Floundering
I think it's time to move on to another blog today. The fourth-ranked page on the search for "philosophy blog" is about existentialism, in which I'm not interested. The fifth-ranked page is the same as the fourth. The sixth-ranked page's latest entry was on May 14, 2002. The seventh-ranked page is mainly quotations from something somebody else wrote! The eighth-ranked page is more readable, but also has no comments, despite its large number of backlinks. The ninth-ranked page, Opiniatrety, seems equally unremarkable. The tenth-ranked page is a blog about law and philosophy, and seems only of peripheral interest.
I think that the problem is that "philosophy blog" is too wide a search. You need to be more specific, like "ethics blog", or "evolution blog".
What can I get from "evolution blog"?
The top-ranked page here is about bloody Ximian Evolution!
I have just conducted a search for "blog evolution biology". I ended up with a blog with an article about evolution being caught in the act of making a big step. It sounds fairly exciting.
But this is just an individual entry. If you leave a comment for it, it might simply go forgotten. If you are simply going to be fishing around for stories about evolution, then why do you not simply conduct a more general search for "evolution biology"? The limitation of the topic to blogs seems completely arbitrary.
I agree. I guess that the basic problem is that your blog is not the same thing as a paper. You will never get any feedback while all you are doing is writing blog entries, because the few visitors that you receive will not leave a comment on an old entry. Besides, you have disabled comments on your old entries now anyway. You still have your email address. But you are unlikely to receive any email about what you have written there.
I think that the solution is for you to do three things:
Philosophy needs DISCUSSION AND DEBATE to progress--so get cracking!
OK, I have just joined the Webring site. I have also applied to be included in the Philosophy Webring. I have incorporated the Webring code into the right-hand margin, and it says "Visit: Philosophy (pending)".
So what do you want to do now? It seems to me that you had a bona fide philosophical project before you joined this webring and I see no point in changing that now. You might find that you get more visitors for being a member of this webring. On the other hand, I don't think you will benefit much from visiting other people's pages randomly. You have a pretty narrow focus in your philosophical projects. If you actually do get a blog entry coming up as especially relevant to a Google search, then that is different. But I wouldn't hold my breath about it either, if I were you. I think that you are better off simply doing what you were before. Let this simply be a greater incentive for you to actually write a PAPER of some kind or other. Unless you do this, nobody will ever leave you any decent comments.
Well, that leaves us where we were before, about the nature of influence. We agree that there must be some common ground between the influencer and the influenced. Where does that leave you?
I don't see why you want to create a theory of ethics based on social evolution anyway. I don't see the point. You don't want to be a hypocrite, and you don't need some "empirical theory of ethics" to avoid being a hypocrite, so what's the point?
I thought you were interested in the anthropology of morals. That was the start of your latest thread. In that respect, you were interested in why we should no longer believe in slavery now, when we did not so long ago. I don't know, what insights do you expect to draw from the explanations for this? Will it affect your moral judgement about slavery in any way?
I just remember that argument that I had with my supervisor. He said that slavery was absolutely wrong, wrong in every case, and it was really dogmatic. It's not even that I disagree with him. But I just think, if that's morality, then why would anybody take it seriously? People used to take for granted that slavery was morally neutral once upon a time, as much as people today take for granted that it is wrong.
It sounds like you are looking for some kind of sociological determinism in ethics. That would be an interesting result. But you could hardly use it to predict the course of history, nor could you use it to justify your existing morality. So why, at the end of the day, is it even useful to explore the issue? I just no longer understand what you hope to achieve by it.
I thought I wanted a theory of ethics. I tried to make that ethics utilitarianism, and discovered that I would simply be a hypocrite if I preached utilitarianism. I don't want egoism either. I don't know, I just no longer have an interesting angle from which to approach ethical questions. Once you reject that you can have a small number of moral principles that can determine the whole of human conduct, you have lost the interest. Your morality can do no better than your commonsense.
I don't know what to say, because I don't know of an example of a real moral dilemma.
I think that the problem is that "philosophy blog" is too wide a search. You need to be more specific, like "ethics blog", or "evolution blog".
What can I get from "evolution blog"?
The top-ranked page here is about bloody Ximian Evolution!
I have just conducted a search for "blog evolution biology". I ended up with a blog with an article about evolution being caught in the act of making a big step. It sounds fairly exciting.
But this is just an individual entry. If you leave a comment for it, it might simply go forgotten. If you are simply going to be fishing around for stories about evolution, then why do you not simply conduct a more general search for "evolution biology"? The limitation of the topic to blogs seems completely arbitrary.
I agree. I guess that the basic problem is that your blog is not the same thing as a paper. You will never get any feedback while all you are doing is writing blog entries, because the few visitors that you receive will not leave a comment on an old entry. Besides, you have disabled comments on your old entries now anyway. You still have your email address. But you are unlikely to receive any email about what you have written there.
I think that the solution is for you to do three things:
- Join a webring.
- Visit the other sites that comprise it.
- LEAVE A COMMENT when you find something noteworthy about them.
Philosophy needs DISCUSSION AND DEBATE to progress--so get cracking!
OK, I have just joined the Webring site. I have also applied to be included in the Philosophy Webring. I have incorporated the Webring code into the right-hand margin, and it says "Visit: Philosophy (pending)".
So what do you want to do now? It seems to me that you had a bona fide philosophical project before you joined this webring and I see no point in changing that now. You might find that you get more visitors for being a member of this webring. On the other hand, I don't think you will benefit much from visiting other people's pages randomly. You have a pretty narrow focus in your philosophical projects. If you actually do get a blog entry coming up as especially relevant to a Google search, then that is different. But I wouldn't hold my breath about it either, if I were you. I think that you are better off simply doing what you were before. Let this simply be a greater incentive for you to actually write a PAPER of some kind or other. Unless you do this, nobody will ever leave you any decent comments.
Well, that leaves us where we were before, about the nature of influence. We agree that there must be some common ground between the influencer and the influenced. Where does that leave you?
I don't see why you want to create a theory of ethics based on social evolution anyway. I don't see the point. You don't want to be a hypocrite, and you don't need some "empirical theory of ethics" to avoid being a hypocrite, so what's the point?
I thought you were interested in the anthropology of morals. That was the start of your latest thread. In that respect, you were interested in why we should no longer believe in slavery now, when we did not so long ago. I don't know, what insights do you expect to draw from the explanations for this? Will it affect your moral judgement about slavery in any way?
I just remember that argument that I had with my supervisor. He said that slavery was absolutely wrong, wrong in every case, and it was really dogmatic. It's not even that I disagree with him. But I just think, if that's morality, then why would anybody take it seriously? People used to take for granted that slavery was morally neutral once upon a time, as much as people today take for granted that it is wrong.
It sounds like you are looking for some kind of sociological determinism in ethics. That would be an interesting result. But you could hardly use it to predict the course of history, nor could you use it to justify your existing morality. So why, at the end of the day, is it even useful to explore the issue? I just no longer understand what you hope to achieve by it.
I thought I wanted a theory of ethics. I tried to make that ethics utilitarianism, and discovered that I would simply be a hypocrite if I preached utilitarianism. I don't want egoism either. I don't know, I just no longer have an interesting angle from which to approach ethical questions. Once you reject that you can have a small number of moral principles that can determine the whole of human conduct, you have lost the interest. Your morality can do no better than your commonsense.
I don't know what to say, because I don't know of an example of a real moral dilemma.
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