/lit/ - Literature

>psychos thinking philosophy is a bandaid for everything
nigga to get some medications

>>17597129
1: I'm not crazy.
2: Philosophy was literally made to understand abstract ideas like this so obviously I where else would I go to understand what "ethics" and "morality" means.
See, this is what I mean. Everyone is so condescending.

>>17597124
Your problem isn't ethics it's that you're a sperg. Read How To Win Friends.
Godspeed brother and yes Kant works.

>>17597124
You sound like a sociopath, so becoming a lawyer will be easy for you because in america, lawyers mostly require no morals at all.

>>17597124
Let me just cut this short for you. Don't go to Kant for ethics. Just drop it. Go for him for epistemology and metaphysics.

>>17597176
I know a lot of people on this site supposedly suffer from Autism or Asperger's syndrome but I don't think I do.
Also, I don't really think highly of self help books but I guess I'll give it a shot. I don't want this thing to mess up my career prospects.

Don't do what Donny Don't does

>>17597197
Not OP, but curious. Who would you go to for ethics instead of Kant?

>>17597231
Of the top of my head, Hume, Smith, Darwin, the Greeks, especially the Greeks because they had soul and breathed ethics rather than treated it as a logical object.

OP, give Derek Parfit a read. He was literally a sperg and struggled to understand a lot of things that are just intuitive to most people, but managed to craft out an effective ethics for autists like you (and me). Read either Reasons and Persons, or On What Matters amd for his comprehensive view of things.

>>17597180
Like I said before I'm pretty sure I'm sane but do you really think I can become a Lawyer without having to worry about morals? I am actually an American by the way (I live in New York).
>>17597197
I don't really have that great of an interest in philosophy I just need something to help me live an easier life.
Also, are you really sure Kant isn't the best? Everyone says he is and his ideas seemed consistent (unlike the bs mumbo jumbo people usually go to, where they talk about feelings and sh*t, excuse my language but this really bothers me).
>>17597210
I looked that up and it's from some cartoon. Can I please get serious answers?

>>17597259
Don't listen to this guy. Kant with HTWFAIP will work. You don't need a theoretical grounding for your ethics you need it to work.

>>17597278
>Can I please get serious answers?
It's called Don'tology and Kan't invented it.

>>17597278
>Lawyer
t. lawyer

>>17597124
You sound like a teenager who tries to be cool. How old are you?

>>17597282
Very wrong. Listen to me. Kant will lead you into infinite thickets of autism when it comes to ethics. Morality is inherently sub-rational and it was Kant's fatal mistake to treat it as a transcendent category subject to reason.

>>17597124
>becoming a Lawyer
>Should I stop bothering with ethics and morals?
Yes.

>>17597278
>I don't really have that great of an interest in philosophy I just need something to help me live an easier life.
Then don't bother. Knowing how is not the same as knowing that. What you need is know how, practical wisdom, not semantic understanding, knowing that. Experience and knowlege are not the same.
>Also, are you really sure Kant isn't the best?
With regards to ethics absolutely. He makes the mistake of treating ethics like he does pure cognitive categories. NOWHERE in Kant's philosophy is an appreciation of what Hume and Smith called moral sentiments. Morality is fundamentally EMOTIONAL. It obeys no logic or rationality.

>>17597305
His prsctical approach (treat people as an end never as a mean) and the approacj of grounding ethics in logic are very useful for OP. That his logical grounding didn't sufficiently work is irrelevant because as I said you don't need a theoretical grounding for it to work. OP is suffering from not being able to interact with others correctly.

Boys we gotta do better in this thread before 30 posts or it's a gonner

>>17597319
Knowing how is knowing that. Wikipedia search stoicism

>>17597277
>Parfit
ok, on the list. I don't have Asperger's or Autism though.
>>17597282
Yeah, you get me. I just want something I can use in life
>>17597294
Oh you are making a pun right?
>Don'tology = Deontology
>Kan't = can't
Very funny, I didn't get it at first. hahahahaha
>>17597299
My bad, I capitalized it by mistake.
>>17597302
I actually am young but I'm not a teenager anymore, I'm 21 now.

[green]hahahahaha[/green]

>>17597338
What does this mean?

>>17597333
>Check wikipedia brodawg
Cute attempt at a troll.

>>17597320
OP needs to be a better person, that's it. Some things do not require instruction, They require personal development. No philosopher can teach you morality, they can only lay out a theory of what morality is. There is a definite distinction, like the map versus the territory. OP does not need to concern himself with 200 year old books, he needs to stop being a fuckhead and grow up.

>>17597358
>:^() <( i hate reading! )

>>17597124
>Unfortunately though, I got a girlfriend a while ago
Why did you do that?

>>17597367
What makes you think I'm not a good person?
I am a good person.
Bad people do bad things.
I do good things.
I am a good person.

>>17597377
>I get all my information from wikipedia articles and tiktok videos! And I presume to argue against the guy who read all the primary sources of the thinkers he cites!
Zoomer detected

>>17597401
>the detection is coming from inside the house

>>17597395
Sorry, I should have chosen my words better. I don't know you; I have very little to go on. I suspect you are somewhere on the autistic spectrum. My evidence for this is that you resonate with Kant's approach to ethics, which is indisputably autistic.

Kant's ethics makes sense from the perspective of an autistic, in that they have no option but to subject ethics to rigid computational evaluations. What I meant is, some things cannot be solved like a rubik's cube. Ethics is not a logical problem, it is an experiential problem.
You said
>never experienced the abstract and nebulous feelings known as "sympathy", "empathy", "remorse", etc.
There is nothing "nebulous" about these sentiments. They are definite parts of the human experience. Your problem is not philosophical, it is psychiatric. You're not a bad person because of this, you're just not neurotypical. That is fine. But your error is believing you can think your way out of the fact you don't experience fundamental human emotions.

>>17597319
>NOWHERE in Kant's philosophy is an appreciation of what Hume and Smith called moral sentiments.
Literally read Chapter 3 of the Critique of Practical Reason lmao, in it he defends moral sentiments, and shows how they're a direct consequence of the moral law. Did you study his ethical theory on Wikipedia summaries?

>>17597409
Why don't you come over my house and suck my dick zoomer. You seem to have a skill for that.

>>17597294
Amazing

>>17597428
Kant bases his moral theory in opposition to Hume, like he does much of his philosophy. He hinges it on a notion of "duty" (hence deontological) which is not analyzable into primitive emotive forms.

>>17597430
Hahahahahaha ewwwwwww you want underage kids to perform sexual favours on you

>>17597450
Again, have you studied Kantian ethics through Wikipedia summaries? It wasn't a polemical question, I'm just trying to understand what led you to so much confusion about its contents.
Regarding your response, read chapter 3 of the Critique of Practical Reason, where he argues that in rational finite being duties are always simultaneous with moral sentiments (and that conversely. to have moral sentiments one must already be aware of the moral law, at some level)

>>17597391
There are many reasons:
It reflects positively on my character, socially, for one.
I am also a heterosexual and feel some need to satiate my sexual desires.
She is attractive and has a good body.
I need someone to do housework for me while I do serious work.
Most importantly, I'm selecting a mate I hope I can make my wife so that she'll have my children in the future.
There are other reasons but that is what comes to mind.
Like I said though I might get a new one though.

>>17597471
No. Kant is utterly wrong with this babble about "moral law." He is treating it as though it were some objective, subject-independent reality.
I quote:
>Respect for the moral law is, therefore, the only and the undoubted moral motive, and this feeling is directed to no object, except on the ground of this law. The moral law first determines the will objectively and directly in the judgement of reason; and freedom, whose causality can be determined only by the law, consists just in this, that it restricts all inclinations, and consequently self-esteem, by the condition of obedience to its pure law.
There is no "pure law" there is animal instincts and social drives.

>>17597493
>No. Kant is utterly wrong with this babble about "moral law." He is treating it as though it were some objective, subject-independent reality
First of all, this has nothing to do with your initial claim, which was about Kant ignoring moral sentiments. He didn't.
Secondly, he doesn't just assert that the moral law exists: he argues for it in the first chapter (in the 4 theorems). Where do you think his argument fails? Which one is the faulty theorem?

>>17597424
Unfortunately, I've had the experience of being around people with Asperger's and Autism and, having had the opportunity to analyze their character against mine, found little in common at all.
On your second point, I find it hard to understand how these abstract emotions aren't nebulous. How can an indefinable concept not be nebulous?
Sure, I think Kant got close to defining what these terms mean but even he was only useful for me until now. Maybe it's because I'm not using him correctly.
>fundamental human emotions
I don't see how these are fundamental human emotions. They seem to get in the way a whole lot.

>>17597472
You can get a maid and a FWB (or prostitute) and it will be cheaper and less hassle than a girlfriend/wife. Literally the only one of those reasons that you have that's worth a damn is a partner for raising kids.

The questions that you should be asking are: do I really want to have kids? For what reason? Are you treating them as ends in themselves or as a means for social status, personal pleasure, to provide for you in old age, to pass on your heritage, etc?

If you decide that having kids is the right thing to do and for the right reasons, the questions you then have to ask are: is this the right woman to conceive and raise children with? Will you stay together with her until your children reach adulthood, even if it causes difficulty for you? If not, why are you still with her?

>>17597507
He mentions the phrase "moral sentiments" twice, two times, in the entirety of the the critique of practical reason.

And he quite literally asserts the moral law as an a priori predicate for the entire argument.

Even in the preface:
>Inasmuch as the reality of the concept of freedom is proved by an apodeictic law of practical reason, it is the keystone of the whole system of pure reason, even the speculative, and all other concepts (those of God and immortality) which, as being mere ideas, remain in it unsupported, now attach themselves to this concept, and by it obtain consistence and objective reality; that is to say, their possibility is proved by the fact that freedom actually exists, for this idea is revealed by the moral law.

>Freedom, however, is the only one of all the ideas of the speculative reason of which we know the possibility a priori (without, however, understanding it), because it is the condition of the moral law which we know. *

Repeatedly and without fail he asserts that morality is a priori , theoretical, and abstract in nature, independent of all notion of instinct

> It is therefore the moral law, of which we become directly conscious (as soon as we trace for ourselves maxims of the will), that first presents itself to us, and leads directly to the concept of freedom, inasmuch as reason presents it as a principle of determination not to be outweighed by any sensible conditions, nay, wholly independent of them. But how is the consciousness, of that moral law possible? We can become conscious of pure practical laws just as we are conscious of pure theoretical principles, by attending to the necessity with which reason prescribes them and to the elimination of all empirical conditions, which it directs.

He is inextricably wedded to the idea that ethics is attached to reason, which is plainly false.

>>17597510
You might not be autistic. That was my first guess. In any event I do think you would benefit more from psychological rather than philosophical evaluation.

You might be a "benign psychopath" it is a prejudice that all psychopaths are malicious or sadistic. On a baseline level psychopathy is defined by an incomprehension of others as subjects and a tendency to view them, like everything else as objects.
I'm not even saying GET HELP. Personally I think you are fine as you are unless you are personally disturbed by it. You owe no one nothing. Might as well embrace your insensitive nature and become a millionaire CEO or something...

>>17597527
>cheaper and less hassle than a girlfriend/wife
I'm not poor so I don't have to worry that much about money. I mean, it's not like I shower her with jewelry anyway. In a sense she does more for me than I do for her so it's really no hassle.
Besides I would never want to be with a whore anyway. I want kids, I know I do. Not now but in the future (I project that by age 28 I shall have already settled down).
>Are you treating them as ends in themselves or as a means for social status, personal pleasure, to provide for you in old age, to pass on your heritage, etc?
You kind of just invalidated all the reasons to have children.
Obviously I would treat them like people. I would teach them everything they need to learn to be successful and reward and discipline them when appropriate.
Is there really anything else to having children?

>>17597544
>He mentions the phrase "moral sentiments" twice, two times, in the entirety of the the critique of practical reason
I'll repeat it once again: the entire third chapter is dedicated to moral sentiments. That is literally the theme of that chapter: how could a moral sentiment, which is an empirical motive, be adequate for a moral self-determination of the will? You're just wrong on this one.

Regarding the two quotes... the preface, as all prefaces, is just summarizing the goals of the book: Kant isn't presupposing that this notion of moral law has already been established. That goal is, according to Kant, achieved with the 4 theorems in the first chapter, which ckntain the actual arguments for this position. Before having established them, he simply does not assume that there is a moral law. This is even more evident at the end of the prefsce, when he defines "desire" and "pleasure" in terms that could be compatible with the impossibility of a moral law.
So I'll just repeat the question: at what point do the 4 theorems fail?
So far you've just asserted that he is wrong, and I still have no idea why you think his actual, specific argument fail.

>>17597555
Take your meds lmao

>>17597124
>"sympathy", "empathy", "remorse", etc.
>ethics
>morals
All spooks, these can safely be ignored.

>>17597693
Also Read Stirner if you want to understand what I mean. He has the best moral system.

>>17597124
So, the issue is, you seem to be treating ethical living as if it's just purely "knowing that," something you can be taught from a textbook. It's not, unfortunately. Certainly, reflective philosophical study of ethics can help advance moral understanding, but reading Kant is not going to be sufficient to be good at life. You learn to be better by doing, and learning from experience what actions are mistakes and what aren't, and developing good practical judgement, and habituating yourself well and being habituated in the right ways.

Of course, you are starting at a disadvantage. No shame in that, necessarily It feels really bad and blunt to say this, but: learning how to act well for you will be like a dyscalculic kid learning math. It's definitely not going to be impossible, but you're going to have to work twice as hard at it.

You're doing well by reminding yourself of basic principles like that one (People are ends in themselves) - but, again, you shouldn't expect magic results from thinking through principles and rules rigidly. This is something that takes a lot of time and experience to master, even for psychologically normal people with good moral educations, and it's going to be harder for you. Keep working at it, though - it's not like we have great alternatives.

>>17597786
>The "knowing that" nigger
Dude, give it a rest. You aren't even correct.
Morals aren't some spiritual thing, they are an agreement between agents to treat each other as their own being with their own decisions, emotions, and property. This is literally what Kant means by "means-in-themselves" and OP was right to start with him.
>>17597124
Just stick with Kant and you'll do great. Maybe read some self-help books if you need to. Other than that the best advice is to be nice.

>>17597124
No

>>17597838
>Useless post from a tripfag

>>17597310
I get that this is a meme but this guy actually sounds like a sociopath/psychopath.
Maybe we shouldn't encourage this guy to become a lawyer at all?

>>17597934
He's definitely not normal. Claims to not have autism and at least appears honest in his dealing with us; a psychopath would probably fluff things up and there's nothing scandalous here.
A real unknown unknown.

>>17597124
Wtf? Go see a doctor friend, Kant can't help you.
You haven't killed anyone yet have you?

>>17598152
I hunt ducks and other birds sometimes, why?
Yes, I'm sane if that's what you're getting at.

>>17597934
What makes people think I'm not right in the head?
Are emotions really this important to people?

>>17597838
Wrong.
Kant was, is, an always be an ethical and moral genius, and the greatest philosopher to EVER write on the subject. No one else can compare.

>>17597570
>I'm not poor so I don't have to worry that much about money.
You'll have to worry about money when you end up with a wife who's as much of a cunt as you are, and then gets upset with the way you treat her and ends up leaving with the house, the car, the kids, and the dog. There are things you can only get from a long term exclusive relationship. Sex isn't one of them. You're literally trolling yourself if you're going to deal with all of the risks and annoyances in exchange for none of the benefits.

>You kind of just invalidated all the reasons to have children.
If the only reason you want to have kids is because how it will benefit you, it's probably not a thing you should be doing. It's the literal definition of treating people only as a means.