How can something that is unequally distributed and has the potential to be a source of even more suffering in the short or long run be a reason for
(1) embracing life or
(2) providing new life to other individuals (i.e. reason for procreation)
[numerals added by andrewk] — schopenhauer1

I think you undermine your case by stapling those two issues together.

Given that an individual is here, alive and conscious, there is every reason to make the best of it, regardless of how much one may have thought it would have been better never to have been conceived. And IIRC there is no end of empirical evidence that maintaining plentiful strong relationships is conducive to happiness.

The issue of procreating however is far more complex and multi-faceted. It is possible to be the world's cheeriest person, with the best imaginable circle of friends, and still believe it is better not to procreate. And it is possible to be the world's most miserable, pessimistic curmudgeon and yet either want to procreate or believe one has a moral duty to do so.

it would not seem to be possible to experience the absence of God. — John

It doesn't seem that way to me. Experiencing absence is part of one of the most powerful human emotions there is, as it is what makes the premature death of a loved one so terrible. I can't remember where but I seem to remember at least one very moving passage in literature where a deeply faithful person has 'realised' that there is nobody there listening to their prayers.

One can of course say 'but they might be mistaken about the absence' or 'God is hiding', but one can say exactly the same thing about the experience of the presence of God. It might be Descartes' evil demon tormenting us by creating an illusion of the presence of a God.

It seems to me that the absence of God is experienced frequently, and traumatically, by people in desperate circumstances.

For someone who has palpably experienced the absence of God, there is no God. For someone who has palbably experienced the existence of God, there is one. And sometimes people have both experiences (but not at the same time).

Necessary conditions for my notion of personhood include consciousness, self-consciousness, non-predictable response to stimuli, possession of emotions, preferences and making plans for the future.

Unlike the controversial Mr Dawkins, I have no problem with the notion of divine simplicity, as long as it is not coupled with the assertion that the divinity is a 'person'. Since persons are the most complex things that we have ever encountered, it seems strange in the extreme to say that something that is perfectly simple is also the most complex thing.

I have no doubt that a Thomist could supply a word salad long enough to feed a billion Cookie Monsters (if Cookie Monsters ate salad, which - sadly - I suspect they don't) to explain why the two are perfectly compatible, but that would do nothing to make the suggestion any less ridiculous to my paltry human imagination.

I was once a master philosopher. Now I've grown up and can move on with my life. It was kinda fun being right about everything. — colin

Then you were not a master philosopher at all. To be quite crude about it, you were an incompetent one. Remember Socrates: 'all I know is that I know nothing'. That is a master philosopher.

And now it seems that you again think you are right about everything. All that has changed is your belief about what that everything is.

What do you mean by "intuition"? — Metaphysician Undercover

Amen.

And I would add the question 'what do you mean by genuine?'.

Isn't genuineness a little like naturalness? We say cities are unnatural for humans, yet we regard them as natural for ants and bees. I would argue that anything any human does is natural for a human - thereby rendering the word meaningless. I suspect the same applies to genuine - and to its close Sartrean cousin 'authentic'.

Gosh. What a long thread for an OP that was just a hit and run that was simply a crude expression of opinion contained not a single philosophical argument (or any other sort of argument in fact)!

I see that the OP has never returned.

There are two very different meanings of pessimism. One believes that things will happen which most people would class as bad. The other has negative feelings about current or future situations.

The first kind can subsequently be shown to be right or wrong. For instance they may be convinced that a war between China and the US is inevitable within the next fifty years. If no such war occurs, they will have been wrong.

The second kind can be neither right nor wrong, accurate or inaccurate, as feelings are primary and not subject to judgements of correctness.

I suspect there's a strong correlation between the two types in personalities, but I like to think of the two contrary combinations

• the person who thinks all sorts of objectively harmful things will happen, but is usually cheerful about it; and
• the person who thinks very few objectively harmful things will happen, but views life morosely

I can't say I know many people of either type, but I'm sure they exist. There's a memorable character of the first type - 'the cheerful pessimist' - in some novel I've read, but the name of the character and the novel is eluding me.

Sorry, I've only dipped in and out of this thread, which is now nine pages long on my computer, so no doubt I've missed many of the posts and the contributors. Who is DC?

when we say "all humans ought be treated equally" we don't need to say anything about non-human animals. — Michael

Agreed, it doesn't necessarily have any implications for non-human animals. It depends on what reason is given for why humans should be treated equally to one another.

If the reason is an axiomatic declaration that humans must be treated as superior to all other life forms but equal to one another, then there is no discussion to have. One either accepts the axiom or one doesn't. I don't.

Often this is sidestepped by instead making the axiom 'All beings that have property X deserve greater consideration than beings that lack it, and equal consideration to each other'. That then leads to an inquiry as to 'why property X? What's so special about that?' If the primacy of property X is eventually just asserted as axiom, the discussion can make no further progress. This strategy also faces the difficulty of explaining whether humans that lack property X deserve equal consideration, and if so why.

The reason that I see most commonly though is of the 'If you prick us, do we not bleed' variety - the argument from sentience. If one is going to argue for equality on the grounds of sentience, one either needs to take Descartes' approach of denying sentience in non-human animals, or else deal with the question of what that concern for sentient beings implies for the treatment of non-human animals.

Why do you care about the feelings of others though? — Πετροκότσυφας

It's hard to know how to answer questions like that. 'Why' questions are so hard to pin down and determine exactly what would constitute a satisfactory response. Why does one care about anything? Caring is an emotion and in my view emotions are fundamental - the starting point for all mental activity. I reject most 'ism' and 'ist' labels but meta-ethically I'm pretty comfortable about accepting the label 'Emotivist'.

If I move on to ask 'How did I come to have such emotions?' I think I'd conclude it's a combination of genes and upbringing - probably more the former than the latter. Some people make evolutionary-based arguments about why a strong sense of empathy can be a genetic advantage for a species, and they sound plausible to me. But I wouldn't be fazed if they were supplanted by some other more-plausible explanation that I have not encountered before.

Yes, that's an important part of my position.

Thanks for your post. It contains a number of substantive points and I'll try to address them as best I can.

Do I think it's inconsistent to argue against racism etc but not against speciesism? Not necessarily. It depends on the reason given. Usually the reasons given are inconsistent. If somebody argues against racism because we should treat all humans equally then the question arises 'what about non-humans?' The answer to that can range from Descartes' answer that they merit no consideration whatsoever, to Gary Francione's 'animal abolitionist' answer that it is never acceptable to use animals any way, even when they don't seem to mind being used. Francione is so far along the spectrum that he seems to regard Peter Singer as pretty close to a battery poultry farm operator.

Some religions proclaim that humans merit special consideration, in fact so much so that a single-cell fertilised human ovum is accorded greater consideration than a chimpanzee or other advanced non-human mammal that clearly has personality, preferences and an sophisticated ability to communicate. The justification given is 'God says so'. I find nothing inconsistent in that. It's just that I don't believe God (if there is one) does say so, so I respectfully disagree with the holders of such beliefs.

Bernard Williams' ethical perspective, elucidated in a thought experiment involving super-advanced aliens taking over the Earth, is that it is ethically defensible for humans to favour members of the human species because it isour species. Such an approach may or may not be inconsistent depending on the approach taken. It depends on the response to the question 'Why is it OK to favour animals of the same species as you over other species, but not OK to favour animals that have the same species and ancestral homeland over animals that have the same species but a different ancestral homeland?' An answer which avoids inconsistency, at the cost of embracing arbitrariness, is 'Because in my ethical framework, species is all that matters in determining the circle of concern'. Bernard Williams was happy to (in fact often seemed to relish) taking on defiantly arbitrary-seeming positions like that, and his position is unassailable. But most people are not comfortable withthat position. I think most people would instead try to argue that the level of concern 'owed' to others drops off gradually with distance, rather than dropping from everything to nothing at the border of a species. That's fine, but it does have the uncomfortable consequence that, since people of African ancestry and people of Northern European ancestry are less closely related to those in the other group than to those in their own group, it ethically justifies a small, but perhaps measurable, discrimination by a member of one of those groups against members of the other. Most people are not comfortable with that. I know I'm not.

Another possible argument is that what matters is things like awareness, ability to communicate or being able to think about other people's thoughts. That would be fine if people really believed it, but my impression is that they don't. A newborn baby scores much lower on those considerations than do most mature members of the higher mammal species, yet most humans would accord greater consideration to a baby than to an adult chimpanzee.

It seems to me that, to avoid inconsistency, an argument for giving all humans greater consideration than all animals either has to just declare as axiom that species is what matters (or some other arbitrary factor, like 'potential personhood', which is an issue sometimes raised by religious people that feel embarrassed to explain their human-preference just by 'God said so'), whether for religious reasons or out of feisty Williamsesque defiance, or accept that the approach implies lesser consideration for humans with whom we share fewer ancestors. But that may just be my lack of imagination about the types of arguments that can be offered. I'd certainly be interested to hear of possible alternatives.

You also asked 'what counts as an ethical reason? Well that's a huge question, and I think many different types of answers would be offered by different people. I suspect that 'ethics' may be one of those concepts that can only be characterised by Wittgenstein's 'family resemblance', eluding attempts to agree a generally accepted definition. But one thing that I think most people would agree on is that ethical decisions form only a small part of all the decisions we make. So any attempt to characterise ethical considerations that includes considerations that would drive a majority of decisions would fail to meet most people's idea of what ethics is.

I think that Πετροκότσυφας's suggestion of 'a practical organising of our relations' would fail on that score. Such a phrase encompasses making allocations in a Christmas Kringle, making introductions at a cocktail party, writing emails, letters and forum posts, applying for jobs... In fact nearly all the things we do seem to fall under that heading, leaving aside only those items that involve only one person - playing patience or working on a maths problem perhaps.

Of course there's never any point in arguing over definitions. If somebody wants to adopt a definition of ethics that includes deciding who to get to run the anchor leg in the 4 x 100m relay, I wish them joy of it. But their idea of ethics will be so far removed from mine (and I believe also from that of most other people) that it would be pointless to attempt to discuss any purportedly ethical issue with them.

For me, and this may be just me, the domain of ethics seems to be delineated by the simple consideration that it is about making decisions that I expect to have an impact on the feelings of other beings that I believe to be sentient.

The reference to Rugby gives away more than your Australianness. It tells us that you are either from NSW, ACT or Qld, or an exile from one of those. In the other states football means only one thing (and as we know, it's not soccer).

I think an interesting argument can be made, and a good discussion had, about the potential of team sports to help us towards higher attainments in communality, spirituality and love - even if that potential is so often betrayed by the corporate interests that commercialise sport, and (more in the UK than in Australia) the thuggish elements that use it as a platform for tribal warfare and hatred. Certainly the Ancient Greeks saw a strong symbiotic connection between the physical, the intellectual and the spiritual.

But that is probably a subject for another thread.

@Wayfarer, as another compatriot, what say you about the potential for various footy codes to enhance, or hamper, the search for cultural and spiritual growth and eudaimonia more generally?

I am baffled by your bafflement. The discussion was about the ethics of treating humans better than animals. You came back with a reason for treating humans better than animals that had nothing to do with ethics.

Not wanting to crow or anything, because we have our own problems too, but Australia suffers from (almost) none of those first three.

1. Electoral boundaries are set by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), which is constituted in such a way as to give it strong independence from the government of the day.
2. Voting is always a Saturday, so as to inconvenience voters as little as possible, voting booths are located and administered by the (aforesaid independent) AEC, and no identification is required for voters.
3. Felons are only disqualified from voting in the Federal election if their sentence is more than three years and, unlike the US, disenfranchisement ceases when the sentence is completed. This is not ideal, as there's no justification for any disenfranchisement, but it pales into insignificance relative to what goes on in the US. The biggest factor though, is that the our incarceration rate is less than one quarter that of the US (although, to our shame, still about three times that of the North European countries).

The problems further down your list, we have too, but not nearly as badly as in the US - apparently the world's most free country.

Looks like we're even then!

It is hardly so arbitrary. Humans treat each other well in the hope and expectation they will get the same treatment in return. That is basic rational behaviour.

That is beside the point. The discussion was about ethical justifications for treating humans better than animals. Those reasons have nothing to do with ethics. They are simple transactional considerations.

If part of the reason that we treat people better than we treat animals is that people are human then it's not inconsistent or irrational to treat people better than we treat animals. — Michael

What those that criticise speciesism would say about this is that the question is why does people being human cause us to treat them better than other animals? I believe the reason is simply tribalism - because humans are our group and cows are not. If defenders of speciesism would just agree to that then there would be no incoherence in their position.

Cognitive dissonance arises when people do not want to admit that, so they try to come up with all sorts of contorted arguments as to why there are good ethical reasons to treat humans better, that have nothing to do with kinship. Peter Singer has done a marvellous job of pulling these arguments apart and showing their inconsistencies. Even Bernard Williams, who disagreed with most of what Singer wrote, said that he favoured people over other animals because they were like him and he thought that was just fine.

We've seen several threads on here trying to argue that humans are somehow 'special', and not just by virtue of kinship. I didn't see a single good argument in any of those threads.

It's like Jim Jeffries' marvellous rant against gun culture. If pro-gun people would just be honest and say the reason they don't want guns controlled is 'I like guns! F*** Off!' then we could respect them for their logical coherence. But instead they come up with ridiculous arguments about 'protection' and 'safety', which have no logical coherence at all.

There's nothing logically incoherent in somebody saying 'I like bacon! F*** off!', or 'I'm kinder to humans than other animals because I'm more closely related to them'. IMHO neither is an attractive argument, since the latter can be used just as well to justify racial discrimination. But they have a certain integrity.

Calvinists do not deny free will. We affirm that people are free to choose what they want to choose. We state that the unbelievers nature is so corrupt that he does not have the ability in his own will, to choose to follow God.

I would love for a Calvinist to turn up and explain why they believe that the last sentence doesn't contradict the first. Whence came the so-corrupt nature of the unbeliever? Did they make it themselves? If so was it in their nature to fashion their nature to be like that?

The middle sentence is an interesting transition. To say somebody is free to choose what they want to choose is something that even the most rusted-on hard determinist can agree with. The point of course is that - according to the determinist - they cannot choose what it is that they want (they have no control of their 'wanter'). This is very different from what St Augustine or other devoted RC proponent of libertarian free will might say, which is that the unbeliever is free to want to believe anything.

Football is spiritually a low expression; it is an expression of tribalism and aggression; it is a force which divides, not an expression of love. — John

Sometimes, yes, but surely not always? What think you of the legendary football (soccer) game reputedly played between the British and German troops in No Mans Land on Christmas Day in the Great War?

I wouldn't call that a general Christian understanding but rather a Roman Catholic understanding.

Calvinism in particular seems to explicitly deny free will in relation to the power to choose sin vs not-sin. Life is a process of either waiting to discover, or striving to discover, whether the decision God made before he created us about whether we would be saved was a Yes or a No.

I absolutely agree with you about Schopenhauer. While I doubt I'm anywhere near as enthusiastic as you are, I very much enjoyed what I have read from him. I don't know what personal failings people mock him with - perhaps his ugliness or his lack of success in love - but I would regard bringing them into a discussion of his philosophy, unless there was a very clear link between them and the philosophy itself - as delete-worthy behavior. I am relatively new on here so I don't know all the available buttons yet, but I imagine there is a Report button you could use to report such posts to moderators.

I feel the same about people interjecting irrelevant comments about Heidegger's Nazi party membership into discussions of his philosophy of being and time, even though I have a dislike for Heidegger the person and do not understand his philosophy.

If you feel that deletion of such interjections is too self-important, that's fine. But if you choose to make a fuss about it, isn't that being rather self-important about your heckles?

By the way, I'm intrigued by this:

Again, I love Camus, but he looks like a douche — Thorongil

It sounds like you regard the word 'douche' as somehow insulting or disgusting. The only meanings I know of for that word are that it is French for 'shower' and in English refers to the act of washing out a woman's vagina with some fluid, usually introduced by a flexible tube - a practice that was mistakenly believed to help with contraception.

Can you explain how either of these meanings cause the word 'douche' to be an insult?

At the other place there was a drop-down list of possible reasons for deletion, and one was 'non-philosophical post'. If people are having a discussion trying to improve their shared understanding of a difficult idea, it is inconsiderate and discourteous to interject with a post that not only ignores that attempt, and ignores the philosophy being discussed, but belittles it by mocking personal qualities of the philosopher involved.

There have been several comments implying a that there is some sort of 'Thought Police' type of attitude in deleting such comments. Such comments miss the point. The Thought Police didn't just delete your heretical statements. They dragged you off to the Ministry of Love for torture and reprogramming. If anybody thinks that deleting a discourteous interjection to a discussion, with no further repercussions and not even a reprimand, is somehow draconian or lacking a sense of humour I'd love to know why.

To me it's like a heckler complaining that Amy Schumer lacks a sense of humour if their 'Show us your tits!' ejaculation was deleted from the recording of her live performance.

If I saw comments criticising personal aspects of a philosopher interjected into a serious discussion others were trying to have about her/his philosophy, on a philosophy forum, in a philosophy thread (as opposed to an off-topic or feedback thread like this), I would have deleted them.

I like to think I would even do that for Ayn Rand. I'm saying that to lay down a public commitment so that, should I come across such things in a serious Rand discussion, I will be motivated to overcome my personal Rand aversion and hold to that lofty principle of moderator ethics.

Interestingly, there hasn't been much Rand discussion here recently. It seems to occur in waves. Or has Randism been supplanted by Trumpism?

I'm not comparing Derrida to Rand by the way. I don't understand Derrida and hence am not in a position to either criticise or support his ideas, whereas I understand Rand much better than I would like to.

I would guess that Chalmers meant nothing by that 'in the world' and his inclusion of those words was just a vestigial habit for concluding certain sorts of sentences, like a Canadian's 'eh' or a Singaporean's 'la'. Certainly the sentence seems to me to be perfectly meaningful, and clearer, without the last three words.

The word 'world' is useful as a way of setting a scope for one's comments. For instance the quoted references from the New Testament are set in a context of a metaphysical hypothesis that there are two types of beings - those with bodies and those without, and the 'not of this world' says that the speaker is usually the other type of being.

Other metaphysical set-ups where the word 'world' has a specific local meaning are Everett's 'Many Worlds Interpretation' of quantum mechanics, and the 'Possible Worlds' approach to defining a semantics for modal logic.

I think in each of those three cases - New Testament Theology, Many Worlds and Possible Worlds, the word has a different meaning.

So perhaps where I'm ending up (for now at least) is that it's a bit of a portmanteau word that can be used to mean different things in different contexts, and does not have a meaning that transcends different metaphysical theories.

Hello Sophisticat. It's great to see you here. I had been hoping you'd turn up. I have missed your posts and particularly your scientific expertise.

Rather, anger itself must have an immediate psychological benefit that is expressed in retribution. And I think this is the reduction or masking of pain, specifically the psychological pain of damage to the self-image. — unenlightened

I can see that anger can mask pain, but it seems to me that it replaces it with something worse. To me anger seems to be pain+blame rather than pain pure and simple. I find it easier to cope with just pain.

I find myself surprised at how widely varying people's feelings are about this. Last night we discussed which of the following we would find it harder to cope with:
- seventy people being killed by a tornado; vs
- seventy people being deliberately killed by a person, like Anders Bering Breivik.

To me the second is far more disturbing, because of the anger it evokes, but not everybody felt that way.

There may well be an evolutionary benefit in anger masking pain, in that it motivates the injured animal to fight, thereby making it more likely to end up in a position in which it can propagate its genes. But that is a gene-propagation benefit rather than a psychological benefit. I feel that that is only rarely a benefit in today's society, and far more often a curse. I find myself agreeing with Nussbaum on that score. I find her characterisation of it as a primitive wish for payback quite compelling.

This is very timely for me, as my philosophy club is meeting tonight to discuss Martha Nussbaum's views on anger, which she wrote about at length in her recent book 'Anger and Forgiveness', and has discussed on downloadable audio at:
- Partially Examined Life Part 1
- Partially examined life part 2, incl interview with Nussbaum
- Partially examined life part 3
- The philosopher's zone
Nussbaum is influenced by the Stoics but distances herself from them to some extent by wanting emotion to have a bigger role than she believes the Stoics wanted. It's all a question of, as un points out, what emotion.

Nussbaum is pretty strongly anti-anger, although she concedes that in certain rare and narrow circumstances it can have a useful instrumental role.

The references to bruised ego are apparently (according to Nussbaum) used by Aristotle in his analysis of anger. She says he identifies anger as generally arising because somebody else disrespects either you or somebody or something that you care about. Aristotle calls this (some Greek equivalent of) 'down-ranking' and connects the desire for retribution with a wish to down-rank the culprit and thereby relatively restore one's own ranking.

Nussbaum doesn't agree with Aristotle that all anger is of that type.

Secondary vs primary emotions is a new concept for me. I need to get my head around it before I can comment.

I don't see any need to argue one or the other. Both are significant and we can do what is possible to mitigate both. But we in the West have more potential to modify the first than the second.

Indeed, and deliberately so. It's emotional responses to crime that generate harmful actions that make us all worse off. That's why doctors, jurists, detectives and so many other crucial professions take themselves off a case if they are emotionally involved in it - such as when the patient, or the victim of a crime, is known to the doctor/detective. I wish politicians would do the same.

Of course people care about justifications. That's why wrongful arrest is such an emotional issue. I doubt the movie 'In the Name of the Father' would have been made if the Guildford Four had actually been responsible for the bombings for which the British government committed the violence of imprisoning them. Violence does not always perpetuate violence. A well-aimed sniper shot to a lone hostage-taker can save many lives. But mostly I agree with you. The West responded with far too much violence to the 2001 terrorist attacks, and has been reaping the fruits of that since.

Are we, should we, each just make up our own narrative about what is most important, are we, should we each just make up our own narrative about how to live the best life possible? — anonymous66

Yes, I think we are just making up our own narrative. No I don't think we should because I agree with Kant that should (ought) implies both Can and Can not, and I don't think we have any choice but to make up our own narrative. We are story-making animals, whether we like it or not.

That is not to say that we pluck any narrative out of thin air at random. Rather, we forge a narrative as our life progresses, based on what helps us to make most sense of our experience, and to achieve a sense of purpose and maybe even contentment.

I have a contradictory-seeming, yet (I believe) internally consistent, view of most postmodernists. I love some of their ideas, particularly those about there being no absolute truth and all beliefs being ultimately psychologically and socially constructed. But I dislike the obscure way that those ideas are frequently (not always) expressed.

The problem is easily resolved for me though, by getting exposure to postmodernism through secondary sources that can put things in plain words. Landru, for instance (where is he, by the way?).

How about: "I think we should think hard about the best way to respond to attacks like these. Should we respond to them with a violent spirit? Or should we take a different path?" — Mongrel

I agree with that, except that I'd rule out the 'responding with a violent spirit' at the very start. Violence is sometimes a necessary part of a multi-faceted solution to domestic and international law enforcement, but it should be done calmly and regretfully, not in a frenzy of hatred, which is what 'violent spirit' suggests to me.

My answer is that we need to take a multi-faceted approach, just like we do in combating other forms of organized crime. That involves:
1. Support for victims
2. Intelligence gathering
3. Enforcement against people involved in the criminal activity
4. Working to minimise the causes of the criminal activity. In the case of Islamic terrorism the most well-known of causes are war and poverty in regions from which the criminals mostly come, plus US foreign policy.

Many of these things are already being done. They are all necessary. I think there is too much emphasis on 2 and 3 and not enough on 1 and 4, but at least they are all being done to some extent.

We will never completely extinguish terrorism, just as we will never completely extinguish other forms of organized crime, but I believe a calm, thoughtful, determined application of the above approach can produce good results.

people who are prone to judging large numbers of people they've never met won't be persuaded not to do that by the presentation of any facts. — Mongrel

So true, and so clearly exemplified by the post immediately above yours.

But it’s disingenuous to say ISIS has no connection to Islamic tradition.

And it's disingenuous to say that the Westboro Baptist Church, or Christians that bomb abortion clinics, or murder dozens of young Norwegians, have no connection to Christian tradition.

What traditions and ancient scriptures say is of very little importance. People that wish to be violent will always find ways to justify their violence. What is important is what the people who belong to religions that have those scriptures believe and do.

I hadn't noticed that statement in the spoken section. I'll go and listen for it. I'm relieved to learn that the Floyd did not make such a mistake.

Not silly. Almost everybody does it. I think when people refer to Flat Earthers they are really thinking of GeoCentrists, ie people who believe the Earth is the centre of the universe.

Genuine Flat Earthers are extremely difficult to find in any age.

I gave up on pointing the misnomer out a few years ago, because it's so common.

It lines up alongside references to the Dark Side of the Moon, which phrase people use thinking they are indicating a mysterious, unknowable place. Even Pink Floyd got this wrong. It's the Far Side of the Moon that is mysterious and was never seen by humans until the Apollo missions went there. And that Far Side is bathed in sunlight about 50% of the time.

Pedantry expostulation concluded.

Not at all. It is possible to define all of mathematics, including the continuum, using just what you refer to as binary logic. The GW Bush example has nothing to do with the fact that logic uses a True/False paradigm. It's to do with somebody assuming there are only two possibilities when in fact there are many more, possibly even an infinite number of them.

I named three of them just yesterday in another thread: Chesterton, William S Buckley and Auberon Waugh. I'd add Auberon's father Evelyn since we are allowing a little more time latitude.
You mentioned Edmund Burke, who I would also say makes the grade. It's interesting that you see him as espousing a form of conservatism with which you do not agree, as I find many of Burke's suggestions acceptable and I'm more like what people call a progressive or liberal.

I can't think of any modern-day conservatives that are of similar intellectual distinction to these. But maybe you can suggest some.

There's a moderate Muslim public intellectual in Australia named Waleed Aly, who describes himself as a conservative. Most people would peg him as a liberal but Aly says that that's because the term conservative has been hijacked by extremists. He says he's the real conservative and they (the shock jocks and flag wavers) are not.

There is nothing wrong with being outcast on account of holding egregiously unreasonable views, it is something the individual can avoid if they want — John

Don't you feel that rests on an assumption that one chooses what one believes? If so, do you think that assumption is defensible?

I don't feel I have a choice in what I believe. I could not for instance start to believe in the Yahweh of the Bible, or in Dianetics, or in leprechauns. I could pretend. But I would know I was pretending.

I don't believe that a fundamentalist Christian whose non-Church-attending son is living with a partner unmarried, chooses to believe that their son will burn in hell. Most likely they are tortured by that belief and would much rather be free of it.

Evelyn Waugh (to name another old-school, highly intelligent conservative, of the type that is so hard to find these days - other than Wayfarer of course) depicted this so poignantly in the closing chapters of Brideshead Revisited. Julia desperately loved Charles and longed to continue their relationship. But she could not shake her belief that it was wrong to do so because she had been married to her ex-husband Rex in a RC church, so that in the eyes of God she was still married to him, so that to be with Charles was a terrible sin.

Perhaps it comes back to the issue of free will. It seems to me that we each believe what we do because it is in our nature to do so. In light of that, it is as unkind to ostracise and vilify somebody for being a conservative Christian as it is to do so because they are black or gay. By all means argue against the views, try to change them and try to prevent their propagation and implementation. But let's never lose sight of the fact that the one with whom we are arguing is a vulnerable, sentient creature like all others, and may have as much power to change what they believe as an ichneumon wasp does to change its horribly cruel method of reproducing.

After all, anyone who opposes it is, or must be, 'anti-gay', i.e. homophobic. — Wayfarer

I have already indicated that I am aware that some in the pro-(gay-marriage) movement say that, and that I disagree with them. If making such nasty accusations were an instance of PC, I would say that it's an instance of excessive PC. But I'm inclined to think that in that case it's more primal than PC - just a hatred of the enemy (in this case the Christians) and a refusal to see their humanity.

some salient commentary on the same by Brendan O'Neill — Wayfarer

No thanks. Brendan O'Neill is in my William Lane Craig category. In the past I read plenty of what he wrote because he was clearly intelligent and I wanted to understand the views of somebody that was intelligent but had a different view from me. But after a while I realised that the intelligence was simply directed towards trying to ram his prejudices down other people's throats, so I decided to waste no more time on any of his (Craig's or O'Neill's) outpourings. Why would I spend time reading such a thing when I've not yet read Breakfast at Tiffany's?

If I want to hear some intelligent commentary from the right I go to William S Buckley, GK Chesterton or Auberon Waugh. The fact that they are all long gone says something sad about the state of public debate. I used to rate Gerard Henderson, but he jumped the shark around the middle of Howard's prime ministership.