Good! In a culture that worships cops and “thought leaders”, this is two steps up from meekly accepting whatever powerful people say.
Now it’s time for:
(3) Acting on your ethical convictions towards specific goals, and learning to work with people who share them, even when their motivations or values are different.P.S. As others here have stated, (1) and (2) are not contradictory. If morality is constructed, then we all construct our own. Unless you actually WANT to be an amoral bastard.
I believe the only objective morality is that you must act without intent to harm others unless it is in self-defense.
How far in advance are you allowed to act in self defense? If you all but know they’re leaving the room to go get a gun out of the next room can you strike while their back is turned as they leave? What if it’s the neighbor who thinks you banged his wife and he’s going next door to get the gun? For most people there’s probably a distance at which the answer becomes “call the cops” but that distance probably gets a lot farther if the guy you think is about to shoot you is the sheriff’s brother. And what if you’re less sure? What if the person is clearly unhinged but it feels like a coinflip as to whether or not they’re about to try to murder you?
What about on a wider societal level? If you think a group of people is marshalling to attack you or the wider society can you attack first? Do you arrest them or even have the police violently disrupt their gatherings? Do you become a terrorist and commit an act of mass violence in the hopes that it will prevent them from attacking you or another group you consider vulnerable?
That raises the other question of whether it’s acceptable to defend others, but for the sake of simplicity it sounds like you’re not in favor of getting in the middle of other people’s fights which is fair, but do your kids fights count as your fights? Is there an age limit on that?
None of those questions necessarily apply to any particular ideology but I can think of a few ways people might and often actually have used these concepts in ways both favoring and disfavoring my own personal convictions.
And now you successfully turned a simple statement into one hell of a philophical exam.
A few years ago a coworker asked what thing is seen as normal now that’s going to be looked back on in 100 years as completely barbaric and I was like seriously? We’re acute inpatient psych nurses who have to force people to take medications, often by physically holding them down and injecting them. We’re doing the best we can, and I actually got into this field because I was that patient (my first restraint incident was my own) and I like to think I’m part of working towards that better future but holy shit does it suck right now.
Even if you skip over the psychiatric emergencies volatile enough to warrant emergency meds there’s so much more awful shit that I don’t have any good alternatives to. I have to see every person’s full skin including removing their pants on admission. I’m as tactful as I can be, I try to make sure the staff members are the same gender (although usually the men don’t mind the nurses all being female). I try to provide as much modesty and dignity as I can, but in the end I can’t tell just by looking which ones have a knife taped to their leg until their pants are actually off. One person actually had an entire loaded gun that the ED somehow missed. I don’t make them squat and cough or put my fingers in any orifices but it still traumatizes the depressed college students who think we’re gonna heal them instead of just prevent them from dying for three days while we make sure it’s safe for them to take the sedatives they’re gonna need for the weeks or even months until they can see an outpatient psych or therapist who will do the actual helping.
Life is horrible. We do the best we can. I’ve decided my meaning of life is to reduce suffering. I don’t work in an environment that’s conducive to that but I also don’t have a whole lot of better options. There are places that are kinder but they’re not designed to handle the really hard cases and a certain amount of those will always exist. At least the more time I spend trying the better idea I have of what actions I can take that will actually reduce suffering (although luck remains a significant factor) and sometimes I even succeed!
Oddly enough, just watched Hitman, and there was a line that fits here.
Even if all morality is subjective or inter-subjective I have some very strong opinions about tabs vs spaces
Morality is, and always has been, built entirely upon empathy. Understanding how someone else feels and considering the greater implications beyond yourself is the fundamental building block to living a moral life. If you’re willing to condemn the world to your shitty code just because the tab key is quicker, you’re a selfish monster who deserves hyponichial splinters. See also: double spaces after a period.
Morality is, and always has been, built entirely upon empathy. Understanding how someone else feels and considering the greater implications beyond yourself is the fundamental building block to living a moral life.
Stoning people to death for mixing fabrics was based on morality too.
Who did that? Jewish people who wore mixed fabrics were unclean and had to cleanse themselves. Who murdered people for that?
Oh no, my half remembered example of overly violent reactions to breaking moral traditions might not be literally accurate!
Did religions include extremely harsh punishments for breaking moral codes? Yes. That is the point even if the details aren’t exactly right.
You can hold to an ethical code while breaking your moral code. This seems to be an example of that, and my frustration with ethics codes of many professional societies/organizations. You can be entirely ethical yet still spend your life crating efficient life ending tools.
Nah, the probibitions against mixed fabrics, and who can be considered holy, and how to pray and to whom, all of those are edicts designed to exert control. It has nothing to do with morality.
My morality is built on furtherment of mankind technologically, with weights assigned to satisfaction and an aversion to harm. Here are some examples on how to apply this logically and without any emotion, empathy included:
- It’s kind of like not really believing in human rights but supporting them anyways because the people who oppose human rights are destructive and inefficient.
- Humans are animals. We must act according to our basic wants and needs in a way that maximizes our satisfaction, or else we are acting against our own nature. However, we must do this in a way that causes no harm, or we have failed as a collective species.
- Diversity is a must because exclusivity is a system which consistently fails every time is has ever been tested.
- The death penalty is taboo not because life is sacred but because one person deciding the importance of another’s life is intellectually bankrupt and only leads to a spiral of violence.
- All life is meaningless, full stop, which gives us the right to assign whatever meaning we like, and having more technology, with equal control over it by each individual person, gives us the collective power to make more choices.
I will not be taking any questions, meatbags
So, empathy like I said.
Why do you value the technological advancement of the human race? How do you determine what is advancement, and what is regression?
Why place emphasis on satisfaction and aversion to harm? How do you determine the relative levels of satisfaction and harm except through empathy?
I apologize for breaking your comment down into quotes.
So, empathy like I said.
Incorrect, it can be entirely selfish and rational, because helping others also helps you.
Why do you value the technological advancement of the human race? How do you determine what is advancement, and what is regression?
I thought I explained that pretty well. Life has the meaning we choose, technology gives more choices.
Why place emphasis on satisfaction and aversion to harm? How do you determine the relative levels of satisfaction and harm except through empathy?
I also explained that. It’s the most efficient method. It is the time-proven way to accomplish the goal of furtherment of technology, and satisfaction is also our primary motive as animals. All methods which fail this simple test, whether or not they avert harm for others, inevitably fail on a societal level. How we measure it, satisfaction and harm, is by actually measuring it via communication. Humanity has developed means of quantifying happiness and wellbeing, of assessing the wants and needs of individuals and society as a whole.
I feel like I’m just repeating myself.
The correct answer is to map tab to spaces in your IDE.
This is gonna get out of hand.
ANNNND
Fuck you, nuh uh
People who use tabs are monsters
<overly dramatic threat of violence here>
Tabs are the one true way! All those who blaspheme against the might tab will be regex’d into compliance.
Vertical or horizontal tabs? And I don’t mean browser tabs.
Tabs. F alignment for aesthetic purposes
My heart goes out to those who suffer with poor editors where this is a problem. I do empathize with them. It’s important to love others and help. That’s the code for my life: love others. Except vim users. Straight to jail.
As I have learned today: “tabstospaces”: true
What’s even funnier- is the amount of people in the comments here that perfectly illustrate the humor in the post without even understanding why.
Jokes on you, I don’t believe in subjective morality.
Could somebody explain it to me, please?
The humor is based on a seeming contradiction this guy’s students exhibit.
They apparently simultaneously believe:
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in a relativistic moral framework - that morality is a social construct (that can mean other things, too, but morality as a social construct is a very common type of relativistic moral framework)
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that their morality is correct and get outraged at disagreements with their moral judgments.
This isn’t logically inconsistent, but it is kind of funny.
It isn’t logically inconsistent because, if you believe morality is relative and what is right/wrong for people in other societies is not necessarily right/wrong for people in your society, then assuming that the professor and his student are part of the same or similar societies, they should share the same or similar morality. People in the same society can disagree on who is a part of their society as well as what is moral. Ethics is messy. So, it is not necessarily logically inconsistent to try to hold others to your relativized moral framework - assuming you believe that it applies to them too since “relativized” doesn’t mean “completely individualized”. And, due to globalization, you might reasonably hold a pretty wide range of people to your moral views.
It is kind of funny because there is a little bit of tension between the rigidity of the ethical beliefs held and the acceptance that ethics are not universal and others may have different moral beliefs that are correct in their cultural context. Basically, to act like your morals are universally correct while believing that your morals are correct for you, but not for everyone, represents a possible contradiction and could be a bit ironic.
A good example of relativistic morality based on culture/society:
On the Mongolian steppe, it has traditionally been seen by some nomadic groups as good and proper for the old, when they can no longer care for themselves, to walk out on the steppe to be killed by the elements and be scavenged - a “sky burial”. Many in the West would find this unacceptable in their cultural context. In fact, they might say, it is wrong to expect or allow your mom to go sky bury herself in Ohio or say… Cambridge. Instead, they might think you should take her in or put her in a home.
Now, if your professor said to you “So you don’t think Mongolians expecting their mothers to die in sky burials is wrong, but you believe me expecting my mother to die in a sky burial is wrong in Cambridge? Curious. I am very intelligent.” You could probably assume they are either a Mongolian nomad or don’t understand relatvistic morality.
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For the people not getting it:
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They treat morals as opinions.
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They also treat their personal opinions like they’re the absolute best opinion.
Another way:
They think everyone likes different ice cream flavors and that’s fine. They like Rocky Road flavor. They also think anyone who doesn’t is a monster.
Convictions are one thing. But they need to be logically consistent. Saying morality is subjective but you’re evil if you don’t subscribe to my personal version is illogical.
Let’s say we decide that
moralswhat is right and wrong is decided entirely by ourselves. Then it makes perfect sense to defend your own opinions and to disagree with people who disagree with your stance on right and wrong. You chose those morals after all. It’s kinda part of the deal that they can’t apply to you alone (example: when is it just to kill?)So I don’t see a contradiction.
I guess this post is about Inability to engage with a different set of morals. But assuming that their is an absolute truth for right and wrong wouldn’t solve that issue, so I’m not sure why they brought it up.
The issue is believing that everyone has a right to their beliefs but then attacking them. It’s like in cultural anthropology: you should only judge a culture by its own internal morals and standards and not impose your outside view when studying them. Kinda like Star Trek Prime Directive.
If you TRULY believe everyone is entitled to their own morals, then you’re breaking that when you criticize someone else’s. After all, they have their own morals system and you’re perfectly fine with that. Your morals can only include your actions. If you believe that your morals are objectively the best, you’re no longer thinking the first thing anymore. It’s subjectivism vs objectivism.
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Yeah, that’s because moral relativism is cool when you live in a free and decent society.
The irony is that you can afford to debate morality when society is moral and you’re not facing an onslaught of inhumanity in the form of fascism and unchecked greed that’s threatening any hope for a future.
But when shit hits the fan, morality becomes pretty fucking clear. And that’s what’s happening right now. Philosophical debates about morality are out the window when you’re facing an existential threat.
They used to be the case that just calling your political opponents evil was oversimplifying. But these days? They literally are just evil in the most cruel ways imaginable to the point where there’s nothing to debate, and people who do so are doing so in bad faith most of the time. I think that’s another dimension of the situation, a poorly moderate websites like Twitter make it so that people are constantly in a hostile environment where good faith cannot be assumed so you have to learn to operate in that kind of environment
And the evil guys are yelling that the other side is evil, while the other side is too good to call anyone evil 😔
I mean yeah, the democrats are violent, authoritarian, and and generally awful.
True. Just ask someone from Gaza
Yeah, things have hugely improved in Gaza since one of the most powerful countries in the world got rid of their “democrats” in government.
Ohnowaititstheopposite.
I think the person replying to you actually just outlined the point the post made. You can frame all of these views for both sides, and could let two people on both side argue about who is actually trying to be cruel.
As much as I’d agree so much evil shit is going in, it’s a good point about how perceptions from others don’t change our own views lately and we aren’t even interested in discussing them. I also understand your point of there being no reason to try discussing them, but that’s the view the people on the other side have had for the past 9 years now, and that’s why we’re where we are. I’m not American but I truly wonder if there’s a way that people can capitulate to each other without having to start a civil war.
When the other side is doing stuff like Mass deportation ASMR videos you’re past the point where it’s a reasonable debate about the exact level of income tax or whatever. Actual cartoon villains wouldn’t dare behave this badly
I see no paradox here. Yes, the rubrics change over time, making morality relative, but the motivation (empathy) remains constant, meaning you can evaluate morality in absolute terms.
A simple analog can be found in chess, an old game that’s fairly well-defined and well-understood compared to ethics. Beginners in chess are sometimes confused when they hear masters evaluate moves using absolute terms — e.g. “this move is more accurate than that move.
Doesn’t that suggest a known optimum — i.e., the most accurate move? Of course it does, but we can’t actually know for sure what move is best until the game is near its end, because finding it is hard. Otherwise the “most accurate” move is never anything more than an educated guess made by the winningest minds/software of the day.
As a result, modern analysis is especially good at picking apart historic games, because it’s only after seeing the better move that we can understand the weaknesses of the one we once thought was best.
Ethical absolutism is similarly retrospective. Every paradigm ever proposed has flaws, but we absolutely can evaluate all of them comparatively by how well their outcomes express empathy. Let the kids cook.
In moral philosophy cultural relativism isn’t merely an empirical observation about how morality develops, though. It’s a value judgment about moral soundness that posits that all forms of morality are sound in context.
(When he says “entirely relative” that signals cultural relativism).
To use your chess example a cultural relativist would hold buckle and thong to the argument that if most people in your chess club habitually play scholars mate and bongcloud then those are the soundest openings, full stop, and that you are objectively right to think that.
Of course chess is a problematic analogy because there are proven known optimums, so tha analogy is biased on the side of objective morality.
Sorry for my delay. I’m with you, and it’s possible these undergrads could be considered cultural relativists.
I suspect all they’re equipped to express is something like the prime directive from Star Trek due, potentially, to their knowledge of the troubled history of deploying foreign (e.g. colonial) mores in non-native contexts. If pressed, I wouldn’t expect any of them to truly support every moral schema without reservation.
Of course chess is a problematic analogy because there are proven known optimums, so the analogy is biased on the side of objective morality.
This confusion was my point, actually. The only proven optimums in chess relate to end game positions, as I mentioned above, due to computational complexity. For moves elsewhere in the game, such as openers, we have convincing anecdotal evidence of optimality, but we definitely cannot prove them without onerous assumptions about the opponent’s behavior.
As a moral relativist myself, I’m obligated to point out that this prompts the question of what constitutes the end game in the moral context. That is, in what situation are the extended effects of any morally relevant action known to a given moral agent? If we can find an example, only then can we begin defining a truly objective moral construct.
Until then, however, “convincing anecdotal evidence of optimality” must suffice, to the chagrin of moral absolutists everywhere.
Edit: swype errors
Now that is funny. Its funny because its true.
Subjective morality is self evidently true, but that gives us no information about how to live our lives, so we must live as if absolute morality is true.
We only have our own perspective. Someone else’s subjective morality is meaningless to us, we aren’t them.
Hah! Cool to see Henry pop up on my feed. I knew this guy back when he was a grad student. And as somebody that also teaches ethics, he is dead on. Undergrads are not only believe all morality is relative and that this is necessary for tolerance and pluralism (it’s not), but are also insanely judgmental if something contradicts their basic sense of morality.
Turns out, ordinary people’s metaethics are highly irrational.
Morality is subjective and many different systems exist.
However, mine is the best one because it leads to optimal human welfare and happiness. If you can show your system is better, I’ll happily change my mind, but until that time, if you follow a system that doesn’t lead to optimal human welfare and happiness, you are, thus, intentionall working against it, and are a thus a monster.
Sounds like “all moral philosophies are equal, but some are more equal than others”
Love your username.
Thanks bro, had read it in Plato but was on a real King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard kick when I signed up for Lemmy (still am).
I just commented elsewhere in this thread, but isn’t moral realism a thing for this exact situation? Is his post not a self report on his inability to identify a moral framework that fits his students worldview, or at least to explain the harm that arises if one has a self contradictory worldview and help them realize that and potentially arrive at a more consistent view? Seems like this comment section is filled with a lot of people that understand their moral framework more than this professor, but obviously are not in the field. Can you please elaborate on the issues here? Like I think abortions are fine, but I understand that others think it’s murder. I don’t think they’re bad people for that, but I understand if they think I’m a bad person for my views. How we deal with it on a societal level is obviously even more complicated. I don’t see how there’s a problem there.
It seems like ALL is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your comment. Do they really believe ALL morality is relative and are also always insanely judgy if things contradict their beliefs?
I think the issue is that students aren’t consistent. They’ll fall back on relativism or subjectivism when they don’t really have a strong opinion, or perceive there to be a lot of controversy about the subject that they don’t want to have to argue about. But fundamentally, whether there’s an objective and universal answer to some moral question or not really doesn’t depend on whether there’s controversy about it, or whether it’s convenient or cool to argue about.
I think that there are parts of morality that really are culturally relative and subjective, and parts that aren’t. Variation in cultural norms is totally okay, as long as we don’t sacrifice the objective, universal stuff. (Like don’t harm people unnecessarily, etc.). The contours of the former and the latter are up for debate, and we shouldn’t presume that anybody knows the exact boundary.
Your beliefs seem to align with what the students are saying and generally with moral realism.
You just said “I think that there are parts of morality that really are culturally relative and subjective, and parts that aren’t.” so you can view some morality as subjective and some as necessarily universal. That is what most people default to and what you seem to saying is wrong with the students. You state they aren’t consistent, but you’re also not consistent. Sometimes subjectivity is right sometimes it’s not. I’m not seeing a distinction, so please elaborate on it if I’m missing it.
Not disagreeing that they’re probably just inconsistent.
Is it possible to be consistent about moral relativism & still make firm choices?
What’s it called when morality is construed as systems of arbitrarily chosen axioms & moral judgements amount to judges stating whether something agrees with a system they chose? Is it inconsistent to acknowledge that these axioms are ultimately choices, choose a system, and judge all actions eligible for moral consideration according to that chosen system?
I’ve been a College and University prof for the past 6 years. I’m in my young 40s, and I just don’t understand most of the people in their 20s. I get that we grew up in really different times, but I wouldn’t have thought there would be such a big clash between them and me. I teach about sound and music, and I simply cannot catch the interest of most of them, no matter what I try. To the point were I’m no sure I want to keep doing this. Maybe I’m already too old school for them but I wonder who will want to teach anymore…
That is the same sentiment my music teacher had 15 years ago and the same sentiment his music teacher did before that. I don’t think it’s illustrating the times as much as just that teaching is a tough and thankless job and most people aren’t interested in learning
I could get that at the grade school level, but at the university/college level those students are choosing the music classes. To be that disengaged for a course you picked is a bit different than a student who is forced to take a course.
That being said, if the course is a requirement that does change things a bit.
Yeah, I’m not sure I agree with this. I’ve always said to myself that I didn’t want to fall into this old-versus-young rhetoric, but I think the situation is different. The world and technologies are changing faster than our ability to integrate them. The world in which my father lived wasn’t that different from his father’s, and neither was mine. But young people, born into the digital age, have been the guinea pigs of social media and the gafam ecosystem, which seems to have radically altered their ability to concentrate (even watching a short film is a challenge), as well as their interest in learning. They see school, even higher education, as a constraint rather than an opportunity. I have the impression that they don’t see the point of learning when a Google search or ai answers everything, and that retaining things is useless. That’s my 2 cents…
I’ll chime in and say that math teachers have said similar things about calculators/graphing calculators for 25+ years. This is most definitely you getting “old”. It’s okay—it happens to all of us.
As far as attention span, that has been an equally common refrain—going back to people complaining that radio has reduced kids attention spans.
Interesting points. I don’t think calculators are equivalent to having the sum of humanity’s knowledge, AI, and infinite content in you pocket tho. There’s a limit to how much fun you can have with a calculator… The same goes for attention in class. Not so long ago, if the class bored you, you had to wait while scribbling in a notepad. Now you can doom scroll anywhere anytime. These kids have been test subjects for ipad, youtube content and smartphone,I don’t blame them, I blame capitalism who made them addicted to social media and their parents who didn’t protect them.
I also want to add that I have some great students, invested in their studies and super bright. It’s just that a majority of them now seems to be incapable of focusing on anything for more than a few minutes.
It’s just that a majority of them now seems to be incapable of focusing on anything for more than a few minutes.
I teach chemistry at a college and I don’t think it’s any different than the past; it’s just more obvious. When I was in middle school, I would tune out all the time, but I didn’t have a smartphone, so I brought shitty fantasy novels to read under the desk. In high-school, I would tune out all the time, but I didn’t have a smartphone, so I would just leave or draw band logos. In undergrad, I would tune out all the time, but I didn’t have a smartphone, so I doodled or wrote song lyrics in the margins of my notebook. Even in grad school, i would frequently just straight disassociate my way through lectures when I ran out of attention span (so every 5 minutes or so).
There’s tons of pedagogy and andragogy research that shows that humans in general only focus for 10-15 minutes at a time (and it’s even shorter for teens and males in their early 20’s), and that’s remarkably consistent across generations. I don’t think people actually have shorter attention spans; they just have an easy way to mindlessly fill that void that is harder to come back from without an interruption. Frankly, my students from Gen X all the way to Gen Alpha students do pretty good at paying attention, but even my best students still zone out every few minutes, and that’s fine. It’s just human nature and the limitations of the way our brains are structured.
Pretty much. I think a lot of the anger over phones is that it makes it real obvious when someone doesn’t care what you’re saying. You’re right that you used to look out into the classroom and couldn’t really tell who was focusing or zoned out
As someone who is young but old enough to remember when boredom was a thing let me tell you boredom sucked. There wasn’t really anything to it worth keeping. Yeah sometimes I go for a walk and have a think but that’s intentional. Being bored when you’re stuck in line or something is just painful and has no redeeming qualities
100%. The only redeeming quality of boredom is that it encourages you to go out and gain other interests and skills in the absence of other entertainment, but that’s more in the “I’m done with my homework and have nothing to do for the next 2 hours until dinner” sense. And even before smartphones, TV, booze, and weed easily filled that niche if you weren’t careful.
Calculators, computers, either way the kids going to finish looking at BOOBS.
We all do.
I’m pretty sure it’s always been the case that most students didn’t care, because they’re forced to be there. I don’t even remember being awake for the majority of precalc because first period is just too early in the day.
Maybe. But when you go study sound tech at college, I would have believe you would be interested to hear about sound stuff… Especially since the application process is pretty heavy and only half of the applicants get in.
I’m not sure that tech is really changing all that fast. In the 1990s a good desktop computer had 40 MB of HDD space and 2 MB of RAM. In the 2000s the hard drives were already 1000x as big, and people had hundreds of MB of RAM. That’s a massive amount of change in just a decade. In the early 1990s nobody had heard of the Internet. By the 2000s it was everywhere.
Sure, these days a low-end phone has much higher specs than that. But, has the phone-using experience really changed much in the last decade? Even the last 2? Specs have gotten better, but it hasn’t really opened up new ways of using the device. Yes, in some ways things are still moving quickly, but it’s always been like that. Some things change rapidly, other things slow down.
I agree that people’s ability to concentrate has been affected. The fact that “attention” has been turned into a kind of currency means that people seem to have lost the ability to focus on one thing for an extended period. That’s something that’s unique to the last 1-2 decades. But, I don’t think people’s interest in learning has changed. It’s just that the traditional way of learning in a classroom is much harder if your attention span is shot. It was never easy, most classes were always boring, but people could get through it because they were still able to focus for extended periods.
School was also always a constraint for most people. People who could go to school for the love of learning rather than as a means to an end were always a lucky minority. If you were really lucky you got a teacher / prof / teaching assistant who could make things interesting. But, in most cases they droned through the required material and you tried to absorb it.
I agree that now that searching the Internet is easier, certain methods of learning / teaching are outdated and haven’t been adapted yet. Memorizing facts was always stupid, but at least when it took a while to look it up in a paper encyclopedia you could just vaguely see the value. But, these days it’s so obviously absurd – yet that’s still what a lot of teachers focus on. It’s not to blame the teachers though. They often don’t have the freedom to change the way they teach, especially today now that there are so many standardized tests. But, memorizing facts about history, for example, is just ridiculous in a world where looking up those facts even with a vague search like “french guy who tried to attack moscow” will take you right to Napoleon.
Some of the most useful classes I ever had were the ones that taught me to analyze and understand information. For example, a philosophy class on analyzing arguments and identifying logical fallacies has been incredibly useful, and only more useful in an age of misinformation and disinformation. Then there were engineering courses that taught how to estimate. Science courses that taught significant figures and error analysis is extremely important when you have calculators / programs that can spit out an answer to dozens of decimal places when the values you supply are approximate. These sorts of things are incredibly useful in a world where a magic machine can spit out an answer and you need to think about whether that answer is reasonable or not.
Looking at music, there’s so much that I’ve learned outside of school that I never learned in school. I stopped taking music classes at the end of high school, and wasn’t all that interested in music for a while. But, since then I’ve become more interested. And, there’s so much that’s not easy to learn just using the Internet. Like, trying to understand the circle of fifths, or the various musical modes, or how to spot certain pop/rock songs as using various 8 or 12 bar blues patterns. I’m lucky because I have a friend who has a PhD in musicology who is willing to chat with me about things I find interesting and want to know more about.
Anyhow, my main points is that I don’t think that kids today are really any different from any other kids throughout history with two main exceptions: their attention span and the immediacy of information on the Internet. Concentrating in school has always been extremely hard, but at least when I was young I hadn’t been trained from age 3 to doom scroll. That means that staying focused through a 1 hour class, which was a chore for me, is a near impossibility for a kid weaned on a smartphone or tablet. As for memorizing, even when I was young, memorizing facts seemed like a waste of time. But, these days it’s clearly ridiculous, but the approach to education hasn’t fully adapted yet. Really, kids in elementary school should be learning how to fact check, how to cross-verify, how to identify misinformation, etc. But, even if teachers know that, they’re boxed in.
Best of luck to you though, it’s good that at least you want to jam information into some brains.
For me personally, life stress and exhaustion are bigger focus inhibitors. I agree that school is largely obsolete and I don’t really blame kids for checking out
Nah, I’m early 30s, but grew up around 20th century media, competitive parents when it came to game shows, and a weird expectation to just know pub trivia.
Took me a while to realise I’m the outlier and still am. Just the other day I was talking to some old colleagues and had to spend energy convincing them that the things they were talking about in the Simpsons are mostly movie or TV references and even then mostly just Kubrick, Hitchcock and a considerable amount of Steven King. They just have no idea how unoriginal most modern/contemporary media is. Not even in a bad way, just in an homage/artist replicatong the old masters etc.
But it’s really strange for a generation with the biggest access and connection to human culture is somehow just as bubbles/silod as ever.
Algorithms, mate. Algorithms…
I think this is less time-specific, and more just people not being terribly interested in learning.
For example, a professor who specialized in virology was explaining everything about how pathogens spillover between species, using a 2010s ebola outbreak as an example. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time because it was as fascinating as a true horror movie, and yet other students were totally zoned out on Facebook a few rows ahead of me. While the professor was talking about organs dissolving due to the disease and the fecal-oral (and other liquids) route of ebola, which wasn’t exactly a dry subject, lol.
Rinse and repeat for courses on macro/micro economics, mirror neurons, psychology classes on kink, even coding classes.
Either I’m fascinated by stuff most people find boring, or a lot of people just hate learning. I’m thinking it’s the latter, since this stuff encompassed a wide range of really interesting subjects from profs who were really excited about what they taught.
I miss them a lot, I used to corner various profs and TAs and ask them questions about time fluctuations around black holes, rare succulent growing tips in the plant growth center, and biotechnology. It was fun having access to such vibrant people :)
Do a class about sounds of tiktok reels that will be a hit.
I actually do sometimes incorporates memes and stuff from tiktok and other social media in my classes.
I wonder how much of that is a change in who is going to college and why, and what the requirements are. More people are being funneled into colleges that previously would have gone directly into the workforce or into an apprenticeship. Is your class a gen ed? Gen Ed’s have really expanded and if you listen to bleeding hearts like me it’s a good thing because it exposes people to new things, but I think it’s actually so poorly managed that people end up taking the classes they think will be the least rigorous regardless of their actual interest just to get them over with.
I’ve had people, presumably young, argue with me on here about politics and morals. For example, I say the right to abortion is a political issue. Been screamed out that it’s not a political issue because a woman’s right to an abortion is a moral issue. Yeah, I agree, but the argument is still political. Some believe abortion is murder and that they’re right. That’s politics.
It’s like they have no sense that other views exist, and opposing views do not constitute politics. “I’m on the right side of this thing so it’s not politics!” As if I’m somehow lowering the debate to mere… something?
That was one of the first things I got confused by on lemmy. Am I making sense? Just crawled in from work and I’m wasted tired.
But they are moral arguments, unless politics is added into the discussion. Let me give you a different example. If I believe people are entitled to the fruits of their labor then that’s a moral point. If I believe the government should enforce everyone getting their fruits, that’s political.
If I were to believe abortion is wrong then that can be a moral point. However if I think the government should take a stand on the matter, that’s political.
It’s like they have no sense that other views exist, and opposing views do not constitute politics.
I think they point they are trying to make is that once you are very very wrong about something (in their mind), it’s no longer a political position, it’s just an immoral position. And if that’s what they’re saying, I disagree with it.
I’m not saying that there are no immoral positions, I’m saying that a position can be completely immoral and still be political. I hate when people use the phrase “it’s just politics” as a shield, as though everyone else has to be OK with some incredibly shitty attitude they have, just because they have managed to also make it a political attitude.
And that’s such a terrible superpower to give to politics, too: the ability to instantly legitimize a position simply because it falls under the domain of politics.
Not to long ago, the question of “should white children and black children be allowed to go to school together” was a political issue in the U.S. And I’d say that’s still a political issue. It didn’t magically become some other type of issue just because a few decades passed and we now agree that one side was completely wrong. The fact that it isn’t actively being discussed anymore doesn’t change the fact that it falls under the umbrella of political issues. It means that someone can have a political opinion and they have to be a real piece of shit to hold that opinion.
The owning class wants to be the only class doing politics. So they brainwash the proles into thinking politics is bad.
And making people believe preserving the status quo is not political but changing it is
not just bad, but extremely venal, petty, and a thing that happens in marble rooms you aren’t allowed to go in.
The point they were trying to make (I believe, and this specific argument) is that the entire basis of the opposing argument is entirely based on religion and pretty much by definition specious. There is no sky daddy looking over your shoulder, and this any morality you base on its existence is inheritetly flawed at best.
What there is are women who need timely access to medical care or their lives are at risk. This is a tangible and real threat.
So treating the issue as “Politics” only serves to dignify the flawed morality of one side while letting women die.
So treating the issue as “Politics” only serves to dignify the flawed morality of one side while letting women die.
Your earlier paragraphs don’t provide any evidence for this point.
It’s also a health issue. It involves choices about life, not unlike someone in a coma or another situation where they are unable to make a conscious choice about whether to continue or deny treatment.
One argument in favor of abortion I recall reading was comparing it to donating an organ while you’re still alive. You are under no obligation of donating anything, of risking your life to save another, even if you are literally the only person on Earth that can save the other. If medical professionals have to respect those choices, they should also respect the choice of mothers who decide to end an undesired pregnancy
It’s even worse than that. You can’t even be forced to donate organs or blood after you’re dead. Most places are opt-in for organ donation. A few jurisdiction are opt-out. Nowhere has mandatory posthumous organ donation. Some despotic countries have apparently used force organ harvesting on political dissidents, but no country has ever established some broad rule, based on patriotism or some such, that everyone has to donate organs after death.
In red states, pregnant women literally have less bodily autonomy than corpses.
Kids thinking anything goes while also being incredibly close-minded is not new.
*humans
There are no adults in the room.
Im 50. The only difference between me and a 12 year old is cancer scares and a bit more wisdom due to experience. Im convinced this is true for most people.
The problem is that between 12 and 30 people people gain way more confidence than they gain wisdom.
Honestly, those two points don’t seem incompatible to me. For example:
Teaching the history of fashion to undergrads in 1985 is bizarre because:
- They insist that standards of dress are entirely relative. Being dressed decently is a cultural construct; some cultures wear hardly any clothing whatsoever and being nude is a completely normal, default way of presenting yourself.
- And yet when I walk into class with my dick and balls hanging out, they all get extremely offended and the coeds threaten to call the police.
(And yes I changed the year because I’m sick of so many of these issues being brought up as though “the kids these days” are the problem, when so often these are issues that have been around LITERALLY FOREVER.)
I’m not trying to dunk on this Henry Shelvin guy – I’m certain that he knows a lot more about philosophy than me, and has more interesting thoughts about morals than I do. And I’m also not going to judge someone based on a tweet…aside from the obvious judgement that they are using Twitter, lol. But as far as takes go, this one kinda sucks.
*edit: I’ll add that I hope this professor is taking this opportunity to explain what the difference is between morals being relative vs being subjective, which is an issue that has come up in this very thread. Especially since I bet a lot of his students have only heard the term “moral relativism” being used by religious conservatives who accuse you of being a moral relativist because you don’t live by the Bible. I know that was definitely the case for me.
No, that is not the direct equivalence. The direct equivalence for 2. Would be something like
“But then they insist that being naked is never acceptable and is grotesque, and anyone that disagrees is a gross pervert”
That’s where the inconsistency comes from
Except that they probably don’t think that.
However, they might think that a professor exposing himself to his students is an abuse of power and sexual harassment, due to the local cultural consensus around what that specific action means, and the unequal relationship between teacher and student.
And yet when I walk into class with my dick and balls hanging out, they all get extremely offended and the coeds threaten to call the police.
Cancel culture today is out of control.
We used to have academic freedom. Now we just have sensitivity trainings and PANTS. SHACKLES OF THE MIND, I TELL YOU!
no, but the shackles of the mind also cover your genitals, at least in part.
Well because we have indecent exposure laws. Hanging your dick and balls out in public is not relevant to cancel culture or fashion.
Who is we? I have immunity
The woke mind virus strikes again.
plenty of people violate laws without comment or condemnation all the time. nobody makes a fuss about someone going 5 mph over the speed limit, or doing a fuck-ton of sexual assault, and it’s really hard to get anyone to care. you’re an asshole if you make a big deal about someone doing some drugs.
laws and morality don’t really correlate.
you’re an asshole if you make a big deal about someone doing some drugs.
Did you respond to the wrong person? I was talking about displaying your cock and balls in public being illegal. Where did this come from?
laws and morality don’t really correlate.
ok. yes thats right. what are you talking about though? when did we start talking about morality?
morality
sorry used to talking to americans. they respond better to that word and can’t tell the difference. but yes. ethics.
did you respond to the wrong person
no. im pointing out that laws are about boots on necks, they have nothing to do with anything else.
Can both points not be true? There will be local morals and social morals that differ from place to place with overarching morals that tend to be everywhere.
Not all morals or beliefs have to be unshakable or viewed as morally reprehensible for disagreement.
Unless they mean all their ethics are held that way in which case that’s just the whole asshole in a different deck chair joke.
I’m sure both are true for some people, but I think the irony he’s pointing out is that this belief system recognizes that every individual/culture has different morals, while simultaneously treating individual/cultural differences as reprehensible.
Sounds like someone who was raised in an echo chamber. They recognize other chambers exist, but hate that they do. We’re back to tribalism.
Or someone with strong morals? I think LGBT people deserve to live. I understand that other people do not based on their own moral arguments. I would not want to associate with them. I don’t live in an echo chamber. I recognize and interact with people with different beliefs (even on LGBT issues), but there are certain moral beliefs that make me not desire to interact with people. Is that tribalism or my morality? If I don’t wanna hang out with nazis, I guess that’s tribalism and the outgroup is nazis? Should I stop living in an echo chamber and hang out with more nazis?
The concept of an echo chamber when used in this casual way is so reductive. “People hang out with other who and consume media that aligns with their beliefs”. That’s not inherently a bad thing. It becomes bad when they are unable to recognize other beliefs exist and unable to accept at least some of them as valid alternative perspectives.
The context is important - “morals” covers both “I think drinking is/isn’t an inherently morally irresponsible activity” and “I want to gas minorities”, and one of those has slightly higher stakes. You can understand the latter often happens because small town america might not have ever met minority groups, or somehow figures the small immigrant community with delicious food is “one of the few good ones” - that doesn’t make their “morals” any less reprehensible.
I think we agree/are saying the same thing? I’m saying that talking in absolutes about echo chambers being bad is reductive. To me, the important distinction between an actual echo chamber and being a normal person with beliefs and opinions, is the ability to recognize that sometimes others have different beliefs/opinions and that those may be equally valid. Like I said I’m anti nazi, but also that normal people (which I’m sometimes classified as) are able to accept some differences. So I’m not ok with nazis, but I think it’s ok to fast for lent if you want even if I don’t. So, we’re both saying context is important?
But the point is that, if you follow moral relativism (which the hypothetical students in the post do, as they insist morality is relative), then you must acquiesce that cultures which hate queer people are valid and acceptable, because doing otherwise would not be moral relativism. Or, take another example, slavery. Is it okay for any culture to practice slavery?
And if you don’t agree that it is valid and acceptable on a philosophical level, well, you can just follow a form moral universalism. Which is more appropriate if you do think some sets of morals are simply more ethical than others, such as, for example, not allowing slavery
It’s not so much about whether different moral standards exist or not, but more whether different standards for morals in and of themselves are acceptable/ethical.
The fact that they didn’t use “moral relativism” explicitly suggests to me that like most general philosophy classes, they are probably moral realists and the OP is just being cheeky about it, or legitimately for some reason completely unable to present moral realism as a subject of discussion.
I don’t agree with your characterization of moral universalism here, but regardless it’s clear that they are either bad at their job or posting for the memes because it’s literally their job to be able to establish what a cohesive view would be and why that is important, so it’s weird to act like clowning on their students for having a selfcontradictory view is anything but an admission of failure on their end.
If you agree that morals are relative and culturally constructed, then you shouldn’t reject differences in morals of others as immoral.
That’s basically just taking a position where you want to be able to change your mind on what’s “moral”, and expect everyone else to follow your opinion on it.
I don’t think acknowledging morals as relative to the culture they exist within exempts decrees of immorality. Relative to their culture, it is. Should they speak from the point of view of a culture that they don’t understand? I personally think it’s a sliding scale where, to the extent it harms other people, it needs to be viewed more objectively just, and where it doesn’t harm, it’s fine being a difference in opinion. The only downside to this is that sometimes you don’t know enough about a topic to know there are victims, and so your prescriptive thoughts can change very quickly about the morality of it. Perspective is important and should always be maximized to avoid this problem.
You just described moral relativism. Was that your goal sorry?
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I wish I could have phrased it that well.
I said that some are but it seems cultures share a couple of them in common like not killing without cause. So in that system there are local morals and global/regional morals.
