Given this he could also choose a more neutral or mildly critical approach. That would also be a better focus for an article critiquing him here.

To me this whole article would better be written as a "Singer, pay more attention to the details, these aren't real charities," than "Your whole philosophy is the problem." I feel like the central message is just off here.

If one were to make this criticism, rather than saying that Singer's philosophy is the problem, I would say that his problem is poor judgment in who he endorses. These are completely separable things.

This succinctly gets at one of the biggest problems, but I want to flesh out the depths of how unsatisfying this critique is a little more:

A big problem here is that Singer's critic isn't offering any details on what the alternative is to Singer's advice to us. What does "solving systemic problems" entail for me, the regular working class person? Talking on social media about injustice? Dedicating my life to working for NPOs?

What exactly is the alternative, and spell out to me exactly how, in tangible terms, that's going to help people more than donating a significant portion of my income to causes that help people?

If you're going to engage in a critique of a consequentialist, you need to be able to spell out what they should be doing and how it better maximizes utility than their current plan.

To me this article almost feels like a hit piece on a good person who's actually trying actively to do something about the problem by someone who's only capable of pointing out the flaws without themselves offering a better plan by people who just want to talk big without actually putting their money where their mouths are.

Also, if you understand Singer as a philosopher from the consequentialist tradition, you know that, ultimately, if you showed him a demonstrably better way of using your time, money and effort, he'd be like "Good point, that does better maximize utility," and would himself make those changes. I'm pretty sure Singer is all for systemic change, but is trying to be realistic about giving the relatively few people who read him tangible, practical advice about actually making a difference. Even if he doesn't advocate for trying to make bigger picture changes, he's most certainly in favour of them if they're possible, and his advice is not, as the above commentor has pointed out, mutually exclusive with that.

I think 9/11 showed us a plane is more than „it’s potential to transport people“. It’s never that simple.

My guess is, it's best to understand what we know now and see where it leads us than things we can't comprehend yet.

Atleast until we have the means via test.

He was also super a Nazi

In my religion, God is infinitely bigger than nothing and, in order to be comprehended by our primitive weak minds, became a human in the year 0 AD.

The first cause in science is unknown for now. We have guesses, but it's really hard to say we know for sure because we can't go back in time.

What science has to offer is in the how. Like proximate causes.

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a movie, you were not in from the beginning, but there in the middle.

In the middle you probably understand a portion of the story and can make a good guess based on the story so far, but can't say for certain how it all started.

And let's say a movie has a director. If we only saw the movie, it's really hard to imagine the director and how it came to be from the filming, actors, acting; synthesis of the final cut for distribution.

To me a God is that which nothing is greater. So that something greater, is not something I can comprehend. But I can observe what I can see and make sense of the present. Like I have an idea of using a camera, there are actors, etc., And the story the theme, the journey.

I understood that the brain works with chemical reactions, but there must be a cause of this chemical reactions. Maybe it's the soul causing the chemical reactions, like a man in a car.

Heidegger was rejecting a certain view of language. Heidegger's point about "being" (more accurately, meaningful presence) is that our everyday practices always-already assume certain conceptions of that by virtue of which entities are what they are, thereby "ontologicaly" defining them. So, the idea that philosophy can even begun by preforming a logical analysis of language is at the very least already dependent on our everyday/theoretical ontological assumptions: by treating language as a "thing", we have uncritically assumed a certain conception of "thinghood" (that is, meaningful presence). Carnap assume a whole set of empiricist/formalist principles (to be fair, carnap is very much explict about those). Yet those principles only make sense within one specific way of encountering beings. Any person who speaks everyday language knows, by virtue of this simple hermeneutic experience, the alien nature of logical analysis. We do not encounter language as a present-at-hand entity to be broken into parts, reduced to core principles and become an object for disembodied theoretical knowledge. Not that this is wrong taken for itself. Linguistics have a place in our "world". So does logic. But they have no superior claim for knowledge and truth then our much more intuitive and direct sense (sinn) of everyday pragmatics, when dasein encounter beings through their usefulness in a mode of ready-to-hand. The technological attitude which reduce beings to the stuff of Cartesian philosophy (or the sense data of carnap, the phenomenalist radical) can only explain the world so far. This is way only (ontological) phenomenology can be first philosophy (as recognized by Heidegger's Aristotle character): any other question, including "reflective" questions about language and thinking, assume an answer to the question about that by virtue of which things can be meaningful for us in the first place. An analysis of meaningful presence in the most general, and what allows for its coming forth and remaining in presence (human temporal existence), must come before an analysis of things. Finally, it's the world-disculsive rather then the descriptive or even problem-solving aspect of language which must be experienced in order for the meaningful presence of things to come to light. A general conception of meanfulness as divorced from what is meaningful must be attaind before even trying the fundamentaly impossible (and therefore basically "mystical") task of creating a "language about language". Heidegger start thinking in language (rather than about language), only after creating a phenomenological framework that will allow for the meaning-creating aspect of language to be understood and situated properly. Logic has no privileged access to language and is parasitic upon the hermeneutic experience through which things become present and disclosed. Understanding the convergence between anxiety, humen finitude, language as experience, and meaningful presence/disclosure is far from being metaphysical. Rather, it is an open-ended approach towards issues of meaning, signification, and interpretation. Heidegger's conception of the nothing can only be understood through this phenomenological context: meaning belongs to the things themselves and not just our statements about them. This is an important husserlian principle. Therefore, for heidegger, Language as disclusive of things is more fundamental than both the ideal and ordinary conception of analytical philosophy. The words "being" and "nothing" are very much constitutive of our more fundamental attunement to the world of meaningful presence (indeed, language is creative!), which comes before any logical statement about sense data forcibly divorced form it.

If they are scientists, then they will be convinced by experiments.

I now think that the "scientists" who deny free will are just sadistic madmen who want to deny the obvious and make humans aleatory animals.

The problem is that you don't change the mindset of the masses just like that within a couple of years. That couple of years, in fact, that we have left to switch away from exploitation of nature before it is really too late to save our livelihood.

She was also a genius. Hannah might have been one of the smartest chain smokers to ever live.

"Technological mindset" is a weird mental gymnastic to avoid criticising capitalism and consumerism (the real culprits behind the exploitation of nature). Instead of romanticizing primitivism we'd be better off with more useful hands and brains on working toward a solution to climate change.

>while the small businesses suffered

So be it.

Out of curiosity, how did he feel about forced labourers being exploited?

This is not Jean Jacques Rousseau, it's an argument against being possessed by the spirit of technology, possessed meaning we see the world only through its eyes and we're not even aware of the framing.

You can look up the case on google. It is public.

> they heavily favored the Titans of the industries and Greatly hindered the smaller companies.

Yes I am in agreement with you. The large corporations definitely benefited while the small businesses suffered.

>I did not mean to imply any value judgment on the covid restrictions,

Alright, my apologies. I wrongly ascribed a normative judgement to you. I believe I ascribed that judgement because during the pandemic I met a lot of people who advocated lifting all restrictions due to the restrictions harming some businesses while benefiting others.

>As for capitalism, ultimately there hasn’t been any company that’s infallible through time. Even something like Amazon isn’t infallible. So on the side of the companies, I don’t think theres any proof of a company that’s lasted long enough to accumulate to the point of true monopolization.

Yes, I agree. I think 'monopolization' is too strong a word for what I was trying to convey. The phenomena I was attempting to describe was merely the decreasing competition and increasing oligopolic market structure. The global market structure is increasingly taking the form of an oligopoly where a fewer number of firms disproportionally capture the majority of the market share. I think capitalism naturally moves in this direction.

What technology to Heidegger was, is different from what it has become today. What fascinates me is how his philosophies presented with reference to the initial phases of technology hold true in reference to the modernized world. The poetic relationship with the world is an appealing alternative. A large faction of human beings are in turn treating nature as just something to exploit, to get resources from. This serves our present demands well but is surely going to prove destructive in the long run.

Is there any difference between an ethical translation and a good translation? Unless by ethical you mean sanitised.

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See leaving social media would be cool, if I wasn’t disabled and could see friends in real life often.