But, it's not normal, though.

It used to be that when you were discussing something, let's say a person driving a car, that you would assume that the gender of the person, if you didn't know it, was male.

So, "A person was driving a car. He turned left."

This was considered to be grammatically correct, but it's totally absurd. You don't know that the gender of the person driving the car is male. After a long debate with a lot of Feminists, grammarians changed this.

It became: "A person was driving a car. He or she turned left."

This is better, but it still assumes that the person driving the car identifies as being either male or female. It doesn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination to suggest that there is a real need for a gender neutral pronoun.

It should be: "A person was driving a car. Ey(or some other gender neutral pronoun) turned left."

You don't know the gender of the person driving the car, and, so, can not assume that ey are either male or female.

Because ey don't identify as being male or female, and, so, it is not correct to subjectify them as either. By doing so, you have referred to another subject who is not present.

I will also begin demanding that you refer to me by the pronoun "xe" if you don't just decide to agree with me.

It's a little bit nitpicky and a little too difficult to get a decent handle on, but you really should use the chosen pronouns. It's sort of like how in the 50s, when you didn't know the gender of the subject of a sentence you would just have to assume that he or she was male. It took kind of a while to alter the language so that people would say "he or she" etc. The gender-neutral pronouns are kind of the same way. If the person does not identify as being male or female, then you should refer to em by eir chosen pronouns.

Alas, though, this is off-topic.

If no one practices getting the pronouns correct then they will never become easy to use colloquially. Judith Butler may be a lesbian, but ey is not a lesbian who identifies as having a binary gender. You are correct that this is not terribly relevent, and, so, Professor Butler is probably fine.

Thanks Noah Te Stroete. My guess would be that Judith Butler identifies as she/gender-neutral pronoun, and, so, @Terrapin Station might get away with it, but were they present, I feel like ey might correct him.

Well, if you want to be really lazy, you can just substitute "they" or "them" for nearly everything. That's what the queer community around here does.


I'm just saying that I think that you should care because Gender Trouble is like the seminal work on contemporary Queer Theory.

Au contraire, mon ami! Judith Butler is the author of Gender Trobule, and I would bet that ey would want for you to refer to em by eir chosen pronouns.

Is Judith Butler "Ms." Butler? I think that you should refer to em as Mx. Butler. Granted, I am just using the Spivak pronouns as I don't know what Judith Butler prefers.

Without the element of risk inherent to action (without which an action would not be an action, but a mere mechanical process), responsibility cannot be attendant to the agent who engenders it — StreetlightX

I like this notion. I agree, but will still contend that it remains to be proven that there is a responsibility that arises out of the element of risk in action.

In the class that I took on Gnosticism, it was suggested that Buddhism had an influence on the Gnostic depiction of Christ. That's probably the extent of my knowledge on the connection between Buddhism and Ancient Greece which doesn't have too much to do with the subject at hand altogether. I had never heard of the connection between the suspension of belief and ecstatic states. That sounds fairly interesting. I like the concept of ekstasis. You don't really have to concede the point as I have already retracted my former position.

I'll be taking a class on Ancient Philosophy in the fall and so may take you up on this. I'll be leaving here then, though.

I am aware of that. I just conflated the terms when I made that post.

tim wood has left the discussion Terrapin Station.

You are correct. I was thinking of Emotivism.

Interesting. I'll have to look into that at some point.

...wherein tim wood invokes the Holocaust and then decides that there will be no further discussion.

So, for everyone else, does Non-Cognitivism deny that Ethical value judgements can be made? I think that it might, and don't necessarily agree, but do agree with the general sentiment of the critique of that is being made.

You don't have to apologize. I thought that your post was kind of funny.

You may be defensive because I am suggesting that a person does not consciously choose to commit suicide. I'm merely positing this, though. It's not a deep conviction of mine or anything. By no means do I mean to imply that people who commit suicide are not autonomous subjects.

I was just explaining that it could be a while before I get around to reading Kierkegaard as I plan on reading Being and Nothingness first. I wasn't trying to suggest that I know what I am talking about because I am someone who is willing to read Being and Nothingness.

Well, okay. Perhaps I shouldn't be so negative. What is there to gain by only seeing what is negative about other worldviews?

I don't know that all Buddhists reject the caste system or that it is a tenet of the faith to do so. Perhaps that critique could be better applied to Hinduism, but what I am moreso suggesting is that repressive elements of whatever ruling orders there were that were there have probably found their way into the faith, and that it may have been integral to the faith to include them. I'm kind of skeptical of the starry-eyed Western attitude towards Buddhism. I assume for it to have been like any other faith. Buddhism seems to be, and kind of is, preferable to other faiths because the form of repression is pacification. That there is not an overt form of oppression provides for better grounds with which to make an argument. I just kind of doubt that it turns out to be the one exemplary faith and not some sort of patriarchical cult or another.

I'm not sure that we do understand one another, though. I am positing that 'true' suicide is impossible. Camus's problem is solved by the very circumstances of the human condition.

I like that quote, by the way. You don't have to go on about this any longer if you don't feel like doing so.

My qualms with Buddhism relate more to the caste system. I can't quite get past that whole thing is just designed to get you to accept your lot in life. The rah get to live it up since they acted virtuously in another life and everyone else just has to learn to cope with that the human experience primarily entails suffering. It's all kind of a lot of good advice, but I do wonder if that isn't just simply there in the same way that being burned at the stake is kind of what is meant by an eternity in hell is just sort of there in Christianity. Like, I'm not quite sure that the religion isn't just simply the pretext for whatever it was that the Indian rah had done to warrant what could be understood as the set of excuses which comprised an ideology.

Religion is an aristocratic excuse disguised as Philosophy. The invocation of the divine is a condescending means to explain inequality to the general populace. It could be indicitave of a certain kind of Western arrogance to be so dismissive of other faiths, but I kind of think that it's all just sort of the same across the board.

I watched a playthrough of that game because I had developed a really strange theory about it. It somehow revolved around the music piece that you play in the middle of the game. I can't really remember what it was as it was something that I had developed during sort of an episode. That game is pretty out there, though.

I like Borges. Have you ever played the game Myst? This isn't terribly like Myst at all, but I had just thought of that for some reason.

My point is that you have only identified an exception to the rule. Murder is an extraordinary case. What we can infer proceeding from that "murder is wrong" can not necessarily be applied throughout all of Ethics.

I'm suggesting that all of Ethics is "outside the bounds of ordinary consideration". Every event is a particularity.

Edit: That you can say that "murder is wrong" does not necessarily invalidate the Non-Cognitivist position. That it happens to be the case that when someone states that "murder is wrong" can be proven to be 'true' abstractly does not necessarily mean that when they make such a claim that they are not making a personal appeal.

I do, however, think that it is possible to simply state that "murder is wrong" abstractly. The distinctions are not how I would choose to wage a debate concerning Ethics.

Edit 2: To answer the original question posed by Wittgenstein, I do think that it is possible to assign truth values to Ethical statements, but don't think that it is useful to do so.

To ascribe abstract laws to Ethics ignores the particulars of any given situation. Take Kieslowski's Dekalog 5, for example. A young drifter kills a taxi driver as sort of existential experiment. From that "murder is wrong" and that "all are equal before the law" one would conclude that Jacek should be given the death penalty. If we don't begin with an assessment of Ethical truths, then we can take into consideration that he is a misguided youth probably stuggling with Nihilism and that some form of rehabilitation is probably better suited to such a crime. The assumption that there are objective Ethical truths is, rather ironically, resultant in a number of the absurdities of Law.

A methodology that proceeds from that "murder is wrong" could be quite interesting. To what degree is what one is doing like murder? I would, perhaps, deduce that it is wrong to violate what an other existentially attests. I would, then, of course, have to qualify this. You could say that in so far that what an other existentially attests is in good faith and Ethically sound and valid that it is wrong to violate this. I could parcel out an entire ethic from there as you could as well. I don't think that I would start there, though.

As murder is the exception and not the rule, I'm not sure that it would be useful to create an ethic proceeding from that "murder is wrong". We can say that "murder is wrong", but that is all that we really know. It's just the one rule that checks out.

For instance, what about theft? Had you just come out of Bicycle Thieves, you might suggest that it is wrong to steal because you don't know what role that that object has to play in a person's life. Had you just finished reading Les Misérables, you might suggest that it is fine to steal if you need to do so in order to survive. From this, you could deduce that it is wrong to steal a bicycle, but not a loaf of bread, but doing so would be absurd. The percieved need to ascribe abstract truths to Ethics is due to a legal aporia which assumes that there ought to be an effective functioning of the State. A governing body has no idea as to how to deal with criminality without the disjointed logic of objective Ethics. To me, it is clear that Ethics are contingent upon the particulars of any given situation. Because we could never understand any given situation in its entirety, we can't make any objective claims as to what is Ethically valid aside from a few deductions such as that "murder is wrong".

To say that murder is, in some sense, not in-itself wrong, especially based on "feeling" or "opinion" is like saying that murder is a liverwurst sandwich. Hey, just my opinion, and therefore and thereby I must be right! I have it written down right here in front of me! — tim wood

Whether or not murder is wrong is contingent upon the circumstances in which the murder was committed. Because murder so emphatically denies the other by virtue of that it terminates them, it can generally be said that "murder is wrong" because is most cases this would prove to be 'true'. I'm sure that there is a hypothetical case where a person may question as to whether or not a murder was, in point of fact, "wrong". Also, are we speaking of murder in particular or just simply killing?

Edit: If we are just speaking of murder, being the unlawful and unwarranted killing of an other, then, you could conclude that "murder is wrong" because it would be, by definition, unwarranted. This ethic, however, stems from that there is an other. It exists because of a social relationship. There is nothing intrinsicly wrong with murder, or, rather, there exists no Ethical law which states that "murder is wrong". That it is wrong is something that is deduced because of a social relationship.

You seem to have a lot of spare time on your hands. Do you write all of these stream of conscious?

Oh, so you were just calling him an idiot.


I have resorted to no such "contextomy" and I am not the thought police. I just think that this political situation is absurd. It seems obvious to me that Trump is not the sort of person who should be the President of the United States of America. There is no satire to make of Trump as he already embodies what would be caricatured. It's not the end of the world, but it is unsettling.

Eh, I don't agree with the standoff. The situation in North Korea should not be left up to Vice News. They did "talk them down", but I don't think that it will result in anything substantial.

There are too many books to be written!

I will say that Donald Trump really did make me feel like anyone could be president.

What I mean, though, is that I think that it's part and parcel to the campaign by the American Right for Trump to be ridiculed. The whole man in the monkey suit act is just a means to dismiss how intimidating that guy is. I find for the whole thing to be rather unsettling.

I can't believe that that Durkheim statistic still holds up. The Protestant faith learned nothing from his work.

What is consciousness as it relates to Being? I'd have to write you a book or something. To give a circular definition, consciousness is the experience that we have of being sentient. I don't think that I could give you a proper ontological definition of consciousness. Sartre attempted to do so in Being and Nothingness. I plan on reading that in the near future, and, so, maybe I'll have a better answer then.

I am somewhat confused by your distinction.

I do think that it is possible for someone to level an Ethical argument concerning abstract truths without, wittingly or not, substituting that something is not Ethically valid with that it is socially disagreeable. I don't agree with such reasoning as I don't think that there are abstract Ethical truths, and I think that whether or not something is socially disagreeable can be relevant.

I also think that Emotivism partially assumes that an appeal to emotions invalidates an argument which I would also, to some degree, reject.

That, I am unsure of. Plants respond to things in nature. Why shouldn't plants feel? I would bet that that any living thing responds to stimuli means that it does in some way feel. In order not to starve, however, you do just have to make an arbitrary distinction. Sentience only extends to decentralized networks because I can't figure out how to get the nutrients that I need to survive otherwise.

I plan on reading Kierkegaard once my books show up in the mail or after I reread Being and Nothingness.


I think that you're right about that.

I suppose that suggesting that there should be a "Post"-Lacanianism is somewhat absurd as a number of the "Post-Structuralists" reject the label.

Partially overcast.

I concur. I always see too much in different sides of various debates and generally disagree with the terms.

How can you remember the future? This is like when I decided to get into Zen Buddhism.

All that is present are the particles. There is nothing between them. Nothing does not exist. There is nothing there that is present in space. I, therefore, concluded that space does not exist. I think that it could, perhaps, be useful to conceptualize things along such lines. I just thought that I was taking it too far.