tronvillain

excreationist:
I think what Kent Stevens is getting at is that humans don't like forced moves. We prefer to be able to choose between a few options, or as Dennet puts it, we prefer to have some elbow room.

jpbrooks

So are you saying that those ideas that "the majority of people" would agree with are merely good candidates for being considered "basic ideas", or are you saying that they already are "basic ideas"?

Also from your comments above, you seem to be making a distinction between "self evident" ideas and "basic" ideas. So if these two kinds of ideas are not the same, how are they related to one another?

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Kent Stevens

I prefer using the term enjoyment or happiness rather than pleasure usually. I tend to say that I would enjoy a cup of coffee rather than I would derive pleasure from a cup of coffee. Anyway pleasure, enjoyment, and happiness all mean roughly the same thing.

There can be a difference between explaining what someone does and the justification for doing something. In terms of someone committing murder there are a number of possible explanations. They could have done the crime because of genes or a bad early environment. They could do things in terms of pleasure or pain. They could even have done a crime because of neurochemicals or brain chemistry. But what I am most concerned about in this thread is how someone might justify doing something to themselves. That which is a person's own motive. This could be in the case of murder that someone was getting revenge. This would tend to be the main justification for the person committing a crime. They might say they were trying to get even.

In terms of explaining morality we could dig deeper. We could explain morality in terms of pleasure and pain. We could explain morality theologically or in reference to Darwinism. But personally I do not want to get into a great deal of justification for not wanting to do wrong. To me morality is something basic and common to most people.

If you want to put enjoyment and morality into one pleasure/pain framework than this is possible for explanatory purposes.

In terms of someone who is threatened with a gun there still exists an explanation or a justification for what they are doing, as there is in all situations. An explanation or justification also is possible when someone is being heroic or cowardly. The justification for someone going along with another who threatening with a gun is that the victim wants to live. Being alive could be seen as a necessary aspect of enjoyment being possible in the future.

Kent Stevens

Basic ideas was initially thought of as ideas that underpin many beliefs and actions. A basic ideas is like foundations to certain other ideas. If basic ideas do underpin many things then you would expect most people would have these basic ideas. One of the practical ways of testing whether an idea is basic or not is whether most people accept an idea or not.

Self evident means pretty much the same as obvious. It also means that an idea provides its own evidence. If an ideas provides its own evidence it does not need further justification. A basic idea is an idea that underpins most other ideas.

There is perhaps not much difference between basic ideas, obvious ideas, and self-evident ideas.

However, if we say that something is a basic idea it may be easier to seek further justification and say some ideas are more basic than other ones. If someone says that the idea of a creator god is self evident or obvious it may be hard to argue with such a person. But someone might say that there are some things more basic than the belief or disbelief in the existence of god. The desire for truth and the used of reason would be more basic than the belief in the existence of god. The common agreement to truth and reason makes it possible to discuss the existence or non-existence of god.

It gets difficult to say there are ideas that are more obvious or more self-evident than others. It is easier to say that one idea is more basic than others.

There are some ideas I can not be greatly bothered justifying. Those extremely rare ideas in my opinion can be thought as being completely basic. What is completely basic is partly subjective. I can be bothered justifying the existence or non-existence of god. I can be bothered justifying why liberty is good. What I can not be greatly bothered justifying is why I do what I enjoy doing or why I want to have truth.

excreationist

Those rare ideas are completely basic? Do you mean that someone might be sitting around then suddenly an idea pops out of the sky - for no reason? I mean it is completely basic after all...
And could you give an example of a rare idea that is completely basic - i.e. there is no reason why someone would believe that - they believe it "just because"?

So if you enjoy playing with trains, that is just basic - there is no reason for it?

excreationist

Well let's say you were in a concentration camp and you were carrying a really heavy load and for a moment your posture made it easier to hold it and you felt a mild pleasure of relief in some of your muscles even though you were very aware of the muscle pain in the other muscles. Would you call this "enjoyment" or "happiness"?

I also talked about the decision-making process, not just the outcome! And their justification is often just a rationalization that may involve them lying to themselves about the real reasons. e.g. they might be scared of someone due to idiosyncratic childhood reasons, but they rationalize this by finding an unrelated fault in the person - this reinforces their fear of the person though they aren't aware of the original reason.

You talk as if these are separate explanations - well my explanation uses all of it. The neurochemicals are just the way that signals, such as pleasure and pain signals are sent. Genes would affect how the motivational system of the brain works (particularly in the case of autism, etc?). Our early environment is where we learn to associate things (like people, etc) with our emotions. If infants and toddlers aren't cared for enough they mightn't associate their "connectedness" pleasures with people enough - and develop empathy and altruism.

Well I'm talking about the fundamental possibly subconscious processes. (I think they are more conscious for me though, but others might lie to themselves about what they want or feel) Usually psychologists try to look deeper than the person's justification, to the person's inner beliefs that they may try to hide - even from themselves. Dr. Phil on Oprah talks a lot about that.

Well this is my summary of individual morality using my motivational system framework:
Basically there are <a href="http://www.ccp.uchicago.edu/grad/Joseph_Craig/kohlberg.htm" target="_blank">Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development</a>, and to progress through the stages you need a stronger social connectedness desire. On the other hand, it means you're looking less and less out for no.1 (yourself).

Kent Stevens

This would not be basic as this is not an idea that underpins a persons thinking. This is still quite a "big" idea that could be broken down to a more "atomic" fundamental level. In less metaphorical language a really basic idea should be a universal in that it applies to a majority of people. The desire for enjoyment could be thought to be a human universal. Enjoying playing with trains is not something that applies to everyone.

My initial thoughts for this thread came from doing continually justification for statements. This involves taking a statement and saying why you either agree or disagree with the statement. This would be a justification in normal language of why you agree or disagree with the statement. You then keep on taking part of the resulting answers and trying to justify these parts. You keep on this continual justification of answers until you can not honestly justify things any more. You would have to stop doing the justification at some time or else be caught in an infinite loop. You would need to do this to at least half a dozen statement to be able to generalise well from the results.

This can be thought of doing an experiment even if it has a little bit of a subjective element. You can repeat this with pen and paper or with a word processor and see what results you get. You could get a statement and keep on asking why to it. Would you get some ideas that are harder to further justify? Are these ideas similar to the basic ideas that I was suggesting?

An example applied to the statement "I enjoy playing with trains" might be as follows.

I enjoy playing with trains. Why? It makes you feel like your dealing with a real set of trains. Why? The trains are made to be similar to real trains. Why? From experience I can tell that toy trains are like real trains and experience is trustworthy. Why? Experience is a good way to find truth and truth is desireable. Why? Having a true representation leads to happiness in life. Why? Happiness is desireable because it is morally good that people be happy. Why? It is desireable that people behave in a moral way. Why? Morality is good. Why? It just is.

Notice that there are what I suggested are three basic ideas in this example truth, happiness, and morality. But the desire for truth could be seen to be completely basic. The desire for truth is part of reason and reason could be seen as completely basic. For to prove that reasoning is valid you would tend to have to use reasoning to do so. You can justify a basic idea with another basic idea. You can justify enjoyment with morality or morality with enjoyment.

On a different note sometimes I would use the term pleasure and pain. I do not want to get cut with broken class in part because of pain. However, usually when I do things it is not to avoid the physical sensation of pain. It might be to avoid discomfort or it may be to enjoy a certain good activiy. We can use pleasure or pain as explanation to talk about most of the things I have discussed in this thread.

excreationist

Kent Stevens:
So a person might like playing with trains because "morality is good"?
So what about this - a person might like to play with toy trains, but not with toy buses. And they like playing with toy army men and dragons but not toy presidents. Are all of those things "basic ideas"? If not, could you explain why not... (for each toy)

[ March 18, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

Kent Stevens

Only a few ideas are basic ideas. We might believe something but only because it is thought to be true. But why should we not be content with lies and falsehood? I am suggesting the desire for truth or an accurate representation is a basic idea.

A basic idea is an idea that underpins many other ideas and actions. On second thoughts basic ideas can apply to individuals, groups, organisations, societies, or everyone. We could talk about the basic ideas of one person. Perhaps these basic ideas for one individual would be truth, reason, happiness, morality, rights, liberty, democracy, atheism, naturalism, and equality. Something like naturalism underpins a lot of other thoughts such as with this belief you would not need to go to church or pray so that you can go to heaven. The desire for truth and the use of reason could be how people are able to discuss things in this forum, or be able to engage in some logical argument. Morality or rights has to do with say not wanting to murder because it is wrong, or theft because it is wrong.

This use of the term basic ideas is a change from how I was using the term before, but it better reflects the use of the word basic. It also helps prevent every trivial idea being thought to be basic by someone. The like of trains does is not something that underpins political philosophies or personal philosophies.

We could talk about the basic ideas of an organisation. One of the basic ideas of infidels.org is the idea of metaphysical naturalism. One of the basic ideas of profit making organisations is to make money.

You could have some basic ideas of a society or a country. Some of the basic ideas of a country might be the idea that people have rights. Other basic ideas of a country could include liberty, democracy, justice, and equal treatment of its people.

Finally there could be basic ideas that apply to everyone. These kind of ideas are what I was mostly talking about in this thread. So the following are examples of ideas that applies to virtually everyone. The use of reason, the desire for truth, the desire for happiness, the desire to not do wrong, and the desire to do what you want. If you disagree with these do you want no reasoning, falsehood, unhappiness, immorality, and oppression. If you want to try justifying these ideas there is nothing to stop you from doing so.

To test whether certain ideas are basic you can do surveys. You could ask people in organisation what they thought was the basic ideas in an organisation and you could read certain documents that relate to the basic ideas of an organisation.
Those ideas that come consistently through from different sources and underpin most thinking in an organisation would be the basic ideas.

To find out what the basic ideas of everyone was you could do surveys and ask people what their ideas were. Those ideas that consistently come through and underpin thinking would be the basic ideas that all people have in common.

Ideas related to reason may be harder to justify further. This is because to justify reason you tend to use reasoning, which is circular, which is not valid.

excreationist

I think a better term for "basic ideas" are "generalizations" or "wide-spread ideas".
It isn't surprising that people see eye to eye on many things - we live in similar environments after all.
We have to form certain beliefs to be able to function properly in our modern world. Some people can't manage to do this and may be put in nursing homes or mental wards.

If you believe something, you believe it is probably true. That is a tautology.
On the other hand, with our two piece brains we are capable of having two conflicting opinions simultaneously. e.g. we might know that we will get fat if we eat lots of chocolate but we want to eat lots of chocolate so we ignore or lie to ourselves. So part of us is saying "chocolate doesn't make me fat" though we know that that isn't the truth. Sometimes we just like to use some "wishful thinking" though we may be half-aware that we are deluding ourselves.

Anyway, to not care about truth or reality (the same thing) would make you insane I think. They might question the "truth" that jumping off of a skyscaper is dangerous or that human limbs don't grow back. Or if they are driving, they might ignore the "truth" that you have to turn when there is a T-junction rather than go straight ahead at normal speed. And they might question the "truth" that you can't walk through walls or eat broken glass.

As far as morality goes, society makes sure that most people grow up to be fairly moral. If not, they are weeded out of society and sent to foster homes or juvenile detention or jails. Social-orientated morality is just something society needs to exist at all. Otherwise it would be total chaos.

As far as political ideas go - it can vary a lot - from right-wing dictatorships to left-wing anarchist communists or free-market liberals. These place different amounts of emphasis on things like individual freedom.