This is either the best or worst moral theory anyone can hold. Maybe both. Also, I've dared myself to complete this entry (accurately, I might add) before my laptop battery dies, which is currently at 80%.
Divine command theory rests on the premise of following the laws of God (or whatever omnipotent/ ethereal/ divine being you care to think of) purely on account of the knowledge that they are that being. Essentially it is following your boss because of they are your boss, regardless of what they tell you to do. This runs into certain paradoxes such as being told to increase production while laying people off, or being told not to murder while committing mass genocide.
Divine command theory's greatest strength is its simplicity. "Do what God tells you to do," or put another way, "good things are what God decides is good." No ifs, ands, or buts. (After that sentence, I don't care about apostrophes anymore. They can all die.) Let this stranger into my house? Sure, God! Procreate with my spouse? You Go(d)t it! Burn the heathen at the stake? Golly Je(sus)willakers! Absotootly! Maybe the sarcasm was laid on a little too strongly here... Anyways, so long as there is a standard for interpreting whatever God desires, DCT is wicked awesome. The Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism, whatever Islam has going on, they all have some binding statements that are understood to be doctrine, i.e. exact instructions from God about living.
This is all well and good for those with boundless, unwavering faith in whatever. However, there was a witty old man named Euthyphro who posed a difficult question to these people a few thousand years ago; Is A) x good because the gods (he was Greek) command it, or B) do the gods command it because x is good?
If you choose A then the gods arbitrarily decide what is good and what is bad. In an instant the gods could command cutting open orphans to harvest their organs a good thing, or they could command the use of crystal meth to be a bad thing. It is the same logic you use to decide where you will eat lunch in a large city, except with morals and they're all immortal.
If you choose B, it means there is an objective reason for x being good outside of the commands of the gods. This limits the gods to being like Navi from Ocarina of Time, always pointing out things that are clearly evident to anyone with more than 3 total cells in their body. It takes the "divine command" out of "divine command theory," and not too many people are keen on having faith in just the word "theory," not even logical positivists.
Long story short, go with utilitarianism, pragmatism, nihilism, Kantian universalism, or pretty much anything other than DCT if you enjoy your social life.
12% battery remaining. w00t!
Steve
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Friday, January 3, 2014
Infinite Things: 1/infinity
This originally started out as a paper on Zeno's paradoxes but the more I researched the problem of infinite regression, supertasks, and fundamental mathematiics (its been a while, ok?) the more fallacies I discovered. This first entry in the "Infinite Things" series will be devoted to the concept of infinite regression, i.e. 1/infinity, which is at the root of each of Zeno's paradoxes.
It Isn't Zero Dammit
1/infinity does not equal zero. Going on the record for this one because as much as I hate math, it should be done right. If infinity is to be treated as an unending series of numbers, or the highest of all possible numbers, it must still be treated as a number. Therefore, 1/infinity does not equal zero but a number really, really, really, REALLY close to zero. The answer I most approved of was "undefined" since infinity itself isn't exactly a true number to speak of. Why, you may ask? Ok, Zeno.
If we walk a line to get from point A to point B, we must get to 1/2 AB, then get to 1/4 AB, then to 1/8 AB, etc. Essentially, we will never get to point B because we always have to go halfway from where we are measuring from to point B, and that distance can always be cut in half "infinitely." Now, I actually read up on this because I didn't want to post a "GUYS! I SOLVED IT!" entry only to read about how wrong I am a few hours later. It actually led me to this entry on supertasks, which started this whole train of thought. (Thank you Chihara, whoever you are.)
This line dividing business makes a lot of paradoxical sense when you start with the whole numbers, i.e. 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8... they're fractions, whatever. BUT! let's start at the other end. Say you get allllll the way to 1/infinity and decide to turn around. Well, doubling 1/infinity gets you... oh, look at that. You get 1/infinity again. Doubling it again gets you... 1/infinity. Yet again. Cynicism aside, this poses a very real problem for the argument. We started out taking real numbers and hypothesizing them into an infinite number, but you can't really do that. You can divide a number by half or double a number as many times as you like; it will never truly reach infinity. It will get small, but no matter how small it gets it will still be a numerical value. The same concept can be applied to matter; cutting a cake in half 100000000000 times still leaves you with a very small piece of cake.
Whoever that douche was in one of the forums I checked before writing this article who said, "for all practical purposes, 1/infinity equals zero," you can't math and you shouldn't math. There are certainly problems in the Arabic mathematical base-10 system that cause problems when applying it to our universe (where else would Zeno get his paradoxes from?), but "pretty much equals" isn't math; it's guessing. I could "pretty much" stop at a red light, and I'll use your logic when the police officer asks me how the car crash happened.
There Was Only One Section in This Post
LOOK AT ALL OF THIS EMPTY SPACE
Its Like It Goes On Forever
When Do You Use "Its" and "It's"?
This cleared things up.
Screw You, BD
Steve
It Isn't Zero Dammit
1/infinity does not equal zero. Going on the record for this one because as much as I hate math, it should be done right. If infinity is to be treated as an unending series of numbers, or the highest of all possible numbers, it must still be treated as a number. Therefore, 1/infinity does not equal zero but a number really, really, really, REALLY close to zero. The answer I most approved of was "undefined" since infinity itself isn't exactly a true number to speak of. Why, you may ask? Ok, Zeno.
If we walk a line to get from point A to point B, we must get to 1/2 AB, then get to 1/4 AB, then to 1/8 AB, etc. Essentially, we will never get to point B because we always have to go halfway from where we are measuring from to point B, and that distance can always be cut in half "infinitely." Now, I actually read up on this because I didn't want to post a "GUYS! I SOLVED IT!" entry only to read about how wrong I am a few hours later. It actually led me to this entry on supertasks, which started this whole train of thought. (Thank you Chihara, whoever you are.)
This line dividing business makes a lot of paradoxical sense when you start with the whole numbers, i.e. 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8... they're fractions, whatever. BUT! let's start at the other end. Say you get allllll the way to 1/infinity and decide to turn around. Well, doubling 1/infinity gets you... oh, look at that. You get 1/infinity again. Doubling it again gets you... 1/infinity. Yet again. Cynicism aside, this poses a very real problem for the argument. We started out taking real numbers and hypothesizing them into an infinite number, but you can't really do that. You can divide a number by half or double a number as many times as you like; it will never truly reach infinity. It will get small, but no matter how small it gets it will still be a numerical value. The same concept can be applied to matter; cutting a cake in half 100000000000 times still leaves you with a very small piece of cake.
Whoever that douche was in one of the forums I checked before writing this article who said, "for all practical purposes, 1/infinity equals zero," you can't math and you shouldn't math. There are certainly problems in the Arabic mathematical base-10 system that cause problems when applying it to our universe (where else would Zeno get his paradoxes from?), but "pretty much equals" isn't math; it's guessing. I could "pretty much" stop at a red light, and I'll use your logic when the police officer asks me how the car crash happened.
There Was Only One Section in This Post
LOOK AT ALL OF THIS EMPTY SPACE
Its Like It Goes On Forever
When Do You Use "Its" and "It's"?
This cleared things up.
Screw You, BD
Steve
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)