Hello! Welcome to this weeks Philosophy Basic, focusing on the problem that illusions present to Direct Realism. If you haven’t read my post on direct realism, then click on the link and have a read.
Saudi Arabia’s Ethics and Robots
Saudi Arabia has recently been trying to increase the popularity of its artificial intelligence industry. As part of this, they had a robot imported in and decided to give it full citizenship. This has resulted in up cry from the international community as it means now a robot has more rights than woman and people in the LGBT+ group in Saudi Arabia. However, it also brings into question whether we can separate humans and artificial intelligence and whether, as a result of this, we should grant them equal rights.
Direct Realism: Philosophy Basics
Hello and welcome to Philosopher Ad Absurdum. This is a series which will run alongside my usual posts and that looks at the basics of philosophy through the perspective of A level philosophy. This can be used as a revision tool or as a starting point for learning philosophy. This part of the series is going to focus on theories of perception and we are going to start with direct realism.
Direct realism is a theory of perception where…
1. Objects are composed of material matter and occupy space.
2. The have properties which they possess within themselves. For instance a strawberry has the property of being red. This property belongs to the strawberry.
3. There is no intermediary between us and the object. That is why it is called DIRECT realism, because we perceive objects directly and DO NOT infer there existence by an intermediary.
4. Because objects exist in an external world, they continue to exist when you do not perceive them. For instance, if the world went completely dark so we can’t see, the objects would still exist despite us not being able to observe the objects at that particular moment.
Naïve Realism in particular…
1. We perceive objects as they exist in the external world. You perceive the strawberry as red because it genuinely is red. If someone else saw it, they would also perceive the object as you do and would see the strawberry as red.
Kant and Catalonia
At the moment, Catalonia (a province in Spain) is currently fighting for independence from Spain. Spain has rejected this stance, along with the the majority of the international community. To try and control Catalonia, Spain has used violence against innocent civilians of the province. This raises quite clearly an issue in Kantian ethics and Kant’s attitude to war; mainly that of whether we should intervene in civil wars and when does a single state separate into two.
Kant believed that there must be laws in order to maximize human freedom. This seems an odd idea, but in a world where there were no rules (a state of nature) we would not be able to own anything or live the life we want to because there would be no rules to allow me to own things or pursue my own ends without being trampled on by others. For example, if someone stole one of my personal possessions, I would not be able to get it back as there would be no rule entitling me to that object or any justice system to try the person who took it. Therefore, we need a state in a rightful condition to maximize our freedom and pursue our ends. As a human being, we have a duty to work towards the rightful condition to ensure that other beings’ autonomy is not undermined.
Arrest me; I’m a murderer… in my dreams
So recently, one of my friends has been really stressed and vividly dreaming. Slowly, they have gotten more and more disturbing to the point where she is killing people in her dreams. She would never dream of harming anyone in real life (I don’t think) but it does pose an interesting question; do we need to be held accountable for the actions we perform in our dreams?