:PROPERTIES: :ID: f4d70abf-242c-41b7-b0dd-d7f1813cfb33 :END: #+title: philosophy #+author: Preston Pan #+html_head: #+html_head: #+html_head: #+options: broken-links:t * Introduction Philosophy is a hard to describe term, but this mindmap defines this term as the study of living life optimally. We use this definition to ground meta-ethical frameworks in [[id:326eb3f8-680a-432c-bf69-42ba4d366116][egoism]], which gives meaning to perscriptive ethical statements (which this mindmap holds there is regularly no meaning to in the colloquial sense). This mindmap defines an ethical statement such as "it is wrong to do x" as a statement which says, "it maximizes utility for your own life if not x". Of course, because it is an emperically justified statement to say that most people act the same, this can ground commonly held moral beliefs. There are several possible refutations to this point of view, but this mindmap maintains that refutations to this point of view usually appeal to some feeling of wrongness rather than being definitionally inconsistent, which is again an instantiation of this point of view (to argue moral truths from a point of view of a feeling of wrongness is an instantiation or a confirmation of this point of view). For instance, one possible counterargument that is brought up involves the fact that this theory equates preferences to moral statements. "I prefer red" and "x is morally right" indeed /feel/ like two separate things. This mindmap maintains that they are two different things in many senses, but that the fundamental assertion of these two statements is the same. It is just a different kind of emotion, but there is no underlying fact of the matter that one can point to with regards to moral theory. Note that there are several arguments that facts are treated on a separate footing to moral theory under such a framework. Indeed it is true that this mindmap will rest on some emperical facts, but this mindmap maintains that doing this is a perfectly internally consistent and descriptive standpoint. From here on, we will use ethical and moral statements as a description of people, rather than a description of some real moral fact.