I know this is anecdotal, but I'm Armenian-American, and I've noticed my emotional reaction to certain events, such as road rage, or disagreement with a sibling, can be more sever when I speak or think in my native tongue, rather than expressing my feelings in English.

I don't necessarily believe my morality changes when I alternate between English and Armenian, but I do find it a lot easier to express my emotions in Armenian than with English, but when I process information in English I can actually pause and think before I speak, which can be more beneficial for situations where your words can do more harm than good.

Thanks for the update. Never been a big Russel fan. I prefer Josiah Royce’s metaphysical system and find it more logical

We agree with this heartily.

The moment one begins crafting something so that others will approve of it, one has valued the approval of others over the commitment to what one is creating.

Fear of disapproval is sneaky, and motivates the ego toward reaction, which can subtly poison one's entire effort.

Make what you make, discover your own path, and if others follow it... then it has value to them, because they decided it does. Not because you worried about whether it would.

...see username

Can you elaborate on what changed for you? In respect to your moral compass, what is one thing you see differently now?

I'm multilingual and bilingual in French and English, and can guarantee there's the added layer of time and experience. Not everyone is multilingual from being raised that way. Some of us travel to such L2 speaking countries and become fluent there. It's getting to live in a completely different culture, being exposed to new ideas and ways of life. Of course this would affect your morality.

I don't have the same moral compass I used to have 10 years ago when I wasn't multilingual.

And those philosophers who only know one truth or claim not to know anything?

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That's just completely wrong. The thing that will be helpful in avoiding ecosystem collapse isn't going to be romanticism, it's going to be technology. Take your example of pesticides: we don't spray them because we hate the poetry of nature, we spray them because we need to be able to make sure that the food we're growing is going to be eaten by humans and not insects. The solution isn't to be better in touch with nature, it's to understand the technologies that can prevent the crops from being lost without spraying them with chemicals. It's a classic case of enlightenment values versus romantic values; we're not going to romance our way out of this, we're going to enlighten our way out of this.

Nature and technology are not 'opposites.' You are trying to obfuscate with semantics, but my underlying point remains clear. A poetic relationship with nature doesn't allow more people the privilege of getting to be born and getting to live to adulthood; technology does. I don't see how you can argue around that but clearly you're going to keep trying.

The objective of a philosopher is to teach philosophy.

That means to help other people come to a love of knowledge.

Knowledge in this circumstance shares in virtue, and in this sense is an end to be sought persons.

I believe this is the correct answer for most vocations with minor variation, i.e. politician, poet, etc.

Edit: it should read “and in this sense is an end to be sought by all persons.”

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I'm dissapointed to read little mentioned of truly bilingual people who are surely the best place to study anything like this?

If you're a shaky foreign language speaker then of course you must think before speaking more and engage different parts of the brain .

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Why should a person’s aims not be “too ambitious”?

It's truly wild how inconsistent and random our brains really are, how much of our decisions are based on weird aspects we don't know or think about. Especially people who tend to think they are always right usually have no idea why they think this or that.

And yea, languages definitely make a difference in how we think.

The part about hearing reprimands in the relatives' voices is pretty telling too. Nobody is really their own person through and through.

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Russell was not a logical positivist, he predates the logical positivists and only agrees with some aspects of their project.

Russell was not a proponent of logical positivism, and made his philosophical contributions before the Vienna Circle, Ayer etc.

Russell is associated with the “Direct Reference Theory” due to his influential paper “On Denoting”, which makes the meaning of a name the reference of its descriptive content. In this sense Russell is a “direct reference” theorist, but only in contrast to Frege, who proposed an intermediary “sense” of a name, between the idea and the object to which it refers. Russell’s work did not, at the time, fall under such a name “Direct Reference Theory” although his work may reasonably be associated with this later theoretical development. Furthermore, Russell’s account of number and of mathematics in the Principia Mathematica is not rooted in Direct Reference Theory in the way you describe: they are separate contribution that are only linked by Russell’s broader work on and advocacy of Frege’s logic. Principia Mathematica, as a project, in fact predates Russell’s work in On Denoting.

Morality and concept of heaven

Heaven in christianity(catholic and orthodox) is not only beyond concept of morality, ethics but also immoral in some sense. Imagine a situation: you have killed a person, normal human being, who you surely know did not go to heaven, therefore is in hell, suffering, (imagine how great their suffering is, imagine it from christian perspective, (christ says that a second in hell is unbarable) )How can u even have a will of going to heaven, when u know that because of ur sin, crime someone is suffering for eternity. What would u do as christian? You would repent and try your best to go to heaven. does it sound immoral? of course it does and it is in some sense.

That tweet is exactly something the sophists would say in ancient Greece and Rome, and for many the sophists aren't even real philosophers. Surely, it is useful to obtain certain life skills, and you can certainly learn a lot by reading about philosophy, philosophical literature as well as writing philosophical pieces. Philosophy doesn't aim to be useful necesarilly, but it is exactly that which does make it useful.

In fact, I would argue that if it were to make "usefulness" a priority it would become useless, or at least absurd. This is even true with mathematics for example. It aims to observe the world as it is and the equations that have come up through history weren't always useful in the time they were written down, but they were very much useful later down the line. Certainly, usefulness depends on context.

If it were to aim at being "useful", this is something that would either naturally be abandoned as it progresses or something that would stunt its growth.

Furthermore, when we talk about usefulness there's an understanding that something is useful to someone which indicates a personal interest, so the moral implications of the idea that philosophy is a tool for someone's personal interest are ridiculous.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. :)

We already have screwed this planet... and 100% of the screwing have been done by scientists and engineers... highly paid professionals... actually the best paid professionals in the planet... teachers don't get 1% of their pay slip. it looks like the plan is to screw the rest of the universe...

I have had several experiences with Germans who are friendly and polite in English, but when they find out I speak German, say, "How nice for you," and proceed to feel like they can be more frank with me about how they really feel about the people with us or the setting.

Utilitarians don't necessarily think that utilitarianism is a guide to behaviour or assigning moral responsibility. They might even reject the usual sense in which we're concerned about moral responsibility since, if utilitarianism is true, punishment and reward ought to be apportioned based on utility rather than deserts.

At its minimum, utilitarianism is just a theory about what constitutes the good. That it might fail to inform behaviour or judgement certainly looks like a problem at face, but it's not clear that this means we should reject it in this latter sense.

see, e.g., https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/#WhiConActVsExpCon

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