Ted Tillich-Farris
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Ted Tillich-Farris
@tillichfarris.bsky.social
42 followers 100 following 190 posts
Philosophy of self-interest. Proprietor of the literary rights of Paul Tillich. International corporate finance attorney.
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8h
obscures what she is trying to clarify. The fact is that subjectivity is fundamental to all living beings & every perspective whether scientific, perspectival or mystical. You cannot escape or evade subjectivity. It is always there. Like the uncertainty principle, subjectivity is universal.
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8h
phenomena that can be relied on to provide
realism. This is clearly suspect as one cannot create objective reality by agreement or a show of hands. This approach also gets bogged down in jargon like "natural kinds" and "robust modal phenomena." I don't find this kind of jargon helpful. In fact, it
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8h
Perspectival realism discussed here by @michelamassimi.bsky.social is an interesting but complex approach that tries to deal with the problem of subjectivity by acknowledging that all knowledge comes from a perspective. Massimi though believes that communities offer a pluralistic perspectives of
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 18h
Why would wealthy and privileged people ever value equality more than their own money? That's the stark question that lies behind @walterscheidel.bsky.social's thesis that it generally takes violence to reduce social inequality. Human beings are after all self-interested.
theintellectualist.bsky.social The Intellectualist @theintellectualist.bsky.social · Jun 29
In The Great Leveler, historian Walter Scheidel argues that inequality has only fallen through massive violence—wars, revolutions, plagues, and collapse. Reform alone rarely works. His book is a grim but essential look at how real economic leveling has historically occurred.
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 1d
is possible you cannot assume it.
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 1d
Science must first prove machine consciousness is possible or that it exists somewhere. One can't simply assume from a belief in "physicalism" that machine consciousness is possible, one must show the mechanism for it. We cannot do that yet, so we can't assume that machine #consciousness is coming.
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 1d
So the burden of proving the existence of "unconscious animals" is on science itself. Machines are a different story. We've no examples of conscious machines, just as we have no proven examples of "unconscious animals". Thus @hakwan.bsky.social has it backwards.
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 1d
Human beings are complex systems with emergent properties that lead to different subjective experience in every being. We know that humans are conscious & we have no theory as to how they could not be conscious. Without imposing a double standard, we must assume that other animals are conscious.
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 1d
Excellent and thoughtful conversation w/ @hakwan.bsky.social on the neuroscientific approach to consciousness. Dr Lau emphasizes that we have no good theories of consciousness. Where he goes wrong is in assuming that consciousness must be computational. That's an assumption there's no evidence for.
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 1d
People & animals are only incentivized by things they care about personally or culturally. You won't train a dog or a seal by offering it a cell phone. Humans on average are incentivized by social recognition. If they weren't, charities would go out of business. Money works for many but not all.
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 1d
An excellent and nuanced conversation on incentives with @janagallus.bsky.social. I would add that incentives work based on subjective self interest and values. And incentives can be gender variant. You won't incentivize male Special Forces troops by offering them a make-up kit to kill more enemies.
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 3d
pontificates examples of violence as good or bad solely based on his own personal opinion and values that he never explicates or shares. This shows why dividing violence into good violence and bad violence is pointless. If someone dislikes an instance of violence it's bad. If he likes it, it's good.
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 3d
pulls them straight from his bum. McMahan whose PhD thesis was supervised by Bernard Williams (who was wary of claims for universal morality) should know better. McMahan is completely flummoxed by Ricardo's mention of OnlyFans. McMahan, a naive Southerner, unable to pronounce the word "advocacy,"
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 3d
A perfect example of why so much moral philosophy is absolute rubbish. Jeff McMahan here asserts his own personal opinions & values as the ultimate arbiter of the morality of political violence. He never explains the basis of any of his values or judgments. And that's a good thing because he
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 4d
Human beings are complex dynamic systems. Excellent conversation on the different approaches to studying human #psychology. The narrow neuroscientific view worries about defining "representation" versus the much broader, more fruitful approach of embodied #consciousness as a complex dynamic system.
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8d
We do things based on ideology, mental illness, stupid mistakes or values that may reflect a complete disinterest in economic factors. Because humans are complex systems too and complexity science teaches us that, as with the weather, unpredictable behaviors you never dreamed of are always emerging.
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8d
authority as though they could predict the future.
Ideas like “class struggle” don’t remotely capture how economic systems work.

Rosenberg thinks game theory can help but humans often don’t act in their economic interest. We instead act based on our own subjectively perceived personal interests.
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8d
result in the emergence of unpredictable effects and forces. Remember the butterfly & the hurricane?
Rosenberg is right that economic theories are always flawed, oversimplified & subject to errors that can be magnified enormously. Yet we often see economists spout ideological nonsense with great
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8d
Dr Rosenberg recognizes that idealized economic models like the "rational self interested consumer" don’t reflect the reality of economic systems. An efficient competitive market is an ideal absolute, not a real market. Economies are complex systems that, like the weather,
thedissenteryt.bsky.social The Dissenter @thedissenteryt.bsky.social · 9d
New episode (1166), with Dr. Alexander Rosenberg. We talk about his great new book, Blunt Instrument: Why Economic Theory Can't Get Any Better...Why We Need It Anyway. #Economics #Philosophy

YouTube: youtu.be/tCwAaO6zSrs
Podcast: bit.ly/4oD0wCY
#1166 Alexander Rosenberg: Why Economic Theory Can't Get Any Better...Why We Need It Anyway
YouTube video by The Dissenter
youtu.be
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8d
are "a few" moral rules that are universal or objective. He doesn't & can't say where such rules could come from.The nature of biological organisms? The universe itself? gods?
But we don't need to speculate. As Ricardo said recently to Owen Flanagan, the idea of objective morality is "just silly."
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8d
shaped by the needs of the group. A military unit will have far different moral concerns than a farming community, a
prison or hospital. #Morality is always contextual, self-interested & relative to the nature of the cooperation required. Buchanan acknowledges moral relativism, but claims there
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 8d
Buchanan was born to be a Southern gentleman. But his pronouncements on morality miss some important points. The need for cooperation does create a need for moral rules. But the nature of those rules is created by the interests of group members and every group tends to have different moral rules
thedissenteryt.bsky.social The Dissenter @thedissenteryt.bsky.social · 8d
New episode (1167), with Dr. Allen Buchanan. We talk about his great new book, Ideology and Revolution: How the Struggle against Domination Drives the Evolution of Morality and Institutions. #Philosophy #politics

YouTube: youtu.be/rctGmZw5f6A
Podcast: tinyurl.com/5n8eajtr
#1167 Allen Buchanan - Ideology and Revolution: Hierarchy, Resistance, Revolution, and Morality
YouTube video by The Dissenter
youtu.be
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 9d
Ricardo @thedissenteryt.bsky.social nails it here when he says that the idea of universal cross cultural morality "seems just silly." That nicely and efficiently disposes of the grand idea in #moral philosophy that there is such a thing as objective moral truth in just three short words.
thedissenteryt.bsky.social The Dissenter @thedissenteryt.bsky.social · 12d
In episode 795, I talk with Dr. Owen Flanagan about his fantastic book, The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility. #Anthropology #Philosophy

youtu.be/1jEyXTmzdzM
#795 Owen Flanagan - The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility
YouTube video by The Dissenter
youtu.be
Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 9d
This was well covered by Gene Wilder in "Blazing Saddles":
www.google.com/search?clien...
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Ted Tillich-Farris @tillichfarris.bsky.social · 11d
develop into crony capitalism (the Russian Kleptocracy) or authoritarian State sponsored capitalism (China). Both are anathema to democratic societies. Attempts to create utopian societies, whether based on libertarian, fascist, socialist or communist ideologies are always doomed to failure.
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