:D

Hanover is on the team primarily for his sage advice.

you're not Spanish are you? — Michael

I'm Scottish.

I think AK is Australian.

Personally I like to see conservatives on the forum, because left-liberals can be such a boring lot. I haven't looked into what happened in this case, but I haven't noticed Baden ever picking on right-wingers just for being right-wing, so I very much doubt anything like that was going on. Certainly some people are less tolerant of Agustino's abrasive style than others, and he can sometimes dominate a discussion to its detriment.

My own moderating focus is on maintaining quality, and I don't mind a bit of argy-bargy. Other mods are much quicker to pounce on flaming. We each make our own decisions, but in the end I think we all aim to justify them with reference to the posting guidelines.

Those that are opposed to porn, and tell you how horrible it is, themselves look at porn regularly. — Wosret

They should know.

I'm not saying that we can't be objective. I'm saying disagreements are mostly over how we see the evidence or facts, and our psychology has a powerful influence on our ability to see the facts, or not see the facts. — Sam26

What kind of beliefs are we talking about here? Let's take the example of beliefs about the best way of governing a country. The psychological proclivities at play in the struggle between the Chartists and the political establishment in the 19th century reflected--more than that, were subsumed by--the social struggle between those who wanted to maintain exclusive power for the upper class, and those from the working class who demanded more power. What are the facts here that one or the other side could be right or wrong about? Both had their rational, but contradicting, arguments. The establishment could point out that the best governments of the past have been monarchies or aristocracies; and that even in Rome, where the plebs had their tribunes, social order depended on the power of the Patricians; and that ancient Greek democracy was unstable and led to mob rule, the execution of Socrates, etc. This is evidence, but the Chartists were not irrational to dismiss it.

The point I'm making is that a substantial proportion of beliefs are like this, that political and ethical beliefs are not necessarily secondary to, say, the belief that here is a hand or that human beings have caused changes to the climate. But are they different in kind, and how so?

This is actually quite topical, because the political and economic establishment of the UK argued against Brexit last year partly on the basis that it would cause economic problems, i.e., that there was a set of facts, presented by leading economists, that the Brexit supporters were irrationally dismissing. But what drives Brexit is in form similar to what drove the Chartists: it's what you do and how you do it that counts. Facts in this context are made, not merely revealed.

Hence, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."

The contracts dried up for me back in 2001 (when the dot com bubble burst). I had to move from a large comfortable apartment in a great part of town to a crappy little one in a less agreeable part of town, and I ended up working as a barman in an old man's pub and a fishmonger at Tesco. If the same sort of thing happens to you, just remind yourself that learning how to properly pour a Guinness and fillet a salmon are skills worth having.

Would you like me to send you over a monkey to offer it up to you? — Sapientia

Because everything is better when served up by a monkey?

What about older insights, scientific or philosophical, that have *not* been rendered obsolete by modern knowledge? Do ideas all come labeled with a expiration date? I would be hard pressed, myself, to think of a single Wittgensteinian insight that has been rendered obsolete by a recent scientific discovery. On the other hand, reading some philosophical musings produced by philosophically illiterate modern scientists, it often seems to me that what they are saying had already been rendered obsolete by Aristotle more than twenty-three centuries ago! — Pierre-Normand

(Y)

I'm not sure if that's aimed at me or at others. In any case, one can attribute conservatism to actually existing Islam, as I just did, without thereby claiming that this conservatism is essential or eternal to Islam. It doesn't make a lot of sense to alienate Muslims who are sympathetic to reform, or are potentially so. That's the trouble with the Clash of Civilizations narrative: it's in danger of being self-fulfilling.

A sad day for democracy in Indonesia. — Wayfarer

Yes, but it's not a freak verdict:

Andreas Harsono, an Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said ... more than 100 Indonesians have been convicted of blasphemy in the past decade, and acquittals in such cases were extremely rare. — Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/09/jakarta-governor-ahok-found-guilty-of-blasphemy-jailed-for-two-years

I think it is a graphic illustration of the tension that exists between democratic institutions and the essentially theocratic nature of Islam, which doesn't recognize the separation of religion and state. — Wayfarer

I think it shows less about the essential nature of Islam than it does about the currently prevailing conservative mood in Islam. Without reform and re-interpretation it is no doubt officially less amenable to the separation of church and state, but such has been a feature of the Islamic world at certain times and places.

I learned a lot from listening to his lectures on Heidegger. At first I was dismayed by his bumbling style--"has this guy even read the book?"--but came to appreciate the way he was always exploring the text along with the students. He was the teacher of a canonical work, but he didn't stop thinking about it or reversing his earlier interpretations.

From the position of a putative creator god, it would constitute an inherent contradiction to assume an attitude of justifiably being able to require of human beings the comprehension and thereby acceptance of a situation ordained for them which in reality was objectively unacceptable and consequently incomprehensible. — Robert Lockhart

Can anyone work out what this means?

I'll have a stab at it. Maybe something like this:

"Given that the human condition is unacceptable, it is contradictory for God to have created this condition and at the same time to expect us to accept it."

Am I close, Robert?

The only way to find out is by asking, as you've done. I deleted your discussion because the opening post was so badly written that it was unintelligible, as the responses you received made clear. I'm sorry to say that your posts are generally so verbose that they read like gibberish.

:o Looks like the tankies have got to you Mol.

But I think you'd be sympathetic to some of his One-Dimensional Man, which I read ages ago. More sympathetic than me, probably.

I got this summary from the Wikipedia page:

(1) The concept of “one-dimensional man” asserts that there are other dimensions of human existence in addition to the present one and that these have been eliminated. It maintains that the spheres of existence formerly considered as private (e.g. sexuality) have now become part of the entire system of social domination of man by man, and it suggests that totalitarianism can be imposed without terror.

(2) Technological rationality, which impoverishes all aspects of contemporary life, has developed the material bases of human freedom, but continues to serve the interests of suppression. There is a logic of domination in technological progress under present conditions: not quantitative accumulation, but a qualitative “leap” is necessary to transform this apparatus of destruction into an apparatus of life.

(3) The analysis proceeds on the basis of “negative” or dialectical thinking, which sees existing things as “other than they are” and as denying the possibilities inherent in themselves. It demands “freedom from the oppressive and ideological power of given facts.”

(4) The book is generally pessimistic about the possibilities for overcoming the increasing domination and unfreedom of technological society; it concentrates on the power of the present establishment to contain and repulse all alternatives to the status quo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Dimensional_Man

All right, I'll settle for three.

whether people want to say he is right or wrong, whatever you want. there'll be a Tweetable comment on it. — ernestm

Unfortunately this is more than 140 characters:

The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. — Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

In fact this does neatly encapsulate what I like about Marx.

Anyone here familiar with Herbert Marcuse, and the other 'new left'? I suppose they're passé now (hey even the word 'passé ' is passé ) but a lot of what they say resonates with me (sans their materialism, however.) — Wayfarer

It seems to me that the Frankfurt School, and the New Left that was inspired by them, are quite current right now. In the US they're getting the blame for the bugbear of "Cultural Marxism" by the Right. This is certainly an exaggeration and caricature, but I think they did have a big influence on the development of the American Left. The rejection of class politics in favour of identity politics, the critique of consumer culture and Western culture in general, and the suspicion of free speech, can, it can be argued, be traced back to the Frankfurt School and Marcuse especially.

The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of communication in word, print, and picture. Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger. I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs. Different opinions and 'philosophies' can no longer compete peacefully for adherence and persuasion on rational grounds: the 'marketplace of ideas' is organized and delimited by those who determine the national and the individual interest. In this society, for which the ideologists have proclaimed the 'end of ideology', the false consciousness has become the general consciousness--from the government down to its last objects. The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped: their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional powers to those who oppress these minorities. It should be evident by now that the exercise of civil rights by those who don't have them presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise, and that liberation of the Damned of the Earth presupposes suppression not only of their old but also of their new masters. — Marcuse, Repressive Tolerance

It reads like a founding document for the identity politics and political correctness now common in the American universities.

You could be. Do you have a reason for the distinction? — schopenhauer1

Yes. He wrote lots of other things, and it's a very varied body of work. The Communist Manifesto is a political pamphlet written at a very specific time for specific practical purposes.

Am I right in saying this is more like "Three Things the Communist Manifesto Got Wrong"?

Indeed. I'm a big Zappa fan and I've just realized that his album Hot Rats, featuring Jean Luc Ponty, may have helped to popularize jazz-rock violin in the first place. I do like that album, even including some of the violin bits.

Pretty cool. The problem I have with that stuff is not so much the dissonance, but all the bloody violin. The sound of the violin in jazz-rock is just...bad. To my ears, at least. I enjoyed the drums most of all in that particular track.

First place!

(for "philosophy forum", with or without quotes, on .com, .co.uk, and .es)

Welcome Sam, good to see you here. Go for it. :)

The only one I can think of who changed his name is @Michael, who used to have the official seal of awesomeness.

Welcome NC, good to see you again. Congratulations, and may your juices flow in this direction. :)

Quit yer whining Q. You do realize that a large number of PF members--me, for instance--only ever used the "Latest Posts" page on the old PF, which is pretty much what we have here?

That would be good, especially when you have to scroll up or down to find the category you want in the side menu. But I don't expect it'll happen any time soon, if at all.

One thing I asked the developers to do is make the category name visible next to each discussion title on the main forum page. They clearly didn't think it was important. I may ask again, because I think that would help with the confusion you and others have expressed.

There is one forum here and it is the site itself, with discussions belonging to categories. You can see categories in the side menu or on the categories page. Also, on the main forum page--equivalent to "Latest" on old PF--you can see the category any discussion belongs to by hovering over it.

Are rape and incest babies somehow less human than other babies? If abortion is murder, then no exception for rape or incest can be rationally justified. Such a thing would be logically indefensible — BenMcLean

Good point. I agree that the legality and morality of an abortion should not be determined by the cause of the pregnancy. But if abortion is not murder or otherwise morally objectionable, then it follows that abortion ought to be as easy for someone whose pregnancy was caused by consensual sex as it is for someone who was raped.

When someone tells me that they are “Not religious, but very spiritual,” I want to punch them in the face. — David Webster, Dispirited

Who is this "we" you speak of?

:D

My understanding is that while Jewish and non-Jewish citizens have equal rights according to Israeli law, immigration into Israel and attaining citizenship are very difficult indeed, with the exception of the Law of Return, which gives Jews from anywhere in the world the right to go to Israel and become a citizen. So unless you're Jewish you're probably out of luck.

Among citizens, there is a big population of Arabs, most of whom are Muslims. They're outnumbered by Jews, but they do have some political clout, and this may be growing--but not because of immigration.

As far as I know the biggest recent influx into Israel that might have had cultural or political consequences is that of the Ethiopian Jews over the last few decades.

It's not taboo, and being a twat is tolerated as well, so carry on.

I know all about it, Benkei. And the word I used is not "thrashing", but "trashing", and it's all you are doing, once again.

It might be that opinions among Muslims have changed since the survey I'm thinking of, which I think was from a few years ago. I may look it up later.

They are basically in the limelight to enforce the islamophobia and outright racism of people. After, what better to have than a former muslim talking about the perils of Islam. — ssu

What do you mean by this? I take it to be an insinuation that ex-Muslims or moderate Muslims who criticize Islam or Islamism are merely Uncle Toms, bolstering basically racist prejudices. Is that right?

Do you think it is fair that vociferous criticism of Islam and Islamism coming from people from a Muslim background is repeatedly trashed, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been trashed by (especially Dutch) Leftists and liberals? Do you think moderate Muslims who would like to see an end to Islamic extremism or conservatism (like, for example, most French Muslims, according to surveys) are helped in any way when those who speak against Islamic extremism or against Islamic conservatism are vilified by the liberal cultural mainstream and the Left (as they are by the Islamists and Islamic conservatives themselves)? Is there any possibility of supporting moderate Muslims and allowing them to speak out and begin to turn the tide of contemporary Muslim ideology when liberals like you shoot down Muslims and ex-Muslims, accusing them of so-called Islamophobia?

If criticism of Islamic practices by Muslims and ex-Muslims is used by the Right--by those who peddle the Clash of Civilizations narrative, for example--doesn't this indicate, not that the criticisms are wrong, but that liberals and Leftists ought to be supporting them also, but from a different point of view? The fact that the Right has done quite well in monopolizing the criticism of Islam is not an argument for a liberal or Left defence of Islam. On the contrary.

Incidentally, I notice that the basic point I'm making here and which I always make in these discussions, while it is not intrinsically subtle, has become subtle.