From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Thu Jun 03 2004 - 08:08:24 MDT
Marc wrote:
> I can't agree with you Ben. The idea that ARE and
> 'should be' are seperate is Humean dogma (I regard it
> as a mistake comparable to Cartesian dualism). Please
> read the (brief) essay I posted: 'Debunking Hippy
> Dippy Moral Philosophy'.
Hmmm...
I am and will probably always be kinda Hippy, but, Eliezer's and Michael
Wilson's opinion notwithstanding, I don't think I'm really all that
Dippy ;-))
The separation of IS and SHOULD-BE seems to be pretty critical to
humanity and its growth and progress. It's definitely a productive
separation on the small scale of ordinary lives. It motivates us to
create and to grow.
You can argue that this separation isn't valuable on the level of the
total and complete universe, since there's no way to change what that
IS. However, how do we know when we're really dealing with the total
and complete and immutable universe, as opposed to something we can
change and make better according to some standard?
Since we never know the universe for sure, we can never know for sure
what IS, therefore in practice there is always some practical validity
to the separation of IS from SHOULD-BE.
-- Ben G
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