, those individual rights. That has to be built into the context of the constitution. I don't think she nailed that part with Galt's oath since it can be so easily twisted. 

In practice, we have the Pledge of Allegiance as a periodic ritual starting in school, which is OK for keeping the country together, but rights-wise, that is a pretty half-assed ritual to get people to want to be good (i.e., in this context, want to uphold individual rights).

Good Lord, look at me. I start writing this stuff and I just keep going on and on...  

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ha!

Drudge just posted this on his other site.

After Hillary Clinton's speech at the DNC, the American flag fell on Huma.

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

18 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

I like to think psychology falls under ethics (not ignoring metaphysics->epistemology->ethics).

 

18 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

In terms of knowledge hierarchy I see that metaphysics->epistemology provide a base for human nature.  With human nature there are different perspectives: biology would be one.  Psychology would be another.  While at the level of human nature, there is a layer that separates (and joins) human nature to psychology and that is the philosophy of psychology.  And that needs to take general principles from the philosophy of science and particularize them as to apply to a philosophy of psychology.

metaphysics->epistemology->philosophy of science->philosophy of psychology->psychology

Psychology gets split up into lots of subareas - motivational psychology, clinical psychology, animal psychology, etc.

There is clearly a joining of some sort between psychology and ethic in that virtues are character traits (both of ethics and from psychological choices).  Ethics applies to acts and acts arise out motivation.  Ethics is about values as well and those are formed in our minds as well as examined objectively relative to human nature. 

There is a reciprocal causality between ethical acts and psychology.  And act can have a psychological effect based upon our held ethical beliefs are, and the kind of things we hold as ethical will effect our psychology (self image for example).

That's what comes to mind... don't know if it is anything like what you were thinking.

Yea, it was meant as hierarchical.  My original purpose was seeing how modern psychology is largely a stolen concept to philosophy---you can't have psychology without philosophy.  Psychology is important, and so much of Objectivism is psychological---what to think, how to think, how to think about yourself, what to think about what you want to do, how to think about others, etc.---that (a proper) psychology seemed to fit into Oist ethics, and needed to be there as to not abstract philosophy away from it.