No, people who consider themselves "philosophers" is too broad a stroke. It includes rational consequentialists, and irrational deontologists and theologians. There are even Randians considered philosophers.teo123 wrote:And how do you know if something is ethical or not? Aren't the philosophers the actual experts on the issue?
It is unfortunately a polluted field, because unlike in science where pseudoscience is basically exiled, the tradition in academic philosophy is to accept everybody and all ideas -- even dialetheism.
You may not realize this, but 60% is still a majority.teo123 wrote:Only 60% of them of them think it's wrong to eat meat from mammals
And that's even considering the mess that is the field of philosophy today. It's hard to get them to agree that it's wrong to kill humans.
The argument against eating meat is very simple.
You need to learn basic logic so you can understand them yourself.
Start by learning what a premise is:
http://www.uky.edu/~rosdatte/phi120/lesson1a.htm
http://people.umass.edu/klement/100/logic.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premise
Premises are typically empirical, which means science: and philosophers are not scientists. Some even deny that animals are sentient, and they are WRONG when they do so, since that violates scientific consensus.
Philosophy only deals with the reasoning, not in validating the empirical premises (that part is science).
That doesn't negate the understanding that it's immoral; actually it makes it more credible.teo123 wrote:and most of them still do that.
If a person eats meat, that person has a cognitive bias in favor of deciding meat is moral. As such, if they decide it is immoral to eat meat despite that bias against vegetarianism, the argument must be VERY strong to overcome such a bias.
Much like how Dawkins admits it is wrong to eat meat: he does that despite his biases in favor of eating meat due to his behavior. He is forced to admit it because the argument is so strong.
No, it takes poor transparency and power concentrated in FEWER individuals to create corruption, or the collusion of many people, not one person acting alone. One corrupt person acting alone in a transparent system is caught and put in jail or fired.teo123 wrote:And what if what I've been told in school is actually true? Seriously, which country is more likely to be corrupt: the small Croatia or the big USA? It takes only one person to corrupt the whole government, so, since USA has way more people, USA is way more likely to be corrupt.
The U.S. has highly distributed power, and it is much more transparent (freedom of information), so it takes a massive conspiracy to carry out any meaningful corruption.
I already linked you to the corruption index.
STOP assuming you can understand these things. You don't know how corruption works, and you don't understand how it affects government systemically.
The corruption index makes it clear that your country is more corrupt.
Your country is also less educated and more controlled by religion, which is NOT science.
You might as well ask "what if the flat Earthers are right after all?" and go back to square one.
The scientific consensus is right (which is not just based on one country, but across many), and your unscientific corrupt government is wrong.
An experiment is not very meaningful if it is not blinded.teo123 wrote:Anyway, that case shows that doing the experiments doesn't help those who don't think logically, as you say it does. Namely, he tried to test his lemon-juice hypothesis and it seemed to work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_experiment
Lack of blinded experiments is a large part of what defines pseudoscience. You will often confirm your beliefs through subtle biases in observation if you aren't blinded.
You have to start with a correct understanding of how the science works to translate correctly between empirical fact to math, and from math interpret the results back into empirical facts.teo123 wrote:And I don't understand how do you mean that science doesn't make things purely mathematical? How is engineering done then? I mean, if you know Bool's algebra, you can figure out by yourself how does an electronic circuit add, subtract, multiply or divide binary numbers. While I am not quite certain, I think that it's quite similar for other types of engineering.
You could do the math, but if you don't understand the empirical reality properly, you can not translate to and from the mathematical form.
You also have to have a means to check your math, or you may have done it wrong. You could check your math when it came to a distance equation, and in those limited cases you can figure things out by yourself.
Ask yourself how you check your conclusions, and how you prove them. Can you do it? If not, then you are not qualified to come to conclusions on your own.
Don't make assumptions based on your own reasoning and experiences.teo123 wrote:And I think that people who have, let's say, backyard chickens have more illusions about how is factory farming done. I haven't found any study about it, but that's what I concluded by talking with people about these things.
If you don't have access to the knowledge, then you will be stupid for the rest of your life.teo123 wrote:And, about that your suggestion not to make any conclusions by yourself if you can find out what the scientific consensus is, what about when you don't have access to the scientific consensus?
You have access, though, now that you should know how to find it.
No they don't, they make terrible decisions constantly. They just don't usually make decisions which kill them quickly (before they procreate) due to evolution. If somebody makes lethal decisions, that person won't survive to have children and teach those methods of decision to them.teo123 wrote:Most of the people don't do that, yet they manage to make good day-to-day decisions.
For example, eating meat probably won't kill you until you're 50, which is well after most people have children and teach them to eat meat.
People make very bad financial choices, bad relationship choices, harmful diet choices, they misunderstand the universe to such an extreme degree that they're essentially wrong about everything in terms of science and religion, they survive on primitive instincts in a modern society. All they have to do is live long enough to procreate and teach their children their bad (but less lethal) habits which let them survive for 40 years.
I can't very reliably guess if somebody is crazy or lying, but if somebody is wrong, it's going to be one or the other ("crazy" in the informal sense).teo123 wrote:And do you trust your intuition when it tells you that somebody is lying or being a lunatic?
Claiming the Earth is flat is a crazy claim. Either you are crazy to believe it (which you were, your brain was running on broken software), or you didn't actually believe it and you were lying.
As to the difficulty of rigorously defining insanity, that's another matter.