Disgust is an emotion — Michael

There is very strong evidence to the effect that disgust is entirely a learned behaviour. We are disgusted by what we are taught to be disgusted by. Hence, the lack of disgust demonstrated by infants, and the huge differences in what is found disgusting across the world. So it is not unreasonable to see this as rational matter. That doesn't, of course, mean that the conclusions reached are right! Personally I find the argument to be a load of dingo's kidneys (mmmmm, kidneys - this calls for a fry-up tonight!)

Re whether it's ethical, I don't personally see suicide as an ethical issue, pro or con. I wouldn't say that it's ethical or unethical. — Terrapin Station

I find that very strange position which is really only tenable if the act of suicide literally affects nobody which I would venture to suggest is never the case. The suicide of someone we know, even at a distance, is one of the most devastating psychological traumas possible. Add to that the burden on those responsible for finding the body, breaking the news, tying up the many loose ends (suicides rarely set their affairs in order beforehand), and it is simply impossible to see suicide as anything other than the most supremely selfish act possible, indiscriminately targeting others for incalculable injury. It's almost an act of terrorism all the worse for the fact that the perpetrator cannot ever be made to account for it. If that's not an ethical issue then I don't know what is!

Worse still is the fact that, contrary to popular understandings, many, if not most, suicides are not the last step in an agonised battle at all but are committed almost on a whim. The old psychiatric jest that the trouble with anti-depressants is that they give the patient enough revived energy to kill themselves still holds good. "”I am leaving because I am bored.”, wrote George Sanders in his suicide note. Nobody has better captured the casual thoughtlessness which many suicides represent.

It is this potential for negligent injury to others which informs the attempts to make suicide illegal (despite the obvious problems in actually prosecuting a case) and explains why religions tend to see it as amongst the greatest (potentially unforgivable) sins. I'm really not sure that you can sidestep the ethical dimension simply by declaring that you don't recognise it as a matter of ethics when so many clearly do.

Then why post in Philosophy of Science which would seem to be the least appropriate place for it?

Yeah, but what's it got to do with philosophy?

Even Pink Floyd got this wrong. — andrewk

As the spoken section of Eclipse specifically includes "There is no dark side of the moon really." this assertion would appear to erroneous! In any case, 'dark' does not only mean 'not lighted' but includes such subtleties as 'unseen', 'hidden', 'obscured', 'arcane' etc. as in 'the dark arts', 'I saw through a mirror darkly', and, of course, 'dark matter'. It is therefore entirely appropriate to call that side of the moon which we never see 'dark' irrespective of the amount of daylight it enjoys.

But you're right about the flat Earth thing! (Y)

So how many shares have you got in this?

I surrender my existence to the will of God — Question

But you don't do that at all. Did you eat breakfast this morning (or some other meal if you're not a breakfast person)? If so then that is an act of will directed at maintaining your existence, the very opposite of surrender, and a sin to boot, in Christian theology at least. If it was possible for human beings to surrender their existence to God then there would be no need for any act of salvation by God and we could all march into heaven under our own steam.

There's nothing new in this. Social media and other technical wizardry has merely changed how the need is expressed but status has always been a major driving force in human interaction. Jane Austen's novels are full of just such manoeuvrings!

Quantum mechanics proves anything and everything for this poster. I wouldn't trouble yourself.

Yup, that's exactly what I said! (Dammit, why's there no facepalm emoji?)

But if the prior fact is that existence is absurd surely morality becomes necessary to maintain some vestige of order in the chaos and limit the damage? Such a morality would indeed be emergent from subjective assessment of the human condition and the perception of possible improvement.

Unless there have been dramatic developments that haven't reached these sures, I'm pretty certain its only Trump of all these sinners that's running for the office popularly known as 'the most powerful man in the world'. Whilst I'm all for straightening out the whole world it does seem to me that there are priorities!

I refer the honourable member to the book I recommended some time ago!

no prizes at all are awarded to shelf stackers — unenlightened

Don't you believe it!

How can you really define the distinction between objective and subjective if we only ever are subjective. — intrapersona

Well what are you actually asking? Defining a distinction doesn't require an ability to experience both or indeed either, surely? X is not-Y requires no further point of reference at all to be verifiable. But I suspect that what you're really asking is how we can know that X (not-Y) is instantiated.

So why are you posting this if there's nobody out here to read and reply to it? And why would you even address the issue of communicability? Who would there be to communicate with?

Oh but it is so obviously comic. You don't seriously think that Jesus was advising people to actually cut their hands off? It's a perfect joke, with the set up "You know what they say at the Temple?" and then the punchline "well if that's right you'd better cut your hand off or you'll never get to Heaven!", knowing wink, laughs all round! It's a brilliant satire on the uselessness of the Law and the stupidity of those who follow it's every jot and tittle believing it will get them into God's good graces, the very theme which Paul would echo so powerfully in Romans as the foundation of Christian soteriology.

The failure to appreciate that Jesus (like his father) has a 'wicked' sense of humour (also evident in those parables that can reasonably be attributed to Jesus) is one of the great tragedies of the Church's history. God knows it could certainly do with lightening up. The Gospel writer's get it, even John though his taste is more to the sardonic, dry side of humour, which is why they constantly point up the Pharisees as the butt of the joke (they think they're first in the queue, can you believe that?). The best Christian writers get it (Harry Williams totally delights in it which is why I read and quote him so often). Zefferelli's "Jesus of Nazareth" nods knowingly at it. It could not be more obvious ... which of course is itself all part of the joke. Because the Pharisees, be they members of the 1st Century Temple or the 21st Century church will never get it.They will only ever have po-faced religion. The Kingdom of God, the realm of delightful laughter, will always be beyond their reach. They just take themselves and everything else too seriously to get past the door.

Digital logic, for example, insisted that the earth must be flat for thousands of years because, obviously, it can't be both flat and round! — wuliheron

It has been the orthodox belief that the Earth is flat neither for thousands of years or thousands of seconds! The Flat Earth Society would have been considered just as weird in 2016 BC as it is today!

So, given the choice as a sufferer, you probably would have to be a complete idiot to not prefer "suffering cerebral palsy" or "special needs". — Baden

Strangely it has emerged that many groups actually prefer to use some of the non-PC terms themselves. One of the UK's leading charities for people with learning difficulties refused for many years to yield to pressure to stop using the term 'mentally handicapped' and still retains a nod to it in its new name. There is a self-help group for the mentally ill which has been involved in a very public effort to 'reclaim' the word 'bonkers', one for the physically disabled that includes 'gimp' in its name, and then there's this!

This is precisely my point. The trouble with being offended on behalf of other people is that it is based on the assumption that you know what is best for them better than they do themselves which can be far more patronising and belittling than any of the allegedly offensive terms and behaviour you are crusading against. The great irony of pc is the great disservice it does to those it claims to be protecting first by failing to consult with them what they actually want in the way of representation and then by attracting attention exclusively to itself in raising the ire of a public that, rightly or wrongly, considers itself falsely accused, further alienates and isolates them.

Far from the altruism that you appear, naively in my opinion, to attribute to the pc brigade, then I am forced to conclude that it is and probably always was primarily self-serving moral superiority.

What I observed was that there are Christian philosophers who say that 'hell' or 'damnation' can be understood as the rejection of salvation, so, in some sense, those who suffer it have chosen that fate; it is a consequence of their actions. It parallels the doctrine of 'evil as the privation of the good', which is also associated with Augustine. — Wayfarer

The only possible interpretation for my money!

Important to remember that the word 'Hell' is an artifact of translation. Hell is actually a pagan concept from the goddess Hel who rules the Norse 'underworld'. The word 'gehenna' does not imply a physical 'hell' and is not interpreted as such for many centuries. Augustine, for example, could never have believed in the existence of Hell since evil has no reality but is the absence or diminishment of good. It is more accurate to see the cursed as being in the same boat as Adam and Eve, simply banished from Eden. They are both literally and figuratively 'the leftovers' exactly what you'd expect to find in 'gehenna' the landfill site of Jerusalem.

Mark 9:43: "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out." — Ciceronianus the White

This is out of place in this discussion, in my opinion. The whole Sermon on Mount is best interpreted as a stand-up routine in my opinion so anything within it must be considered as a very clever joke sending up the Law and the Pharisaic interpretation of it.

Yes and no questions? Really? :-}

I don't think your definition is really adequate. Surely it must take account of the fact that the conviction in the superiority of the bigot's views is maintained in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. In other words there is a degree of irrationality required to being a bigot rather than simply a well-informed individual. If one's views are in fact superior then it is entirely right to be so convinced. It isn't egotistical to be correct. It can't be wrong to be right, only to believe you are when you are not.

It is an important feature of 'political correctness' that it is not a 'movement' (for want of a better word) initiated by oppressed groups but by intellectuals and academics on behalf of these groups (whether they wanted it or not). It was rooted in a kind of revivalist logical positivism that, contrary to Wittgenstein, deemed words inflexible carriers of historical social and cultural prejudice. You may think you are using a term in a perfectly friendly, non-judgemental way, but PC argued, you are, by definition, wrong. Judgement is inherent in the term no matter the context in which it is used.

And so we had the often totally illogical kind of revisionism that turned 'handicapped' into 'disabled' (despite many people's feeling that the latter was actually less accurate and more disparaging) and 'spastic' into 'suffering cerebral palsy' evolving eventually into the awful blanket term 'special' (a corruption of 'with special needs'?) Negro became black (?) or African American (??) and so on. You'll have your own opinion as to the true value of this but it was not long before PC started going mad! And always at the hands of the wise on behalf of the oppressed (or the seemingly oppressed) who still hadn't really decided whether they needed it or not.

That has since evolved to the point where a kind of professionally offended and highly vocal elite microcensors every article written, every speech made, every political decision, indeed every stray thought that sees the light of day often to the excruciated embarrassment of those on whose behalf they claim to be acting and the rage of those who consider themselves falsely 'accused' as the very wide brushes that this elite employs tar everyone!

So, to get back to the original question, I do not think it fruitful to go looking for psychological explanations for PC other than the comfort of identity and the simple belief that you are morally correct which is pretty much a given for any and all social, cultural, political and religious groups. There is plenty for philosophers to get stuck into in what is believed without the distraction of personal motivations for believing it!

It's not my black and white view. It is double predestination as taught in extremist Calvinist churches. Though I do concede that 'before' was probably a slightly careless choice of word in the context.

My own view would very much be all white if we're sticking with the metaphor, he says enigmatically!

Yeah well you know what they say about 'assume'!

Andrea Rossi claims to have a working LENR device that has quite considerable energy densities — Question

I've got God in this box, you know!

The Navy contract was for an entirely different device. Of the 26 supplied under the contract 19 did not work at all and the remaining 7 had an output 800 times lower than predicted/promised. The contract has unsurprisingly not been renewed. The Toyota association seems to be a figment of your imagination as far as I can tell. Rossi's patent application for LENR remains unresolved as it is effectively no more than a plea to protect an unspecified 'black box'. It includes no specifics as to the design and function of the device or any explanation of how it defies all known laws of physics!

In short, Rossi is a fantasist and charlatan at best. He will play no part in any genuine advances in this field.

Belief in God's omnibenevolence is an essential foundation in traditional Christianity; — Wiki on omnibenevolence

What utter twaddle! This statement is almost completely falsified by the remainder of the text if interpreted properly so I really shouldn't need to say any more. I am however utterly fascinated to learn how the Roman Catholic Church which literally invented Hell and those Protestant Churches who delight in it to the extent that they added double predestination to the mix can possibly be understood to be proponents of an omnibenevolent God, barring an entirely new definition of 'benevolent' that includes condemning people to eternal pain and punishment even before they have done anything to actually deserve it!

Really? I'm not aware of any credal or catechismal statement to that end. Nor am I aware that the only definition of 'perfect' is the Platonic Ideal. And omnibenevolence is not in any way a logical concomitant of perfection.

I am not in any way saying that there are not problems with Christian conceptions of God. I am saying that the so-called 'problem of evil' is not one of them because as it is configured it simply does not apply to the Christian concept of God. This remains true irrespective of the state of theology or belief of any or all Christian churches past or present. The God who sacrificed his Son on the Cross simply cannot be identical with the God of the 'problem of evil'.

Being a cynic of the highest order I'm certain that those who propose the problem even now as an objection to Christianity are well aware of this and laugh like drains when Christians are taken in by it. But that's neither here nor there. It remains indisputable that that God is not the God in which Christianity requires belief whether actual Christians believe it or not!

Whether the 'problem of evil' is actually a problem for that God is another matter altogether (although personally I think the whole argument is a load of fetid dingo's kidneys!)

I can’t know if there is anything other than my experience, because all I ever encounter is my experience. — Dominic Osborn

Even if that weren't patently and trivially false (by what experience do you know that you can't know if there is anything other than your experience and who is this I person that's doing all this experiencing and therefore cannot be itself an experience?) it implies that all experiences must in fact be total illusions or fantasies since all experiences are by definition of something other than the experience itself. But if that is so then they are not experiences at all!

If God is to be considered a just God, S/he cannot let evil go unpunished — Preston

Correct

If God knew of an evil event and had the capacity to stop the event,

S/he would be morally obliged to stop the event. — Preston

Incorrect (and for a Christian as heretical as it is possible to be!) Even if we leave God out of it altogether the one simply does not follow from the other. But for a Christian committed to belief in a God with an entirely novel solution to the problem posed in the first statement it is an absolute non sequitur.

Much the same can be said for most of your post actually. The problems you raise are arguments about a Platonist ideal of God (and are from unresolvable even within that context) but despite the polularity of Neo-Platonism amongst the early Fathers of the Church that is not the God that Christians actually believe in. There is one immeasurably important distinction. The Platonic ideal God is totally impersonal and immutable. To identify the Christian God of three persons in relationship with mankind through the power of the cross with that God is simply impossible. For a Christian to say that they no longer believe in that God is nonsense for they never believed in that God in the first place.

Meh! If I didn't exist they'd have to invent me!

It can't be resolved. Simple economics. Demand outstrips supply both buying and renting. Builders and letters must make a profit. Housing associations and councils must at least cover costs. Building 'affordable homes' is a fool's solution because they will simply be used as a foot on the ladder in exactly the same way that council houses were when they became subject to right to buy. Forcing rents down will simply lead to landlords abandoning the market. These are the inevitable consequences of growth economics and population increase.

I was thinking parents but yeah those things work as well! X-)

You: x + y = z

Me: No, x + y = a

You: Proof is ij(k+l)/q > 3

Me: :-O

Anybody who says they understand process logic doesn't understand process logic!

But your whole post is predicated on Whitehead's assumption (presumption) that his ideas are Math. If, as there seems every reason to suppose, he is wrong to do so, it is reasonable to dismiss the rest of your post as Wayfarer has done, and as I am now doing.

As that manifestly is not how we use language, we do and we do!

Ad hominem so soon? I'll take that as a win then!

Monks have been celibate in almost all religions for thousands of years, but they must have just been idiots... — Agustino

Firstly, historically inaccurate. Secondly, circular argument. If your hidden definition of monk is celibate individual then it proves absolutely nothing that monks are celibate. Third, false attribution of motivation. Religious celibacy is not reserved to Gnostic religions nor for the purpose of enlightenment. Fourth, false authority. It is, of course, entirely possible that monks have indeed been idiots in this regard. There are certainly many in the Catholic Church who believe that celibate priests is and always was a truly stupid idea.

And that's before you go on to provide anecdotal evidence masquerading as fact and conjecture as observation. You are, of course, entitled to believe any old tosh you want but in a philosophy forum it requires a much higher standard of justification than this!

The alternative, of course, is that it's just pseudo-scientific gobbledegook masquerading as philosophy and the reason that nobody understands it is that it has no actual meaning. Your inability to express your idea in language comprehensible to us mere mortals is not validation of anything other than reason to suspect that it is ultimately hogwash. Nor is a claim to have evidence evidence itself nor the support of some 'names' in science or philosophy proof of anything. It is always important to remember that what is rational is not measured by the number of rational persons who claim it to be so. A million people can be wrong!