Hanging up the phone on others is...

Discuss morality and ethics in this message board.
Featured Article: Philosophical Analysis of Abortion, The Right to Life, and Murder
User avatar
LuckyR
Moderator
Posts: 7932
Joined: January 18th, 2015, 1:16 am

Re: Hanging up the phone on others is...

Post by LuckyR »

Empiricist-Bruno wrote: January 18th, 2019, 4:12 pm
LuckyR wrote: January 18th, 2019, 3:06 am

No. As I mentioned, if you did everything in your power (came up with the idea and stepped on the door's trigger, in the example I used), but an outside circumstance (broken door trigger, in my example) thwarts the action, you are rude.

If you change your mind, you were headed to rudeness, but stopped along the way
Now, this is getting interesting. What if there is no button to activate the door. The door is motion sensor activated. For some reason, you suspect that the child is too small to be picked up by the sensors and you think that by walking by, you can activate the door. You try and do that and nothing happens as the motion sensor does not work. Are you rude for what you did? If I understand you correctly, you say yes, that was rude. But if another person doesn't know about the motion sensor walks and does the exact same thing as the other "rude" person and again, the door does not swing open on the child as it is broken. The person that didn't know about the motion sensors is not rude? Two people do exactly the same thing with exactly the same effect: nothing happens and one is quite rude while the other is still a polite person?

Attempted murder isn't murder, right? Why should attempted rudeness be rudeness? Why should attempting to do a thing be the thing you want to do? To me, that simply does not make sense. The point of attempting to do a thing is to try to be successful at doing a thing because the thing won't get done without trying and trying implies the possibility of failure.

If there is inherently no possibility of failure in any attempt, can your attempt really be called an attempt? You are successful right from the start. And so the very moment you think about doing something possibly rude, you should be deemed rude if you are rude for the intent. Maybe you mean "upon completion of your rudeness intent" but this is contradicted by the fact that you say that "if you are thwarted by an outside circumstance, you are still rude."

It seems to me that if your rudeness intent isn't complete because of outside circumstances, then you should simply be, as you say, "headed to rudeness" but not rude yet.
Yes and no. Yes attempted murder is not as bad as murder (just as attempted rudeness is not as bad as rudeness). However you can go to prison for 5 years to life (with the possibility of parole) in California, which is a not uncommon guideline for attempted murder.
"As usual... it depends."
User avatar
Empiricist-Bruno
Moderator
Posts: 582
Joined: July 15th, 2014, 1:52 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Berkeley
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Re: Hanging up the phone on others is...

Post by Empiricist-Bruno »

LuckyR wrote: January 18th, 2019, 6:31 pm
Empiricist-Bruno wrote: January 18th, 2019, 4:12 pm
Now, this is getting interesting. What if there is no button to activate the door. The door is motion sensor activated. For some reason, you suspect that the child is too small to be picked up by the sensors and you think that by walking by, you can activate the door. You try and do that and nothing happens as the motion sensor does not work. Are you rude for what you did? If I understand you correctly, you say yes, that was rude. But if another person doesn't know about the motion sensor walks and does the exact same thing as the other "rude" person and again, the door does not swing open on the child as it is broken. The person that didn't know about the motion sensors is not rude? Two people do exactly the same thing with exactly the same effect: nothing happens and one is quite rude while the other is still a polite person?

Attempted murder isn't murder, right? Why should attempted rudeness be rudeness? Why should attempting to do a thing be the thing you want to do? To me, that simply does not make sense. The point of attempting to do a thing is to try to be successful at doing a thing because the thing won't get done without trying and trying implies the possibility of failure.

If there is inherently no possibility of failure in any attempt, can your attempt really be called an attempt? You are successful right from the start. And so the very moment you think about doing something possibly rude, you should be deemed rude if you are rude for the intent. Maybe you mean "upon completion of your rudeness intent" but this is contradicted by the fact that you say that "if you are thwarted by an outside circumstance, you are still rude."

It seems to me that if your rudeness intent isn't complete because of outside circumstances, then you should simply be, as you say, "headed to rudeness" but not rude yet.
Yes and no. Yes attempted murder is not as bad as murder (just as attempted rudeness is not as bad as rudeness). However you can go to prison for 5 years to life (with the possibility of parole) in California, which is a not uncommon guideline for attempted murder.
And now can you please explain how attempted rudeness is not as bad as rudeness when, according to what you mentioned earlier, attempted rudeness is rudeness?

I think you are conceding here that attempted rudeness differs from rudeness. You may think it is related but you realize now that attempted rudeness can not be equated to rudeness. You may view attempted rudeness as similarly reprehensible but you do acknowledge now that one isn't the same as the other. Thank you for that.
Watch out for the hidden paradoxes around you!
Karpel Tunnel
Posts: 948
Joined: February 16th, 2018, 11:28 am

Re: Hanging up the phone on others is...

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

Empiricist-Bruno wrote: January 18th, 2019, 1:36 pm
Karpel, I do not believe that I am mixing up two unconnected things but I don't want to spend my limited time online arguing this point at the moment. There is something much more interesting and important that you are saying which I prefer to focus on for now.

First, you mention and even argue that you are not a machine, by presenting a vision of yourself that does not match your vision of what a machine is. That's fine, but above that, you strongly argue that what is clearly the product of a machine is in fact your product. If the product of a machine is your product and you are fine with that, I see it as you voluntarily saying that you are a machine and agreeing to this definition for yourself. That is what I determine by reading your thinking as opposed to hearing your voice.
I am not a stick either. If I say that use a tool to express my anger it does not mean that I am that tool.

If I make a book shelf using power tools, even work out some of the measurements in some app on a computer, I built that shelf. The tools did not build the shelf. Someone else did.

If my voice travels through the air, that is, it actually is not my voice that travels, it is waves of air caused by my voice, it is still me that is affecting other people.

If you avoid dealing with the specific examples I use to challegen your points, it ends up being facile.

You end up simply restating your opinion and avoidng the hard stuff and projecting stuff one me. That's easy.
User avatar
LuckyR
Moderator
Posts: 7932
Joined: January 18th, 2015, 1:16 am

Re: Hanging up the phone on others is...

Post by LuckyR »

Empiricist-Bruno wrote: January 18th, 2019, 7:33 pm
LuckyR wrote: January 18th, 2019, 6:31 pm

Yes and no. Yes attempted murder is not as bad as murder (just as attempted rudeness is not as bad as rudeness). However you can go to prison for 5 years to life (with the possibility of parole) in California, which is a not uncommon guideline for attempted murder.
And now can you please explain how attempted rudeness is not as bad as rudeness when, according to what you mentioned earlier, attempted rudeness is rudeness?

I think you are conceding here that attempted rudeness differs from rudeness. You may think it is related but you realize now that attempted rudeness can not be equated to rudeness. You may view attempted rudeness as similarly reprehensible but you do acknowledge now that one isn't the same as the other. Thank you for that.
Again yes and no. You were the one who brought up murder and attempted murder, which of course are legal issues guided by the law and not by ethics and morality. Rudeness as you are aware is not illegal, so your previous post comparing the pairs was tenuous at best, and thus your "gotcha" above suffers from the same problem.

The trap you fell into is that in the cause and effect equation, the law is effect weighted while my analysis (which dealt with intent) is cause weighted.
"As usual... it depends."
User avatar
Empiricist-Bruno
Moderator
Posts: 582
Joined: July 15th, 2014, 1:52 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Berkeley
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Re: Hanging up the phone on others is...

Post by Empiricist-Bruno »

Karpel Tunnel wrote: January 18th, 2019, 11:56 pm
Empiricist-Bruno wrote: January 18th, 2019, 1:36 pm
Karpel, I do not believe that I am mixing up two unconnected things but I don't want to spend my limited time online arguing this point at the moment. There is something much more interesting and important that you are saying which I prefer to focus on for now.

First, you mention and even argue that you are not a machine, by presenting a vision of yourself that does not match your vision of what a machine is. That's fine, but above that, you strongly argue that what is clearly the product of a machine is in fact your product. If the product of a machine is your product and you are fine with that, I see it as you voluntarily saying that you are a machine and agreeing to this definition for yourself. That is what I determine by reading your thinking as opposed to hearing your voice.
I am not a stick either. If I say that use a tool to express my anger it does not mean that I am that tool.

If I make a book shelf using power tools, even work out some of the measurements in some app on a computer, I built that shelf. The tools did not build the shelf. Someone else did.

If my voice travels through the air, that is, it actually is not my voice that travels, it is waves of air caused by my voice, it is still me that is affecting other people.

If you avoid dealing with the specific examples I use to challegen your points, it ends up being facile.

You end up simply restating your opinion and avoidng the hard stuff and projecting stuff one me. That's easy.

Karpel, I did not know that you were not a stick, even as you do a stick job. If I played the trumpet and spent much time with it and then had someone call me "trumpet", I would not take offense for I would love my trumpet and being called a trumpet would mean to me that I am loveable and when I am with the trumpet, the two of us make a great unit and I would not mind if that team bear the name trumpet as I am not an egoist or self-centered.

The way you talk however does continue to suggest to me that you do believe yourself to be a machine like Steve3007 . You argue that machines are tools and that a stick is a tool and that you are not a stick even if you are getting satisfying results with your stick and so why should you consider yourself a machine if you like the results they provide in interaction with you given that you can call them tools too.

There, it seems to me that here you are trying to pass machines off under a broader term, "tools", to try and trip my argument. It's like trying to hide the machine flame that is burning out of control in our world by using a euphemism, or another term that comprises similar but mostly flame-less things to try and obscure the truth.

Before I go on, I just want to say here that I very much appreciate this discussion with you. Yours are good arguments to make because they indeed do manage to obscure the truth and the truth is where I am hoping we are heading for.

In the case of power tools, you certainly do put some of your own aiming energy into the job. You still have to move the machine onto a target and apply a certain force to it and so you are doing an instrumental job as the machine does its job as well. When a number of entities are working in a team producing a result, it is simply not fair to claim that the result is just this worker's result and not that other entity's product or vice versa.

When thinking about it, if you think you built your shelf all alone it may not be because you think you are the machine but simply because you are unable to acknowledge the work of the other in the product that was created. You don't want to give Cesare what is Cesare not out of greed but simply because you seem to prefer not to acknowledge Cesare because you can view Cesare as a tool, something which Cesare certainly does not appear to mind, even if you should realize that this is quite wrong, and detrimental to you.

But under the influence of machines, I feel that people lose control of their thinking; their thinking must be friendly to machines and to what helps them to propagate. This may be the reason why it has to be you that built the whole thing with the power tools and that no other helped. With the power tools, your identity changes as you become much more able than a regular person. You become happy like a drunk. It is hard to talk to a drunk who thinks he or she is almighty and that he or she thinks of himself/ herself as being as strong or potent as a nuclear explosion. Can the truth get into such a person's head? I wonder.
If my voice travels through the air, that is, it actually is not my voice that travels, it is waves of air caused by my voice, it is still me that is affecting other people.
It would seem you are educated because you know about how sound travels. But knowing how sound travels does not imply that you know what a voice is. Does the wind has a voice? Is music a voice?

I disagree with you when you say your voice does not travel. I just read in what I think is a reputable source, http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... voice.html
that "The male speaking voice averages about 125 Hz, while the female voice averages about 210 Hz. Children's voices average over 300 Hz"

So here, they seem to be calling the voice the actual wave, Do you disagree with them? Do you know better than they do what a voice really is? I think you are just confusing your thoughts with your voice.

Doesn't a voice has to be connected to a living being to be legitimately deemed as a voice? I do need an answer from you to that question in order to be able to continue with you toward what I think is the liberating truth. If a voice is no more than a type of noise to you, then we aren't on the same page. I am not sure if I would be able to help you understand that a voice must come from a living being to be considered a voice (especially if you are a machine) but I can try. If you do think that a voice is something that first and foremost comes from living beings, I will become more inclined to believe in your claim that you are not a machine.

Karpel, are you ready to concede the fact that it isn't your voice or any human voice that comes out of any electronic speaker's phone yet? If not, then I will feel that you are becoming defensive about your machine identity. And why would you be defensive of it if you claim not to be a machine?

If you avoid dealing with the specific examples I use to challegen your points, it ends up being facile.

You end up simply restating your opinion and avoidng the hard stuff and projecting stuff one me. That's easy.
I am trying hard not to disappoint you here.
Watch out for the hidden paradoxes around you!
Post Reply

Return to “Ethics and Morality”

2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise
by John K Danenbarger
January 2023

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023

The Unfakeable Code®

The Unfakeable Code®
by Tony Jeton Selimi
April 2023

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
by Alan Watts
May 2023

Killing Abel

Killing Abel
by Michael Tieman
June 2023

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead
by E. Alan Fleischauer
July 2023

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough
by Mark Unger
August 2023

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely
September 2023

Artwords

Artwords
by Beatriz M. Robles
November 2023

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope
by Dr. Randy Ross
December 2023

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes
by Ali Master
February 2024

2022 Philosophy Books of the Month

Emotional Intelligence At Work

Emotional Intelligence At Work
by Richard M Contino & Penelope J Holt
January 2022

Free Will, Do You Have It?

Free Will, Do You Have It?
by Albertus Kral
February 2022

My Enemy in Vietnam

My Enemy in Vietnam
by Billy Springer
March 2022

2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
April 2022

The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
by Rob White
May 2022

What Makes America Great

What Makes America Great
by Bob Dowell
June 2022

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
by Jerry Durr
July 2022

Living in Color

Living in Color
by Mike Murphy
August 2022 (tentative)

The Not So Great American Novel

The Not So Great American Novel
by James E Doucette
September 2022

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches
by John N. (Jake) Ferris
October 2022

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021