u/DecentTreat4309

What is the general consensus on this question? I understand that the definition of analytic vs continental is more of a "family resemblance" thing rather than strict definition but would they generally be considered analytic? Is the perceived border between analytic and continental essentially modern analytic philosophy from the 20th century onward vs everything else being continental or is it specifically about where the philosophers come from ("Continental Europe"). I saw in a recent debate somebody refer to Hume as a continental philosopher so it makes me wonder.

Both C3PO and R2D2 are seen in Star Wars behaving as if they have mental states of their own and personalities of their own. But what if they are so called "philosophical zombies" which is a concept in the philosophy of mind where somebody has the exact same behavior and physical components as a conscious being but yet has no true inner experience. By "inner experience" I simply mean "first person perspective". Is there "something it is like" to be droids in Star Wars or do they just behave from the third person perspective as if they have consciousness but without any first person perspective.

This question is closely related to a question I have previously asked this subreddit whether there are souls in Star Wars or not. Presumably droids would not have souls right? And the concept of a soul is closely tied to consciousness.

But from a narrative standpoint it would seem rather strange if C3PO and R2D2 did not really have any true emotions or intentions. Basically my question phrased in overly fancy terms is what is the ontological status of minds in Star Wars? What is Star Wars' view on the philosophy of mind?

EDIT: I understand that they behave as if they have pain and emotions and so on. I under they have what is called "functional consciousness" in philosophy of mind. They behave and react to stimuli and have a bunch of computational power. What I am asking is if they have "phenomenal consciousness" which is just the pure "first person perspective". I am not asking about their behavior or capacity for "intelligence" I am asking if they genuinely have an inner life. And if they have that then why would they have that? At what point do they get phenomenal consciousness? This is a philosophical issue in real life as well of course but considering that Star Wars literally has magic in it I think it would not be so implausible from an in universe standpoint to think that droids would not be conscious considering they have no access to the force.

I think of examples like the force ghosts (individual existence beyond death) and what not but also the frequent talk of "becoming one with the force" and the force being a field without spatial boundaries and it binding and penetrating all life.

The Mortis gods are also individuals even.

I understand that the 2003 show is not canon anymore but I do wonder if there is any explicit contradiction between the events in the show and the current Star Wars canon story wise? The show introduces both Grievous and Ventress and the subsequent 2008 TCW seems to take these characters existing for granted.

At the end of Yellow's true pacifist route Clover gives up his soul for the underground's sake. So that when they get 7 souls they will be able to flee the underground.

Clover is the 6th soul. So Clover knows that his soul will not be enough. Does he just expect the 7th soul to willingly sacrifice themselves to save the underground? Does he think the 7th soul has a moral obligation to do this? Does he think the monsters should kill the 7th soul and that if the 7th soul is not killed then that would be unfortunate? Does he think that it would be wrong for the 7th soul to not sacrifice themselves?

This seems like very utilitarian thinking on Clover's part if I am interpreting this correctly. Utilitarianism is a philosophical position in ethics which states that the greatest action is that which maximises the total benefit for the most people. This is fine in most scenarios. I would be very surprised if the justice soul was a utilitarian though. I will not go into all the objections against utilitarianism here but you can look them up and there are plenty and the most famous one is that it is obviously wrong to kill a person to harvest their organs to save 5 other people who need organ transplants. People have certain rights that should not be violated even if there is a greater utility or at the very least they should not be violated unless there is an immensely higher utility and I think Frisk would have a right to not be killed or have to sacrifice himself.

Let us say that Clover does not think that Frisk would have an obligation to sacrifice himself. Then why would Clover do it? Why would Clover sacrifice himself if he doesn't also think that Frisk should also sacrifice himself? Would Clover cheer on the monsters trying to kill Frisk in the original Undertale?

This is just a small criticism I have of Undertale Yellow but on the whole I think the game seems awesome.

Direct realism states that we are directly acquainted with the nature of external physical objects and the external world through our perception. Panpsychism states that the true nature of the physical is mental. We are clearly not directly acquainted with other people's phenomenal consciousness so my question is if it's impossible to be both a direct realist and a panspychist?

I would say I am a Libertarian basically due to Michael Huemers arguments. I believe in moral realism. Michael Huemer argues from very basic common sense morality that political authority is not valid. This is something I have essentially thought all my life. There is no reason why the state should have any rights others should not have.

My question is how popular is Michael Huemer among ancaps? How popular are his arguments? He is a very broad philosopher engaged with all parts of philosophy essentially. He is also a vegan for ethical reasons which I also am.

I essentially wonder also are people ancaps because they genuinely believe like I do that political authority is immoral or is it more because of prudential reasons / egoist reasons?

In general I highly recommend Michael Huemer. I agree with him on essentially 99% of all things mainly because I agree with his epistemology of "phenomenal conservatism" which I think is the only viable epistemology which is essentially just common sense epistemology and his views on all other aspects of philosophy follow from that.

I now believe there seems like there is an intelligent creator. Or ot seems more likely than not.

Some of the motivations for me believing this are the contingency argument (and its stronger form the modal cosmological argument not to be confused with the modal ontological argument). The unmoved mover argument is also pretty good but not as decisive for me.

The main reason is four teleological / design arguments: the fine tuning argument, psychophysical harmony, nomological harmony and psychonomic harmony (by Joe Schmid). Specifically psychophysical and psychonomic. These arguments are extremely good. Even Richard Dawkins says that the fine tuning argument could rationally convince one to be a deist.

If you are not familiar with all the arguments I just said I would highly recommend looking them up. They are extremely good.

Anyway those are the main arguments for me that really move me.

I just can't be a traditional theist though who believes in an all good god because of the problem of evil especially natural evil such as tsunamis and the evolutionary history of suffering of animals. Free will does not explain this.

But I do believe in an intelligent designer. Agnostic Paul Draper argues that "aesthetic deism" which is a view of god which states that he is motivated by aesthetic beauty rather than moral goodness creates the world the way it is to be beautiful.

This just makes a lot of sense. The world seems largely indifferent to good and evil and pleasure and pain seem randomly dispersed and virtuous people don't necessarily end up better of than people with vices. I am a moral realist as well and I believe goodness has nothing to do with god because of the eurythpro dilemma.

Maybe "aesthetic" deism is wrong and god is not motivated by aesthetic requirements but he is motivated by something else.

Essentially I just think there is a lot of reasons to infer an intelligent designer of the world. It just is very intuitive based on how harmonious everything is. And I dont mean just on a biology level but on the level of physical laws (which make the biology inevitable) and psychophysical laws (there are so many reasons to believe consciousness is immaterial such as the hard problem of consciousness and I am far more confident that consciousness is immaterial than that deism is true).

Anyway I dont believe that the deist god would have to be evil. Just morally ambiguous and motivated by some other transcendental ideal.