Life of Pi

[sapphi_snake]

Bong Lover said:

1.  Now we're getting somewhere! This is pretty much the point I've been trying to make. What you say about morality is a natural consequence of a mechanical world view. It is also one of the most difficult problems to address with this view. After all, if nothing is bad or good in itself, where is the justificiation for laws, punishment and reward. To place this justification in the will of people with similar goals or feelings is problematic.

2. Another implication of this world view is that the world is deterministic, meaning that nothing is really free to change. The entire course of history, our actions, feelings and fortunes are already set for us. Does it make any sense to punish people if they don't have free will? Does it make any sense questioning punishment when who gets punished and who doesn't is already predetermined?

3. In the end, subscribing to a purely mechanical world view is ultimately a matter of faith as well. You have to chose to reject supernatural exsistence, you can never prove that is doesn't exsist.

Finally, to round out a few of your direct questions:

I have no idea what something outside matter that controls ethics would be. It could be a set of undiscovered natural laws (similar to gravity and friction) yet unobservable (at least for now) or it could be a all knowing supreme conciousness, or perhaps it is an essential part of the human body? I really have no idea, it is also very possible that no such rules exsist and that the world is nothing but matter.

And, killing in self-defense is not the same as killing in aggression. The way I see it Pi kills the chef out of necessity and self defense. His actions are heroic because he manages to survive against increadible odds. Being trapped with a physically superior insane murderer being one of the things that stacks the odds against him considerably. When I say it's wrong to kill somebody, it is not an absolute rule. There are exceptions. In fact, I don't think there is a moral universal law that says killing is bad. I think if there is a fixed point of morality it will probably say something more along the lines that forcing your will on others is bad. That said, questions of ethics are notoriously difficult to determine with 100% certainty.

5. PS: This conversatiopn is exactly what Life of Pi is meant to inspire. I guess the book is successful on some level ;)

1. Problematic, but again, we do not have absolute knowledge about the universe. Of course you find it problematic, and unsatisfying, but unless you want to make up absolute answers (like religion), you're gonna have to be satisfied with this.

2. I don't see why this implies any determinism. Care to elaborate on this.

3. I've never seen any evidence that anything "supernatural" exists, nor have I any reason to believe in something like this. There's also a problem with the terms "natural" and "supernatural", as they're mere conventions. We deem "natural" that which is in concordance with our current knowledge of the world around us, that which we have observed, explained and classified. What we don't have knowledge of yet, what we can't explain, we deem "supernatural". However as we gain more knowledge about the world around us, seemingly unexplainable things become perfectly explainable, and the "supernatural" becomes "natural". This is why I say that if something really exists, it is "natural", not "supernatural" (this would even include something like "God").

4. I agree that killing in self defence is acceptable. However, the problem is that Pi created a delusion to make himself forget what he did. The danger is that someone could do the same after commiting an attrocity, thus erasing it, and being able to live without suffeing any consiquences for it.

5. Don't give too much credit to the author.