Honestly Agustino, if you're the kind of person who thinks user-defined fonts and text colours are a good thing, then I doubt we have enough in common for a rational discussion about it. Several reasons have been given in the thread already. It would be messy, and communication depends on common standards, especially common standards of presentation. You say that one of the problems with philosophy is the form in which it's published. Are you saying that, e.g., the World as Will and Representation would have been better if Schopenhauer had been able to get it printed in his favourite purple Comic Sans?

Are you trolling?

No, that would be terrible. I'm baffled that anyone thinks it would be good.

A lot of developers don't pay adequate attention to graphic + typographic design, but I don't understand why not. These are essential elements that should be incorporated and thought out in each design. Most people just stick Montserrat or Roboto with 2 lines of code and then forget about fonts, but that's the wrong approach. The right font + the right graphic design significantly increases conversions, and most clients don't want websites just to look cool, or work cool - they want them to sell for them. — Agustino

This goes against your case, because it's an argument for good design, under the control of a web designer, which is the opposite of what you're asking for.

Ok, understood. Formatting and style though is a means of communication too, and as such, it is a writer's concern. One of the things that I think has brought philosophy down in the past is that the content is there, but the FORM isn't used to reflect and support it as effectively as possible. — Agustino

I don't see how. And I can't get over the fact that you work in web development and yet you think it's cool for users to be able to change the font and text colour. That's insane.

One thing I totally hate about the interface of this forum is that there's no adequate text editor. I can't centre text, can't wrap text around images, use different fonts, change font size, etc. It would make communicating stuff more interesting if we had a Word document kind of interface which gave you full flexibility. — Agustino

I abhor WYSIWYG and so-called word processors and think their invention was a terrible mistake. Formatting and style is not the writer's concern. I think the editor is fine as it is and I will not be requesting that feature. I wouldn't mind seeing Markdown support, though.

test

@StreetlightX It's a good point that we have to pay attention to politics and particular social and economic conditions. This still doesn't imply that "Islamic culture" is a bad concept. It depends what you're saying about it.

Otherwise, I had already made three points that have been made by others since: that there are several Islamic cultures, that this does not imply that there is no Islamic culture (singular), and that which Islamic cultures we talk about--and when we should use the singular "Islamic culture"--depends on what we're interested in.

Generally, those in this discussion who deny the usefulness of "Islamic culture" are being quite irrational.

yeah, I was kidding.

It's sad that 2001 never happened — Question

It's sad that there haven't been monoliths guiding the evolution of the human race so we can become space babies?

When I said it didn't matter, it was in the context of the rest of my post and of the point at issue. I meant that the fact there are intersecting cultures does not go against the point that we can legitimately speak of Islamic culture--obviously, when it's accurate to do so.

Incidentally, one very broad but interesting way to see what's happening in Islam is not merely as a reaction to Western secularism--several Muslim-majority societies accommodated those changes, even if they've since been reversed--and not as a reaction to Western military interference, but as a competition for moral and religious authority, for the leadership of Islam, being fought between Sunni and Shia Islam. One can see how this would generate a kind of arms race of conservatism.

It's been said that one thing that Kubrick introduced in the film, which doesn't fit well with the theme of technological progress that Q talked about, was the theme of humans' losing control of their technology, symbolized by the floating pen, and then played out for real with HAL.

(Y)

Not to mention religion and language. Of course, these are not universal among Muslims--the Arabic language didn't take over in, for example, Iran or Indonesia, and there are deep religious divisions--and it might be better to say there are several Islamic cultures. But that doesn't mean it's always inappropriate to refer to "Islamic culture" as such, because some cultural dimensions, such as religious interpretations and ideologies (and pottery), can spread very quickly beyond the original source ethnicity, nationality, language, etc., and considering that this happens with Islam primarily among Muslims (obviously), it's indispensable to be able to refer to an Islamic culture in general. A relevant example is the ultra-conservative Salafist movement, which has been influential far beyond Egypt and Saudi Arabia. There are trends in religious interpretation that can be seen across Islamic cultures (plural), thus allowing us to refer to a single Islamic culture, insofar as the dimensions of religion and ideology are considered important aspects of a culture.

I take andrewk to be saying that you have to be careful about making claims about all Muslims, which is right, but that doesn't mean there are not trends, e.g., towards conservatism, that can be identified and which cut across other cultural dimensions. To say things about Islamic culture is not necessarily to make sweeping claims about all Muslims. andrewk and Benkei are probably sensitive to those times when such terms as "Islamic culture" are used to make sweeping claims about all Muslims.

So, to get back to the point: against andrewk's first post in this discussion, it may be quite legitimate to say that Islam is currently theocratic, i.e., that theocratic tendencies are pronounced, though I wouldn't go so far as to say this is essential to Islam, notwithstanding its theological support.

@Benkei The fact that cultures might intersect or contain each other doesn't matter. The relevant granularity depends on what you're interested in. In this case, that's religion, so it's surely then appropriate to speak of Islamic culture, because there are few things more cultural than religion. But it is complicated. The big French survey from a few years ago showed that millions of French people (mostly of North African descent) identify as Muslims but also as secular and non-observant. However, I think this backs up my basic point.

What are you talking about?

2001 : A Space Odyssey, would be my first pick due to being all cozy with logical positivism, which simply became replaced with scientism. — Question

What do you mean by this, Q? What's 2001 got to do with logical positivism and scientism?

Yes, and because, traditionally, conservatism is pragmatic and generally allergic to ideology, it didn't have any trouble embracing things that are now considered to be left-wing--such as the welfare state--when they seemed to promise social stability. And as you say, the communitarian aspect of conservatism looks a lot like the kind of left-wing positions taken by the Left, like the British Labour Party, for example. It's up to those in power to look after the poor, and so on. It's a patrician outlook probably partly stemming from aristocratic noblesse oblige; the decline of--and in America, the non-existence of--the aristocracy may explain why this side of conservatism gave way to the free-market, classically liberal stuff.

Myself, I don't really go for either kind of conservatism, but I appreciate some of their critiques of the Left, and their defence of individual freedoms (what some unreformed Marxists call "mere formal freedoms").

There was a recent article on Spiked, which makes some good points about Nietzsche's position on truth, even though it's otherwise polemically anti-PoMo and a bit shallow.

Nietzsche believed in truth, albeit of an unstable, contingent, perspectival and disposable variety. He believed in constant experimentation and argument. His Übermensch forever goes beyond and above. This is why they had to struggle, because truth was difficult but ultimately necessary to obtain through free-thinking and reason. As he wrote in Daybreak (1881): ‘Every smallest step in the field of free thinking, and of the personally formed life, has ever been fought for at a cost of spiritual and physical tortures… change has required its innumerable martyrs… Nothing has been bought more dearly than that little bit of human reason and sense of freedom that is now the basis of our pride.’ Far from being casual about truth, Nietzsche cared deeply about it. And any truth we held had to earn its keep. ‘Truth has had to be fought for every step of the way, almost everything else dear to our hearts, on which our love and our trust in life depend, had to be sacrificed to it’, he wrote later in 1888 in The Antichrist.

Nietzsche believed truths had to be earnt. He believed we had to cross swords in the struggle for truth, because it mattered so dearly, not because ‘anything goes’. We had to accept as true even that which we found intolerable and unacceptable, when the evidence proved it so. All points of view certainly are not valid. Walter Kaufmann, who began the mainstream rehabilitation of Nietzsche after the Second World War, concluded in the fourth edition of his classic Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1974): ‘Nietzsche’s valuation of suffering and cruelty was not the consequence of any gory irrationality, but a corollary of his high esteem of rationality. The powerful man is the rational man who subjects even his most cherished faith to the severe scrutiny of reason and is prepared to give up his beliefs if they cannot stand this stern test. He abandons what he loves most, if rationality requires it. He does not yield to his inclinations and impulses.’ — Patrick West

http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/nietzsches-enlightenment/19617#.WRwFGnV96kA

So I'm not sure how to answer the poll, as a lot of what passes for "hard left" today is not part of my political outlook, even though Marx is my go-to guy. I've been called a conservative on several occasions, on this forum and elsewhere. I admit I'm attracted to conservatism despite fundamentally disagreeing with it--I think maybe because it's not culturally mainstream, such that independence of thought sometimes seems more common among conservatives, which is a big change in the intellectual landscape.

From a recent article on Quillette:

The political spectrum creates confusion. It tells us, for example, that both fascist Adolf Hitler and libertarian Milton Friedman are on the “far right,” yet Hitler advocated nationalism, socialism, militarism, authoritarianism, and anti-Semitism, while Milton Friedman advocated internationalism, capitalism, pacifism, civil liberties, and was himself a Jew.

George W. Bush’s big-government, militarist philosophy is considered “right wing” as is Rand Paul’s small-government, anti-militarist philosophy. We say that liberals believe in free speech and conservatives believe in free markets, yet moving to the “extreme left” means clamping down on free speech (as with Stalin or Mao) and moving to the “extreme right” means clamping down on free markets (as with National Socialism). — Hyrum Lewis

http://quillette.com/2017/05/03/time-retire-political-spectrum/

Atheist.

: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.