But what about Greta's message is adversarial in nature, or should provoke obloquy? — tim wood

If she stated an uncontested truth, no one would have cared. I get that you think her comments ought not be contested, but they are, and therefore she should expect those who disagree to disagree.

And issues I've seen contested in my professional life are far less disputable than climate change, like many criminals who deny obvious facts. What causes dispute often is personal interest in the outcome. What is true and not, I leave to those without interest or bias, which seem to grow rarer daily.

I'm generally opposed to vulgarities in public, whether they say things I agree with (like "Fuck the Racists") or things I disagree with (like, "Fuck those who aren't Racists"). So, I side with those who enforce the decorum from a formality perspective, but not with those who feel the messenger gets a pass because of her status. She spoke clothed as an adult, elevated to the status of one who mattered, and given the podium as any adult.

From time to time I defend lawsuits brought by parents for their children, alleging sometimes bogus injuries from car accidents. They get no special consideration due to their youth. They can take as much money from my clients' pockets as any adult, so the defense against them can be no less vigorous.

So, if I felt Greta's words deserved a hearty "fuck off" had they been spoken by an old shrew, she gets it too. If little old insignificant Greta doesn't deserve an unfiltered response, then she doesn't deserve a spot speaking at the UN.

What position anyway? Brexit? Boris's ban on combs? Michael Gove's proposal to make lying compulsory? — Baden

I was unaware of the proposal to make lying compulsory, but i'd be in favor of that. Or would I?

The big question for us namby-pamby socialists is, 'why do turkeys vote for Christmas?' — unenlightened

Yet there are liberal rich. Are they suicidal or principled? Can't the same hold true for working class conservatives?

It's possible that the reason the conservatives won is because their position is the correct one. Sometimes you have to get beyond trying to explain why the result was wrong and just admit it was you who was wrong.

Are you saying you-all got to kill your father all by yourselves? No legal form observed or judgment made, no prior determination of right? — tim wood

The cause of death was kidney failure, despite your attempt to mischaracterize it as a killing. In any event, you've now taken a different approach, which is to condemn the cessation of medical treatment in all instances as some form of murder. That would be the case from a moral perspective (assuming we adhere to your definition of what constitutes a killing) regardless of whether it was the result of the deliberations of the family or of some judge or whoever it might be that society has designated as the decision maker. That is to say, the relevance of who decides seems as aside if you're taking the approach that the decision itself is per se unjustifiable.

But, as to your question, yes. It was a family decision. That's how it works. I don't really know what you envision actually happens day to day, as if the courts are clogged with thousands of petitioners asking judges to decide the day to day course of medical treatment for the terminally ill. The decision the family made was simply whether to lead a terribly dying man who had no understanding of what was going on back to the dialysis clinic and whether to continue carting him back and forth several times a week. That did not require court involvement. Maybe you think it should, but I don't see from a moral perspective why that ought to be.

As to the question, it wasn't who was better suited, it was, "who should have the final decision?" Had it been, of the two, which has the greater right? — tim wood

That was the question I gleaned from the OP.

You mean Trump? — frank

God created Trump to spare me from being the butt of your joke.

I'll get to it. I'm currently doing a full audit of all of @frank's posts and am too busy to delete all your posts just yet.

Notes for Hanover

When somebody asks what Thomism says about evil, that's philosophy of religion.

When somebody asks why God made dinosaurs, that's not philosophy of anything. — frank

That's a helpful distinction in response to nothing we've been talking about, so I thank you.

I'll disagree though, just for the sake of argument. As I assume God does everything for a purpose, I do wonder why an all purposeful entity would make dinosaurs, something obviously without any purpose. They were really big, very stupid, and didn't know how to avoid extinction. Why would a perfect God make something with shit for brains?

No one. In limiting it to parent and spouse, you've effectively taken it out of America, where, I believe, even the comatose are entitled to representation. There is the issue of competency. The victim first has to be ruled incompetent. If incompetent, often such people are assigned a lawyer to represent their interests. That is, even if all the family on all sides are in agreement, that's not by itself enough. I said no one; maybe I "should" amend that to the court with jurisdiction. — tim wood

You're suggesting that the state appoints a lawyer to every person in a nursing home who has end of life treatment decisions to make but are incapacitated to make them? Do you have a cite for that? I'm quite sure it was entirely a family decision when we decided to stop dialysis treatment for my father when he was suffering from many other ailments, including dementia.

Regardless of the dubious factual declaration, it's irrelevant to the question of the OP, which simply asked whether the spouse or the parent was the better suited person to make such decisions, specifically indicating that they were not interested in what the law dictated, but only in what ought to be.

That is, when a person can't decide for themselves, do we defer to mom or spouse? Which stands in a better position to make such decisions?

Ideally, the victim has signed a power of attorney prior to her injury that sets out her wishes if she becomes incapacitated and sets forth who has the power to decide for her. Assuming she has opted not to affirmatively clarify, she has effectively deferred to whatever the law states. My assumption is that it would be the spouse and not the parents who would then decide because upon marriage, one is generally considered fully emancipated from their parents' control.

I know your question was a moral question and not a legal one, but I think the morality is tied to the fact that we're trying to express the wishes of the victim, and I do impute some responsibility upon the victim for their decisions prior to victimhood, which would include their decision to allow the law to decide for them in the event they didn't otherwise specify a different course.

Did you know that the word "stupid" comes from the Latin word "stupere" meaning "be amazed or stunned"? — Michael

Stupendous

Oh. Maybe it's an accent thing. I pronounce "my call" like "my cool" and "Michael" like "my cull". — Michael

I pronounce "my call" like "my cawl." Any other way is stupid.

If I were a philosophy professor, spending 40+ hours a week teaching, studying, researching, and discussing philosophy, I'd be encouraged that there is an online community devoted to my passion, and I'd try to promote it the best I could, even possibly accepting an invitation to participate, but then quickly realizing I simply lacked the time to do it justice. I totally get it.

Addressing the OP more specifically, I think the future of philosophy at the academic level will be towards greater polarization, with departments dividing along ideological lines. I see no reason to think academia will be immune from the same political direction as society in general. The comments here assume a continued leftward march (overturning the vestiges of patriarchy, proclaiming capitalism harmful), yet I expect backlash from what we wish to assume are neutral fact finding bodies. I expect there will be CNN universities and FoxNews universities (so to speak), or departments at least. I, for one, think that'd be a good thing. I think truth derives only through a truly adversarial process. Seeking intellectual agreement is the path to stupidity.

Not this again. "Stop" is such a magical word here. So purposeful, and effective that when applied to mental states, would seem to make the problem (almost as-if) vanish away. Bingo? — Wallows

So you want me to stop saying stop? Neither of us can just stop it seems.

Anyway, don't focus on the stop part. Focus on getting you that dog.

I must have asked or therapists must get this question a lot; but, what do you do when you lose the will to live or simply get tired of it? — Wallows

If you're bored, stop being boring. I'd suggest you get a dog, name him Winnie, and the two of you drive up the California coast to Oregon. Camp out in a yurt and write a journal about your travels with Winnie.

The simplest way to do this is to go to Western Union and wire the money to any anonymous password account, then PM me that information, and then I'll pick up the sack of cash and take it to post office, where I'll transfer it into a money order. I'll then send the money order to my bank via regular mail and wait for it to clear. Once it's in my account, I'll withdraw it from an ATM and then I'll ask @Baden for a physical address so that I can mail a check to him so that he can hand it to @jamalrob who works one cubicle over in the underwriting department. Then you'll be able to upload whatever shit you need to. Western Union, the post office, and my ATM charge transaction fees, so send a lot more than you think you need to.

Could someone be so kind as to explain to me how to upload an image? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Yeah, uploads are subscriber-only because we have to pay for the space. So... give us some money? — Baden

Ha! Turns out your lights aren't turning on because you didn't pay the power bill. :wink:

Everyone seems to be achieving remission around here. But, here I am some 15 years of online interactions with people, and I feel like I want to spend my life here. My being is so imbued with these 'why' questions that I can't stop thinking philosophically.

Heres a fun fact from my CALC II class I had. My teacher asked me some question about the tangent to some plane existing in tangential slope, and I the philosopher that I am asked "But does it exist?" Laugh all you want this shit is so fucking important to me, that I feel like I have to write a paper sometime in the future, just to get invited to talk with professional philosophers.

Anyway enough about me, what's with the turnover rate, can we do something about guiding newbies into phil 101 threads and then having them graduate into higher abstractions? — Wallows

So, (1) you want to know the turnover rate here, (2) you had a foundational question in calculus class you wished addressed prior to your dealing with an applied calculus question, (3) you wanted to know why the turnover rate was high, and (4) you want to know whether we can create a poster hierarchy, limiting certain threads to certain posters based upon ability.

(1) I don't know. (2) Interesting story. (3) If we don't know #1, how do we conclude #3? (4) That's a really bad elitist idea and I don't see how it would resolve #3, assuming #3 is true.

As noted, this is the feedback section, so you're welcome for this feedback.

The question why Al-Qaeda bombed the Pentagon and the World Trade Center has a relatively clear answer: “They say they did it because of U.S. support for the corrupt Saudi monarchy and the garrisoning of American troops in Saudi Arabia." — StreetlightX

Seems like an over-simplification:

"In Osama Bin Laden's November 2002 "Letter to America",[3][4] he explicitly stated that al-Qaeda's motives for their attacks include: Western support for attacking Muslims in Somalia, supporting Russian atrocities against Muslims in Chechnya, supporting the Indian oppression against Muslims in Kashmir, the Jewish aggression against Muslims in Lebanon, the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia,[4][5][6] US support of Israel,[7][8] and sanctions against Iraq.[9]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks

If the satisfied slave has the better life, then this might imply that life satisfaction is perhaps the most important factor in determining quality of life. — TheHedoMinimalist

As John Stuart Mill says:

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question.”

And what he is doing here is in determining the good. That which is good is that which leads to the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. And here he distinguishes between happiness and satisfaction, with the former being a higher function of humans and that which ought be maximized and the latter being simple pleasure and avoidance of pain which is not of his interest in maximizing.

So, why ought the slave be freed despite his comfort and acceptance of his fate? It's because there is a standard that demands that people strive for higher intellectual satisfaction and not live as animals. The religious would refer to this as living out to the extent of one's creation.

Assman is apparently a perfectly good and respectable Austrian name. — tim wood

I don't question the gentleman's respectability. I expect it's a family name, having been gained by the prior occupation or reputation perhaps of his ancestors. Much like someone named Smith was a blacksmith or silversmith and maybe someone now named Carpenter had a great great grandfather who was just that.

So Jan Assman had a great great grandfather who enjoyed the backside and was apparently well known for it. It's not something I blame him for, and I do admit to a certain admiration for his celebrating that facet of his personality. His now accomplished descendant, who apparently is quite the Egyptologist, in a whimsically ironic twist, provides evidence of his own ancient civilization through his name. The original patriarch Assman apparently enjoyed staring at, fondling, and perhaps even invading the ass. Good for him I say. Good for him.

Wrestling the Angel - Terryl L. Givens
Creation ex nihilo - Gary Anderson and Markus Bockmuehl
Moses the Egyptian - Jan Assmann (an unfortunate last name).

Europeans were the first to claim a whole race as "me and mine" and therefore had huge advantages over smaller societies (the Nazi's showed where the emphasis on "me and mine" gets taken too far) — ZhouBoTong

This really isn't true. The Nazis limited their tribe to Aryans, specifically excluding the neighboring Slavs (who were very much white). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavic_sentiment

The idea of all whites being of the same tribe seems an American thing, where ancestral history has gotten lost with the generations and intermarriage among the groups. The same holds true for American blacks, who have no idea of their ancestral origins. But look to recent immigrants, white or black, people keep to their groups.

In Ireland, the Catholics can hate the Protestants. In Scotland , they can hold hostilities toward the English. In the US, these groups can't be distinguished. The melting pot boiled those subtle distinctions off, but race remains, no doubt due to the historical legal and imposed social distinctions of the races in the US.

Despite my responses, which were intentionally confrontational, you could've tried to find common ground, appealed to liberal values, or whatever. You did not. — praxis

The object isn't to appease, but to not be confrontational in the first place.

That's what I was pointing out. I have though, despite your efforts at confrontation, not cared. That's mostly because I'm too cool for school.

1991. Dutch. — Benkei

Much respect. Apologies.

These are serious issues and I shouldn't fool around as I have. — praxis

I get the sarcasm, but I'm not chastising you. I'm just saying I know you and I don't agree and doubtfully ever will, so if that's all you're letting me know, we probably could have figured that out before we started talking. I think the point of the OP was just to point out the problem associated with vilifying the other side of we are to ever neutralize the discord. If you don't see harmony as a goal, then we can keep up doing what we're doing.

The aspect that I'm trying to introduce you to is that the children are innocent. The children are undeserving, are they not? — praxis

Yes, so let's collect up the world's children and nuture and care for them all, and let's collect up all the kitties and puppies too that have lesser homes than my spoiled floppy eared Fred and give them better homes.

I'm trying to point out that if irresponsible parents place their children in jeopardy, let's place the blame on the parents and not allow them to use their children to mitigate the parents' problems.

You can't win when I have the moral high ground. Just admit it was a mistake and let's leave it at that. — praxis

This is the very problem pointed out by the OP. It's this lecturing, self certainty that makes you think you can end the conversation by just announcing yourself right.

What to do with terrorists who hide in grammar schools? What sort of force can you use? It's the same sort of question. That the nuance evades you because you want to keep assuring yourself and telling me that you love children more than me doesn't sway me in your direction.

Let me ask you, was it right to stop this policy or should it be continued? — praxis

Political decisions are pragmatic and it seemed an unsustainable policy based upon democratic sentiment. Maintaining it would only lead to greater polarization with minimal effect on the underlying problem of illegal immigration. So, it should be stopped.

The best argument against the morality of the policy (after subtracting out the pragmatics) is that the consequence of separation was draconian, being unjust not because a negative consequence was undeserving, but because it was cruel and unusual. That is to say, I don't think it reasonable to assume you can illegally cross a border without repercussion and I think you are particularly reckless if you bring your children along and place them in peril, but I'm willing to consider other responses to the problem other than separating the children from the parents that are less harsh. I do believe that justice without mercy is not justice at all, but is simply revenge.

My openness to other responses to the moral violation of the parents and my reference to the lofty proposition of justice is based upon my infinite rationality and inherent gentle disposition.

It’s funny that the party known for championing children, when they’re on the right side of a vagina, can be so willing to defend the abandonment of that concern after they’ve crossed that barrier. — praxis

Even funnier is how the party known for killing babies is so worried about whether a child is separated from her mother for a short while.

Funnier still is that I'm pro-choice, but that hardly matters, since we're just spinning this in the way that makes the other look as absurd as possible, which I think was the lament of the OP.

Separating a child from their parents in this manner is undoubtedly traumatic and has caused incalculable mental anguish. — praxis

Yeah, I doubt it. I'm not discounting that the separation isn't a happy time for the child, but life is difficult for all sort of kids, not only those with parents who knowingly and recklessly subject them to foreign authorities.

Sometimes (as in always), when a parent commits a crime and gets incarcerated, his kids don't get to join him in the cell. One of the problems with being a criminal is the wide reaching range of victims who you never even considered, like all those you let down from your bad decisions.

The point of this OP I don't think is to get you to agree with me, but maybe just to realize that different worldviews yield different results, and that perhaps the diversity of opinion championed by the left ought be permitted to apply to the opinions of the right, instead of labeling them evil in the limited good/evil dichotomy.

Separating thousands of children from their parents is not a fine point, my unsympathetic friend. — praxis

If you decided to immigrate to Germany and you knew their laws strictly forbade it, and you knew there was increased enforcement of its immigration laws currently in effect, do you not think it criminally negligent for you to bring your kids directly into your criminal enterprise and subject them to law enforcement measures?

I'm not sure how else I'm supposed to interpret that than saying "y'all stupid". — Benkei

It'd be ya'll're (you all are) stupid, not y'all stupid, unless you were going for the African American dialect that truncates the final consonant, but I doubt you're that hip.

Leave southern talk to the southerners.

I have a hard time understanding this. Obama was apparently the reincarnation of Chairman Mao and the Antichrist, all at the same time. I never thought to say to a conservative: "Keep it up and we'll re-elect him!" — frank

The outrage does seem to be expressed in different ways by the different parties. The left seems to get very lecture driven, condescending, and emotional. I'm not saying the right has no emotional investment, but it's typically an argumentative anger, as opposed to crying at a loss, and the violence in the streets is rarely from the right.

But there is something openly consequence driven from the right, as when Trump said he'd increase the height of the wall if people kept complaining about. It was a totally ridiculous, of course, but that paternalistic "I'm going to turn this car around and no one is getting any ice cream" response does resonate with the right. Or, maybe it's a fuck with me, I'll fuck with you response, which, again sounds like a right driven refusal to be a victim sort of approach.

Obviously all of this is loose group psychoanalysis, which I'm sure varies considerably among its members, but there's no doubt that the reactions of the respective sides are notably different.

As for me. I just gotta be me.

Explain. Are you surviving if you do none of the work translating into survival of your organism? What are you dependent on which is surviving? — Anthony

My post specifically said "Survivalism in modern society has nothing to do with basket weaving, tracking and hunting prey, or starting campfires," but then you generalized it to something I didn't say, which is that survival can occur even if you do nothing that makes you survive.

What I meant was specifically what I said, which is that those itemized things are not required for survival in today's society. In today's society, you get a job, make some money, and go out and buy baskets and food and you then turn your stove on in your kitchen and cook the food. The primitive skills you prioritized therefore shouldn't be prioritized, but should be considered interesting hobbies.

I'm really not knocking your hobbies. I just don't think you really need to be a good cub scout in order to survive.

So no, we likely never going to see any exact repetition of these movements and events, but that does not mean that we should discard these otherwise politically salient terms, especially when we seem them echo again so clearly in modernity. — Maw

Sure, we can exclude the fact that Hitler was a genocidal manic, but he did have two legs, so he was in fact like Trump in a really important way.

Like I said, I don't take your comments seriously. You can keep trying to draw these parallels all you want, but it only better makes the point of the OP, which is that the scorn the left heaps upon the right by calling them Nazi-like does nothing but strengthen their resolve and increase their loyalty to their political leaders.

That is to say, how might you get Trump re-elected? Keep doing what you're doing.

I mean, go ahead an yawn at this, I don't think of you a morally considerate person by any means, so I wouldn't be surprised, but this is all within just two years under conditions more favorable than Germany faced at the time, yet wind the clock ahead several years and factor in the effects of global warming in third world countries and who fucking knows how things might escalate — Maw

Is this where I draw a distinction between gas chambers for Jews sought out from every corner of Europe and temporary detention centers for those who have sought out residency in the US in open violation of its laws?

It's nothing at all the same, and it's for that reason I yawn, as I've grown tired of hearing the same old nonsense all these years. I honestly don't take these comments seriously regardless of how morally outraged you might be.

Look up what was happening in Germany in 1934 — Maw

The Nazi hyperbole goes from mildly annoying to insulting, but to speak literally, as if we are just a few years from actual gas chambers and genocide, is absurd and may evoke a yawn, depending upon how passionate I am at the time

And, does Trump’s base constitute the hysteric mass, subordinated to the irrational impulses of the maniacal leader? — Number2018

An important distinction that sometimes gets overlooked between Hitler and Trump is that the former had death camps where millions of people were systematically murdered in an attempt to create a pure race and in the latter the guy would send out a bunch of fucked up tweets that pissed everyone off. Other than that, pretty much the same.

What would you make of a Bernie or Warren candidacy? — StreetlightX

Bernie is an 800 year old socialist from Timbuktu, yet he's supposed to be the voice of the future, who will just seize the passion of this changing nation. Really? He owes his fame to the debacle of the Democrats in having eliminated all competition in last election's primaries to hand Hillary the unopposed candidacy, minus one irrelevant old man so they could make it look like a contest. Then the guy actually makes a run for it and gives her some heat, proving she was an incredibly weak candidate.

A Trump/Bernie debate would be very entertaining, watching Trump tell him he's impotent or something else totally crazy. Anyway, the left needs to rethink running a socialist and maybe move to the middle. Trump is hardly a right wing firebrand, but more of loony tune right leaning pragmatist, so I don't know the country really is looking for an ideologue.

Warren seems to have a problem with the truth, and that will be exploited. If the Democrats wish to bring dignity back to the office, I'm not sure she'd be the candidate. Having a woman candidate against Trump will only give him the opportunity to be unapologetically sexist, thus gaining him more votes. You really can't underestimate the value of being unapologetic. If openly advocating pussy grabbing doesn't sink someone for being sexist, I don't think anything will.