Humanism - what is it good for?

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tomarin

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What is your understanding of humanism as a philosophy or creed? Is it that ‘man is the measure of all things’ and isn’t that kind of self-absorbed? What about all the other life forms on our planet?
 
We cant even get people on this forum to consider being nice to AI or each other. I doubt you’ll make much headway here.
 
Brittany said:
Humanism is where we attach primacy to humans rather than the supernatural/divine. It’s not a Man Vs. Lower Animals thing, it’s a Man Vs. God thing. So, from a Catholic perspective, it’s a bad philosophy. Catholicism teaches that we are dependent on God, and indeed we are.
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Yes, except that I believe one can be a religious humanist or a secular humanist - the thinkers of the Renaissance were humanists without being atheists, and we moderns are to a great extent their heirs.
 
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Can one even be nice to AI? Bring nice implies there is someone that can accept the nicety, which sorta implies feelings or abstractions.
 
Has that ever happened? You can program a machine to respond in a way like feelings, but I know of no way to actually program feelings.
 
What are feelings? Chemical responses to (name removed by moderator)ut. You can code a response to negative or positive (name removed by moderator)ut with values corresponding to the status and health of the system.

voila, emotions.
 
It’s a bit more.
It is an experience by the person who then reacts to the emotion.
True emotions are impossible without a person to experience them.
You can have a machine make droopy eyes and a sad sound, but they’re not actually sad.
 
tomarin said:
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Brittany:
Yes, except that I believe one can be a religious humanist or a secular humanist - the thinkers of the Renaissance were humanists without being atheists, and we moderns are to a great extent their heirs.
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In the last 150 years humanism was altered by Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, etc. Amiable agnostics like Huxley didn’t accept Faith but were solid on Reason.today the Church has to defend both faith and reason.

We are living in a time dominated by Nietzsche s heirs. The snowflakes are as far removed from reason as they are from faith but this is what the Media will define as humanism. In other words humanism is now redefined in education and media as absence of dogmas.
 
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Be careful insulting “snowflakes”, you may find yourself under an avalanche.
 
In the USA, we have all been “avalanced” by relativistic education, and the relativistic media. It limits many persons’ ability to think critically and sensitively, which is part of what used to be considered authentic Humanism.

I respond by helping out at a school which does teach critical thinking, and by doing a tiny bit to encourage this in other ways.
 
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First you’d have to get everyone to agree as to a definition of humanism…

focus on humankind as center of intellectual and artistic endeavor;
method of study that emphasized the superiority of classical forms over medieval styles, in particular the study of ancient languages
 
JanetF said:
First you’d have to get everyone to agree as to a definition of humanism…

focus on humankind as center of intellectual and artistic endeavor;
method of study that emphasized the superiority of classical forms over medieval styles, in particular the study of ancient languages
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The middle ages incorporated the wisdom of ancient times. They were as “humanistic” as the ancients were, using the traditional meaning of humanism. I could classify the ancients and medieval scholars as closer to authentic humanism than most scholars today. Both of the older eras were a mix of wise and not so wise.

Ancient languages, which the medievals preserved, are helpful to study now for a humanistic outlook. The whole area of Liberal Arts is crucial, for they emphasize the importance of the individual. Recent scholarship, which has its positives, tends to emphasize populations, groups, larger trends - not so much individuals.
 
It’s about maintaining a sense of value, meaning and purpose that is rooted in the human will instead of God…
 
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