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Comment by stareatgoats | Hacker News Reader

> Only humans have moral agency, and therefore, as co-inhabitants of planet Earth with an astounding number of plants and animals, have the unique responsibility for conservation.

Ancient Greek thinking like this usually leaves me with a sense akin to shock, I think because I'm victim of some darling prejudices of our time: that the quality of human thinking has gradually improved over eons. That the vast number of humans now engaged in thinking on all continents, with marvels of technology at their fingertips would mean we have ready access to unparalleled understanding of the human condition compared to times past. Instead we are like children. We can hardly even understand what those people were talking about.

Moral agency? Never heard about it :-/.

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I read quite a lot of ancient philosophy and grappled with basically this exact thought. It was a bit painful to feel as though we've intellectually slid backwards. There is a theory that calls that era the Axial Age, which is worth looking up. That era contained some of the greatest thinkers in history: Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Buddha, Confucius etc.

The thing to keep in mind is that there is incredible selection bias at work here. The vast majority of people living then were illiterate and living brutal lives. They didn't know or care about philosophy, much like the majority of people now. Yes, ancient Athens was special in that it had a special focus on thought, but I would still bet that the modern era has a greater percentage of people who are interested in great thought than ever before, and we've had our own thinkers at great heights.

I can't speak about Buddha or Confucius.

Greek legacy was build in ~100-150 years, which is more like a flash in human history than an era. I'm talking about 5th century BC specifically. Walking to the streets of the Athenian city state you could come across:

- philosophers: Socrates, Isocrates, Protagoras, Parmenides - historians: Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon - authors: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes - scientists(?): Democritus (the atom guy), Phidias (greatest sculptor in Ancient Greece), Hippocrates (father of modern Medicine) - politicians: Pericles and Demosthenes - military minds: Miltiades, Themistocles

I think the fact that democracy was established the century before, had a lot to do with this concentration of minds.

That said, of course, slavery was a thing, women were more like objects and only a few had voting rights.

In which sense Democritus is a scientist? He never emprically observed atoms or used scientific method in any meaningful sense. He was a natural philosopher, and a very crucial figure in his school too. The basic idea is that natural philosophy was heavily challenged by Parmenides who made some really good points about how everything should be one and unitary and thus nothing exists in the sense we see and observe ("everything is an illusion"). Then later philosophers tried to circumvent Parmenides while maintaining some bit of realism and common sense. Democritus is one such philosopher, who tried to agree realism with Parmenides by suggesting that everything may be composed of a single type of objects called atoms and their composition gives us the illusion of "differences" such as color, taste etc and thus everything like feelings, colors, tastes are "by convention" when in reality it is atoms all the way down. This argument is more important in the context of post-Parmenidean Greek Natural Philosophy rather than scientific context.

EDIT Fun fact: Democritus -- also known as the founder of materialism -- is highly influential in modern enlightenment too. Most famously, Karl Marx was heavily influenced by his ideas so much so that his Doctoral thesis was on him. If you read Marx's writings chronologically, you'll see that he started his philosophical career as an idealist, and then (possibly with Democritus influence) turned 180 degrees and became a materialist and dedicated his life to argue against idealism.

Since the scientific method wasn’t known at the time, it’s hard to argue that indeed, he was more of a philosopher.

That said the quote: “Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” spelled more than 2k years before J. Dalton, is enough to call him a scientist IMHO.

After, the only way one can progress and see the future, is by standing at the shoulders of giants.

Weirdly, in China the major schools of philosophy appeared at roughly the same time. Confucianism, Daoism, legalism, and a stack of others.

Yes, agree that those philosophers did not represent their societies as a whole. But it is not fair to say that they were totally separated from their time either. For example how sortition was the rule of choice in Athens: it echoes a careful thoughtfulness about how to organize society that included every citizen (excluding women, slaves and barbarians, granted) in an intelligent discourse.

Our time in contrast has outsourced thinking to experts, who in turn don't think at all, only use various automations (maths or other systems) to synthesize something that is instrumental in some way, be it to sway peoples opinions or (vastly more common) get into their pockets (I've been in marketing, I know how it works). Even free will has been mathematically 'disproved' in our time, and many believe it to be so, so why bother use any moral agency at all?

Too broad a brush? Maybe. But history does have a way of labeling eras. And my guess is ours will be labelled as the era of great automation, without any thoughtful direction.

I think this is spot on. Another way of considering this feeling is that despite great minds existing for (probably well over) 2000 years, the wins of great minds may not seem as great as one would have hoped. Don’t get me wrong, great minds have done great things to further humanity. But humanity also has a less-than-stellar record of protecting wins & progress, and the forces that wish to drag us back remain ever powerful and vigilant.

I think the mistake you're making there is presuming that people like Aristotle are representitive of the average person of their era. That's certainly not the case. Peoples who's names are still remembered and revered thousands of years later are anomalies. The Aristotles of the ancient world represent the best humanity had to offer over a thousand year period. Comparing them to an average person of today is apples to oranges. Instead compare to the most prolific thinkers of the last 1000 years. How does Aristotle stack up against Leonardo Da Vinci or Isaac Newton?

We wish there was something like the Central Limit Theorem for philosophy, but moral philosophy, population ethics, utilitarianism, etc. create all these fraught impossibility theorems or paradoxes, and as technology improves, it’s hard to fault a lot of people for taking an instrumentally rational approach to materialism, and just feeling exhausted by the breadth of what you need to think about and the pedantic effort and risks required to act ethically in all the increasing interfaces with society.

I don’t think it needs to be stated, but the vast majority of Greeks were not Aristotle. If his way of thinking were common, he would have been considered unremarkable.

Take some time and read The Clouds and Plato’s apologia, and think about what happened to Socrates, and think about what that says about how the average person thought about philosophy.

And that there is active discouragement to even read philosophy / metaphysics among much the mainstream science community.

Should MP be in same lot as philosophy?

It's a branch of philosophy.

And yet Science is the "new" name for Natural Philosophy. For example, The Cambridge Philosophical Society (http://cambridgephilosophicalsociety.org/) was founded in 1819 'for the purpose of promoting scientific inquiry'.

Moral agency simply means that you're capable of making moral judgements. He's basically saying that only humans are smart enough to judge the outcome of their actions as good or bad, and as a result he thinks that we have a responsibility to not do things we deem bad.

Which is exactly a notion that's being challenged by modern science. We observe animals from apes to crows that do understand the outcome of their actions. Whether they judge it as good or bad in a grander scheme, we don't know, but that grander scheme is just as well being challenged by nihilism.

Yes, I know what moral agency means, I was being facetious, sorry about that. The implied meaning was a jab at a rather common interpretation of the 'modern science' paradigm, which advocates determinism and downplays free will (and hence moral agency). It is one of many stupefying factors of our time.

Moral agency entails more than understanding (predicting outcomes is also not sufficient for moral understanding). It also requires that the agent is capable of acting voluntarily.

Whether an agent has rights also depends on his (in principle) capacity for moral responsibility.

Furthermore, much of what is presented as modern science challenging "classical" views of free will, language and the like is dubious on closer inspection. Libet is a great example.

Spend some time reading ancient books like the ones from Herodotus and other similar aged ones.

It is quite interesting how in some ways ancient societies were already relatively advanced, how we lost some of it thought the centuries and how only in modern societies we are getting some of those 3000 or something old ideas back.

Naturally there was other stuff that it is quite good that it was lost in the mist of time.

I have recently been reading The history of the Peloponnesian war and honestly, if you got rid of the greek names, the ancient weapons and other anachronisms.. it could be easily set in modern society.

Our technology has improved. That's pretty much it! We're certainly no more intelligent than our ancient cousins...

Do you know how Socrates died? He was put to death for asking hypothetical religious/political/philosophical questions of his students leading to charges of corruption and impiety. On the other hand, true to his philosophy to the end, he had every possibility to escape the city after being convicted and sentenced to death. He instead accepted the judgement of the law and ended his own life with a drink of hemlock.

And it's easy to look back at that and imagine how much we have progressed, yet at the same time we still have as much a fear of words as ever. And I imagine there's hardly a person that would respect our system of law so much as to be voluntarily willing to sacrifice their lives as a matter of principle in obedience to such, even when he certainly felt he was being grievously wronged.

During wars and revolutions and such, people did sacrificed themselves. People did sacrificed themselves when talking against communism and nazism.

People today in critical situations still do that. Hell, Snowden sacrificed a lot and so did other wistleblowers. Not life, but definitely a lot.

It has very little to do with sacrifice in and of itself. Socrates could have escaped punishment and left Greece very easily had he wanted. And he certainly felt he was in the right and the law was in the wrong which could create a relative justification for doing so. Yet he chose to accept his punishment.

There's immense discussion about the reasons for this, but there's no doubt that a major part of it is that he felt the 'social contract' that held society together was sacred. And so he did what he could to improve that society even when it may have run afoul of that society's laws, but also did not aim to avoid its judgement and justice when it came to that, however unjust he might have felt them. Snowden did the exact opposite in seeking to achieve his ends yet also avoid justice at even extreme costs to himself.

It's a mindset that we can even hardly imagine in times today, which is precisely what Socrates feared society would turn into.

It was outlier back then too. Outliers like that exist still, but they are less prominent (And happened in both Germany and Communists countries, I have run across self sacrifices like that. Russian admiral who refused to leave out of sense of duty and got tortured, blinded and killed. Last tzar refused to leave for similar reason. Less prominent German people who dissented and knew what will happen to them and knew they achieve nothing.)

But also, it is less frequent because that mindset achieves nothing. It is interesting personal story as you cross it in history book, but they are drops nobody takes lesson from and nobody cares about. Just about only ones that was close to achieving something were those who made popular martyrs from themselves. From top of head, there was that Polish man who turned himself into concentration camp so that he can escape and be witness. (Was not much believed.)

It could be said that that mindset alone accomplishes nothing but in mass it creates the foundation for a just society. And even when the society itself may lack it, when its leaders follow such a code it can at least be justly governed. But as democracy has become the norm, so as has the election of individuals whose personal code is dubious at best. And that in turn results in the formation of rules and laws that reflect such a lack of values.

I suppose I mostly just long for a time when political leaders were those deeply schooled participants in political and logical philosophy. Now a days instead of writings on political theory and ideology, the most we can expect from our political leaders is ghost written "autobiographies" that seem to be little more than self indulgent money grabs.

Socrates was not leader at that moment, he was killed. The regime at time was authoritarian and its leaders killed a lot of other people too.

None of those other deaths created just society - the violent and corrupted people stayed in power till they were topped by other violence. (Or in case of communism regime remained violent till it died dozens years after for different reasons).

I don't know when deeply thinking political and logical philosiphers were supposed to rule. I also don't think it would necessary imply just or fair society. It might end like cruel but effective society too with strong entrenched power structure.

Socrates lived in Athens during Athenian democracy, which was a true and literal democracy, and was executed by democratic vote of 500 Athenian citizen jurors - 52% to 48%, perhaps a validation of Socrates' criticisms of democracy! Aside from that, many individuals at a high level of society and political involvement were direct students of Socrates.

Though in my comment I was alluding to the founding of the US in particular. The writings and philosophy that underpinned the founding and logic of this nation were incredible and undoubtedly set the stage for a rural backwoods colony to, in less than 300 years, become the most powerful and influential nation in the world. Of course much of the philosophy and logic that the nation was founded on has been disregarded or ignored when convenient and it's not so hard to argue that our ongoing success has been more the result of inertia than a fundamental superiority.

People having citizenship and thus right to vote were minority in Athens. And I dont mean just that it excluded women and slaves. It was more then in other cities, but still a minority.

Two of Socrates students, overthrown the democratic government twice and killed a lot of people. Thousands, plus others lost properties or were send away. One of those students was friend of Socrates. The authoritarian killers here being friends and students of Socrates. So you know, some hard feelings are to be expected toward Socrates too.

Maybe he was considered dangerous, because his ideas were used in past to kill a lot of people. Where rule based society would respect amnesty (there was amnesty) despite fear and danger, this one was violent. Socrates might been big thinker, but his death is not the only one in the story that counts or counted for his contemporaries.

It is not totally entirely clear how Socrates was involved with what, but the society there was dealing with a lot of violence in close memory and that is ignoring violence against slaves.

It took a lot of violence too, in coming to power for US, not just writings and philosophy. And a lot of that philosophy was not "disregarded" in violence, but instead used to argue for violence and to defend violence. For both good and bad causes. And a lot of gains were not inertia, it was decision to take things and fight to take things from others. Not that other powers were not like that too, absolutely they were violent and entitled too.

But, the freedom rhetorics was often used to take away property or freedom from others.

You stated previously that Socrates was killed by an authoritarian regime that killed lots of other people. That is false. You're now stating that the Athenian government was violently overthrown with lots of killing in the process, which is also false. The Athenian democracy was overthrown legally and with words and laws.

I'm also not sure what you mean now that the founding US philosophy was used to justify violence. Things like westward expansion is what I imagine you're referencing, but that had nothing to do with the political philosophy of the founding of the nation.

I mixed them up when writing first comment. Don't take my issue with it, google trial of socrates either on wiki or on more historical sites. Read on thirty tyrants. Overthrown democracy for some months with help of Sparta, followed persecutions of opposition, then got overthrown back. This part of story is in most of them, only artistic ones limit themselves to the simple one.

Teritory is one thing, south and west. Freedom and property rights theories were developed and used to argume for slavery expansion and slavery itself. Freedom and destiny no matter what you are about to do, not just the big questions but also the smaller conflicts around.

Both sides of civil war said to fight for freedom too and the affair had huge number of deaths.

To be perfectly frank we don't for a reason. Given how definitive the early 20th century was in what not to do and the dangers of obedience. If people just followed orders as told we would have had a nuclear war in which the best case was the collapse of the US and USSR. there are few left who would fit in the categories. Societal metacognition is a necessity - to stand by its wrongs is the surest way to destroy it.

This has nothing to do with blind obedience whatsoever, which goes entirely against the point.

Socrates knew his teachings could run afoul of the law. And in fact it already had put him in contention with this in power, which many believe was an underpinning of his prosecution. In particular Socrates was a strong and vocal critic of democracy, which is the direction that 'the powers that be' were taking Greece. He feared that masses of people, of no meaningful qualification, were unlikely to be able to be able to vote to effective ends. He similarly feared the election of demogogues, which even at the time democracy had started to show trends towards.

And he was stating all of this at the height, and eventual decline, of Athenian democracy. Said democracy was in fact overthrown multiple times during Socrates' life in movements headed by former pupils of his! At one point Socrates was ordered to arrest one of his pupils. An order which he refused though at the same time making no effort to avoid its execution such as, for instance, by informing his pupil of it. See the nuance? Perhaps most ironic is that his final fate was decided by a vote of 500 Athenians of no particular qualification. And he was put to death by a 52% to 48% margin.

The point is difference between deference to law and deference to justice. Socrates would not obey the law without consideration, but he would also not seek to avoid repercussion for his actions.

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