You have not addressed the issue other than by now conflating "competence" with "excellence". — javra

The relevant word in question is aretē (ἀρετή).

Reality? Because no one ever found Socrates's questions eristic — javra

You're engaged in an equivocation between what is eristic and what is falsely believed to be eristic.

"competency at being virtuous" — javra

Virtue = aretē (ἀρετή).

Back in the la-la land of rational philosophy, many a human is, or can become, quite competent at committing so-called "perfect crimes" where all negative repercussions are evaded, including those of theft, murder, and rape, amongst others.

To most, this then again turns to the issue of "competency at being virtuous" as the standard for ethical conduct--such that crimes, perfect or not, are all deemed unethical irrespective of the competency a human has in committing them. — javra

This looks like a strawman coming from a contrarian position, and you seem to have been on a contrarian streak of late.

There is a sense in which competence is neutral with respect to certain ends. For example, the medical doctor's competence provides him with the ability to heal the body and also with the ability to harm the body. His knowledge of how the human body works provides him with both abilities.

Now if someone says, "Would you rather be a competent doctor or an incompetent doctor?," and your answer is, "I would not want to be a competent doctor because that would also make me competent at harming the human body," then I don't see that you've taken any of this very seriously. Instead of quibbling, the serious person would say, "I would rather be a competent rather than incompetent, even though someone who is competent in medicine also understands how to harm."

The deeper point is that indifference to competence or excellence is not a rational position, and only exists in philosophical la-la land. Humans do things, and humans want to do the things they do, well. That's all you need for an Aristotelian approach. The relativist will want to say that there is nothing normative about any human "doing." They would be forced to say, for example, that humans have no reason to prefer "doing" survival to "doing" death, and therefore the medical expert has no reason to prefer healing to harming. But this is irrational in the extreme. There are ends that are intrinsic to humanity, such as the gravitation towards pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Only philosophical la-la land is able to claim that there are no intrinsic human ends, or excellences, or competences. Only philosophical la-la land is able to claim that, "For all X and for all Y, X is not preferable to Y in any complete sense."

-

In life as lived, many an honest enquiry will be eristic — javra

That's just not true. In fact it looks as though a very strange word game is being played.

As to “refusal to define”, myself, I was never asked, but if I were to be asked, I’d succinctly reply thus: Those oughts which further one’s proximity to the cosmic ultimate telos of perfected and complete eudemonia (one that is not just personal at expense of others, but globally applicable ... such eudemonia being interpretable as the ultimate good in both Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic philosophies) will be oughts that are virtuous and hence ethical (though not necessarily moral … as in slavery being moral in certain societies yet still unethical). On the other hand, those oughts which don’t so further, aren’t virtuous and, hence, aren’t ethical. — javra

I think you'll find that if you privilege the most common good or telos in this way (as globalists do), then you end up fumbling the subsidiary goods and ends that are constitutive of the "cosmic ultimate telos." More simply, if individuals do not seek competence, then societies do not flourish. Saying, "Worry about the societal flourishing rather than individual competence," is a kind of non-starter. Aristotle links up individual ethics to the communal whole in the second part of the Nicomachean Ethics, namely the Politics. There is a two-way interaction between the individual level and the communal level.

In any case, if you admit that there is an ultimate telos that defines ethics, then you've failed to avoid the notion of competence or excellence, for competence will just be competence in relation to your ultimate ethical telos. Thus despite your contrarian objection, you too will prefer competence to incompetence.

- This is a very cogent and well-marshalled post. :up:

Our “is” — our biological and cognitive architecture — already entails competences that can be exercised well or poorly.

“Ought” simply names the direction of self-correction toward more adequate realization of those competences. — Wayfarer

Quite right.

The objection that is sometimes directed to the Aristotelian position which says, "Why ought I be virtuous rather than vicious?," could be rephrased, "Why ought I be competent rather than incompetent?" Once we move out of philosophical la-la land we see that such questions make little sense. Either they have more to do with eristic than genuine inquiry, or else they rely on a strong distinction between a moral ought and a non-moral ought that the objector refuses to define.

I am glad we have found some common ground. — Paine

:up:

One controversy that has played out for years on this site is how to understand the midwifery in Theaetetus against the accounts of recollection in other dialogues. Kierkegaard clearly refers to the latter in the Fragments as a fundamental condition. Does Penner deal with that difference in any way? — Paine

I don't remember him getting into that. Here is his concluding paragraph, which might shed some light:

Kierkegaard was and remains a child of the Enlightenment, if by this one means that his project is set within the context of Enlightenment concerns and that he is not a reactionary thinker who hearkens back to a pre-Enlightenment, premodern worldview. Insofar as Kierkegaard accepted that modernity posited a new situation for human thought and human being that had to be reckoned with on its own terms, he was irremediably modern. What he attempted to do, however, was to point the way forward by insisting that modern thought must not and cannot simply wipe the slate clean and start from scratch but must be careful to listen to ancient wisdom and resituate it in this new, modern context. As Climacus remarks in his “Moral” at the end of Philosophical Fragments, “To go beyond Socrates when one nevertheless says essentially the same thing as he, only not nearly so well—that, at least, is not Socratic.” — Penner, ibid.

As a matter of theology in the Protestant tradition, the role of who will be a teacher is an explosion of thoughts after questioning the apostolic continuity of the Catholic dogma. I figure that all the "disciple at the second hand" discussion in the Fragments can be ruled out as a secular conversation. It certainly is a stumbling block for those who want to separate that thought from the theological. — Paine

Yes, this is a great point. I am going to revisit that section.

Well, Hegel said as much. It is important to remember Kierkegaard is repeating that view through his view of paganism. I do not agree with them. Maybe I can say why sometime. — Paine

Okay.

Sure. :up:

And I should say that there is no reason to believe that Aristotle sees this as an overly programmatic or even conscious process. He seems to think that people naturally emulate those they admire, and naturally begin to reflect on the qualities of those they admire as they grow older.

- Okay, thanks. :up:

Yes, great stuff. :up:

So we could draw this back to the OP a bit (which is quite good):

But if happiness (εὐδαιμονία, eudomonia) consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonable that it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will be the virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the Intellect (νοῦς nous), or whatever else it be... — The Nicomachean Ethics 1.1177a11

We could reasonably think of Descartes' legacy as truncating the being of humans, and leading to an anthropology where "the highest virtue" is ratiocination or a kind of calculation (in much the same way that calculators manipulate numbers or LLMs manipulate text). The modern virtue of ratiocination is admittedly instrumental, for it is meant to provide power over nature, which in turn serves the ends that were deemed ultimate at that time. From there we get reactionary pendulum swings away from this virtue and this anthropology, such as in the Romanticism of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the story continues...

(Moral) virtue is for practical life. For Aristotle the philosopher is not as much in need of moral virtue because he is less engaged in practical life (politics, commerce, etc.). The philosopher is more interested in intellectual virtue. One comes to know (moral) virtue by recognizing one's role models and then in turn coming to discern the individual virtues that such role models possess, and for Aristotle the "role models" will tend to be commonly held, at least by and large.

So one learns about virtue by recognizing particular people who are excellent and happy people, and who one naturally wishes to emulate. But the "foundation" for Aristotelian virtue is very much tied up with practice or "habit." Only by doing something consistently will one become good at it. A virtue is an excellent-making quality of a human being. If one wishes to be an excellent human being then they must have the virtues, and the virtues are had by practice or familiarity. Then, for Aristotle happiness is had via excellence, but excellence is not sought as a means to the end of happiness. It's almost as if Aristotle would say that happiness is excellence seen in a particular light. For a simple example, the man who is an excellent soccer player is brought joy by playing soccer, but the joy and the activity of playing soccer well aren't really two different things. It's not as if he plays soccer well and then goes to the sideline to wait for someone to bring him his joy as a reward.

More broadly, I've noticed that the "Aristotle" of the antique Greeks and that of modern "virtue ethics" might we well be two different philosophers. The modern version allows some sort of "telos" for man, in that certain things are "good for him" because of "the sort of thing he is," but seems to have a much greater difficulty making any sort of argument for some desires being "higher" versus "lower," or securing the notion that the rational soul must lead, train, and unify the sensible soul and vegetative soul (logos ruling over and shaping thymos and epithumia). But as far as I can tell this radically destabilizes virtue ethics, since now man is merely loosely ordered (on average) to an irreducible plurality of goods which "diminish when shared." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah. Peter Simpson sees this as a kind of epistemic reversal, where instead of reasoning from virtues (with Aristotle), one reasons from happiness. Cf. "On Virtue Ethics and Aristotle."

-

Here’s the interesting bit. On Taylor’s picture, my own neo-Aristotelian view, which is the one Gellner would likely dismiss as an irrational “creed,” still inhabits the immanent frame in a closed way (naturalist), and yet it isn’t therefore disenchanted. Thinking otherwise would be another instance of the dimensional collapse mentioned earlier. Because it accounts for "strong evaluations" (see note below), a virtue-ethical orientation to eudaimonia, and for intrinsically meaningful forms of life, it amounts to a re-enchantment without transcendence.

So, for Taylor, disenchantment vs. re-enchantment doesn’t line up with naturalism vs. transcendence. — Pierre-Normand

I'm not sure I would call Aristotle a "naturalist." That seems not only anachronistic, but perhaps also incorrect. I don't see a lack of transcendence in Aristotle, even if his idea of God was not the Christian God. He does admittedly distinguish the practical man and his moral virtues from the philosopher and his contemplation, but the contemplation of the philosopher looks to be "transcendent." I think @Count Timothy von Icarus' attribution of Platonic themes to Aristotle is quite apt in this way.

They may not be paying heed to what Putnam sees as a required "collapse" of the fact/value dichotomy.

Eudaimonia cannot survive the surgical operation that separates understanding what we are from what it is that we ought to be and do, and this can justifiably be viewed as a loss of immanence or transcendence depending on which side one locates themselves in Taylor's immanent frame. — Pierre-Normand

I think this is important, and I think the way you pointed up the unification of Aristotle's speculative and practical reason is instructive, but modern man seems to have crossed a Rubicon and can no longer "collapse" the "dichotomy." I would be interested to know where Putnam writes about this.

- :up:

But now, there is zero tolerance for meaningful political discussion between opposing factions; there is just exaggerated posturing set to withstand inordinately zealous assault. Throwing grenades to forestall artillery while crafting secret nuclear missiles. — Fire Ologist

Yes: a rhetorical arms race.

To get more specific about the concept of system, he distinguishes the relevant philosophical sense from mere systematization. The latter is some kind of organizational schema applied selectively, as in sociology; but a philosophical system develops from a basic principle to "draw everything into itself" so that nothing escapes it. It is totalizing. — Jamal

The question of "systems" is a subtle one. On my view it can be summed up more simply. A systematic thinker is someone who tends to think always in the same categories or through the same lens. This means, for example, that someone whose human activities are unvaried will tend to be a systematic thinker, and Kant would be a good example here.

Erich Przywara has an ontological reason to bar overly systematic thinking, namely his conviction (and the Catholic dogma) that anything which can be said about the Ultimate Reality, however right it is, is more wrong than right (so to speak), and that all of reality flows from the Ultimate Reality (i.e. the Creator).

This can be seen more concretely in a quote such as this:

What may be called linear thinking goes straight out from one pole or from one idea of the cosmos of ideas, which every true philosophy is. This idea, cut off from its interrelations and interdependencies with the cosmos, it then fanatically thinks to a finish. Thus it becomes radical individualism or socialism or totalitarianism or anarchism. This linear thinking, so characteristic of the modem mind and its countless isms, is a stranger to Catholic political philosophy. For Catholic political philosophy is ‘spheric’ thinking. Of the interdependencies and the mutual relations between ideas as united in a spheric cosmos and the concordance of these, spheric thinking must be always aware. — Heinrich Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought, 22-23

Others have pointed out that the Catholic Church and Rommen himself have often missed the mark on this point, but the quote remains instructive. There is an indefinable "circularity" to the sort of thought that resists a linear mode. It is natural, organic, unforced, and without "rough edges."

OK, I think I know what he's getting at, and I now think you're right. Provincial philosophies are latently systematic in that they secretly maintain that impulse to tie everything together by imposing their ready-made schemes (systematization), but they fail to take what is good about system, which is the organic development of such a system. In other words, they follow the letter, not the spirit, of system (pun not intended).

I don't think it's important so sort out this confusion (although the confusion might be entirely mine). What matters is:

1. Philosophy should treat phenomena as interconnected within an organized whole
2. This is possible without system in the traditional sense
3. And this takes what is good about system rather than merely abandoning it dismissively
4. Imposing one's own scheme on the phenomena from the outside is to take what's bad about system---the phenomena should be allowed to speak for themselves — Jamal

What he says about philosophical systems is a justification of his attempt to make sense of the world as an objective reality whose parts are connected without imposing an overarching metaphysical principle, such as spirit. — Jamal

But our disagreement here is just the result of the real ambivalence in his position, which is dialectical: he is both against and for system. — Jamal

Here I'm tempted as always to resolve the contradiction by saying that his position is not really one of dialectical contradiciton, that it's more like: he is against X aspects of system but he is for Y aspects of system, which replaces the contradiciton with a simple differentiation. But Adorno always resists this, believing that this is identity-thinking in action.

So I should ask myself: is something lost when I resolve the contradiciton in that way?

[...]

EDIT: The key here is that the persistence of contradictions is a mode of truth.

That's a bit weak but I'll leave it there. — Jamal

It is true that persistence of contradiction is a mode of truth, and this is part of Przywara's point (not to mention Nicholas of Cusa's coincidentia oppositorum, which influences Przywara).

Yet what I see in Adorno is a form of systematization around an opposition to "identity-thinking." I want to say that there is no thought that is not susceptible to systematization, and that every thinker is more or less systematic. But the curious question asks whether a thinker like Adorno who is emphatically opposed to "philosophical systems" in a thoroughgoing way could ever himself avoid a system erected around this goal—a goal that he energetically devotes himself to.

System-thinking is a form of monomania, and therefore anyone who is especially devoted to a singular cause will tend to be a system-thinker in one way or another. I would argue that the only way for the devoted person to avoid this is by devoting themselves to a cause that is not singular, and this is what the analogia entis or the coincidentia oppositorum attempts to provide. Causes which are negative and therefore act in opposition have an especially difficult time avoiding monomania. Adorno's cause is not only negative, but the thing that he opposes (identity-thinking) itself strikes me as being singular. At the same time, it does involve a certain ambiguity and subtlety which makes it vaguely familiar to Przywara's or Rommen's approach, but I think it will fail to avoid systems-thinking precisely because it is insufficiently ontologically grounded.

But again, I think the ultimate test here has to do with the way of life of the philosophers in question. Figures like Przywara or his student, Josef Pieper, intentionally lived lives that were resistant to systematization. Their activities, engagements, readings, and relationships were all significantly varied, which is what ultimately leads one away from monomania. Supposing that Adorno desperately wanted to oppose the Holocaust and its (logical) pre-conditions, the point here is that one can actually want to avoid the Holocaust too much, strange as that may seem. One can be led into a form of monomania even in their project to oppose pure evil (and this is a basic reason why evil is so pernicious). In order to avoid systems-thinking one is required to engage systems and even evil systems in paradoxical ways (e.g. Luke 6:29). Totalitarian thinking is very likely to breed totalitarian thinking, either by propagation or, more likely, by opposition. When one says, for example, "This must never happen again!," they inevitably commit themselves to a coercive and systematizing approach. They are forced to offer a program which will guarantee a certain outcome, and guarantees require systems.

(Literary depictions of this principle are present in the binding of Isaac, and also in the mirror opposite provided in the remarkable film, A Monster Calls. In a sub-story within that film, an apothecary refuses to heal a parson's child, precisely because the parson will stop at nothing to have his child healed. In a certain sense the parson had become a monomaniac, and the paradox is that his cause would have succeeded if not for his monomania.)

Invoking the specter of Christian nationalism here might thus be likened to invoking the threat of Stalinism to oppose the New Deal in that, arguably, the New Deal actually made a sort of American Stalinism less, not more likely precisely because it addressed the issues that motivated Stalinism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, it would be hard to overestimate how true this is. Factionalism breeds extremism. When we misrepresent another position in order to make it appear extreme, we are ourselves the ultimate creators of the extremism that will inevitably arise because of our misrepresentation.

For example, we've seen bad faith accusations of "Christian nationalism" for a long time, and now we're getting bona fide Christian nationalists. We've seen bad faith accusations of "Nazism" for a long time, and now we're getting bona fide Nazis. The same thing happens on the right with accusations of "Communism," although that is an older phenomenon.

Of course, professors are given tenure because their work upholds the goals of the institution: a professor will never be given tenure if they play a Socratic role of constant truth seeking. All institutions are fairly political in nature. — ProtagoranSocratist

That's true, but the tenured professor is less beholden to the institution than a non-tenured professor. The whole concept of tenure is in part meant to give a professor academic freedom without fear of being fired.

Right, and yet I think it is key to understand that societal values and managerial interests are somewhat different. I want to say that such people are valued by society, and although they pose a liability to a manager that a money-motivated person does not pose, nevertheless I don't think they pose that liability to society.

Well, except when they do pose that liability to society. But I want to say that someone who is interested in truth per se is not the same as someone who is interested in, "working for the good of the world." I think a healthy society does value people who are interested in truth and are motivated to pursue it in itself. Someone who is interested in goodness or love is more complicated insofar as the society is concerned. That's why someone like Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) wrote his encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," which points up the way that truth should always be normative in any endeavor that seeks good/betterment/improvement.

The problem of course is that I keep showing up, and they won't pay me if I'm going to show up anyway. — Hanover

Yeah. Granted, I think a society does value citizens who care about truth, but I don't think care for truth is incentivized in overtly material ways, such as by giving out money. People who care about truth are valued because they care about truth whether or not they are given money. They are valued because they cannot be bought, and it's pretty hard to give people money for intellectual work without biasing that intellectual work (although we do try, and one example would be university tenure).

Some may find it odd, but there is a direct parallel to the Old Testament prophets, especially when one compares the "employed prophets" to the prophets who are not being employed by the king and must therefore work out their subsistence in some other way.

BBC director general (Tim Davie) and the chief executive of BBC news (Deborah Turness) have both resigned over a debacle relating to misleading editing of footage of Donald Trump on January 6th. Quite a story!

But having all three, 1)research of your own choosing 2) and getting paid 3) is a bridge too far, otherwise folks would want to research Michelin starred restaurant's dessert menus. — LuckyR

Yep. :grin:

I'm not seeing the problem. There are research jobs in industry where folks are paid (often quite well) to push back the frontiers of ignorance, ie make new discoveries. — LuckyR

The problem could be seen by understanding that no one is paid to, "push back the frontiers of ignorance." Modern research along with the modern research university that it comes from are not oriented to truth per se. They are oriented to advances in particular fields for particular ends. For example, the reason STEM institutions (such as universities) receive so much funding from the government is because the government wants technological advances for the sake of security, industry, warfare, etc.

No one is paying for the end of, "pushing back the frontiers of ignorance." Ignorance is in a very real sense infinite. We could redirect all intellectual effort in the world towards studying ants, and we would never learn all there is to know about ants. The aim is not to, "push back the frontiers of ignorance," but rather to learn some specific thing for some specific reason, such as developing technology for the sake of human prosperity, national security, etc.

But sure, if the OP wants to work at a research institute or a think tank, then he could be paid to "study." Presumably he wants to study whatever he wants to study, not what some institution or think tank tells him to study.

A government could implement a robot tax, but the person responsible for paying such a tax is the robot's owner, not the robot (just as the property tax you speak of is paid by the owner of the property, not the property itself).

So the same question persists: Why would anyone want to pay you to do things that do not benefit them in any way? — Leontiskos

Because in an enlightened society humans don't search for selfish material gains but the sacred things like education and knowledge. — Copernicus

But you've answered a different question, namely the question, "Why would anyone want to pay you to do things that do not benefit them in a selfish, material way?" The question I asked was this: "Why would anyone want to pay you to do things that do not benefit them in any way?" For example, people will fund university scholarships, but only if they believe in the mission of the university.

We have a word for giving people things for their own benefit, and that word is not "payment." It is "charity" or "almsgiving."

If we think about the sort of knowledge that is good in itself (and not as a means to an end), then by that very fact it makes no sense to pay people to pursue such knowledge. Payment is a way of incentivizing someone as a means to an end. An end in itself is not susceptible to payment. This is precisely why Socrates objected to the Sophists.

Your knowledge, though is not mine, so why would I, through taxes, fund you? — Tobias

Right. I would suggest that should think about why anyone would want to pay him to study simply for the sake of studying, whether that payment occurs through individuals or through groups.

For example, he says:

At this point, humans need to develop advanced robotics to let them do all the physical and mental labour and let humans enjoy the fruits of production in their own bubbles (libraries, vacations, drug addiction, etc). — Copernicus

The idea here is that robots will handle productive labor, and robots will essentially pay humans. It's a form of slavery, where the robot provides everything the human needs and the human is devoted to leisure (except without the moral problem of enslaving a free being).

The problem is that the robot slave is always someone's robot slave. Therefore it is not the robot slave who "pays" you to study, go on vacation, etc. It is the owner of the robot slave who effectively "pays" you to [do nothing especially productive].

So the same question persists: Why would anyone want to pay you to do things that do not benefit them in any way? The whole notion of "payment" is thrown into question if the one "paying" does not receive anything in return.

You have a lot of other ideas to offer Bob, I don't want to see you gummed up on a thread that has seemingly run its course feeling like you have to defend yourself. You don't. — Philosophim

Yeah, I think the substantive discussion is largely behind us. :up:

I think Bob has done a good job defending his name. At this point the thread doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

- Fair enough.

Realize though how this post from earlier was meant to assuage the large number of doubts regarding the question of whether in-private moderation jockeying by ordinary members was occurring:

In fact, I haven't received a single private message complaining about this discussion. — Jamal

It appears as if this is no longer true.

I don't understand why you are DM me that you would like to be omitted from the discussion in this thread, of which I honored and respected, to just inject yourself yet again to spew false, defamatory, unsubstantiated, and spiteful comments about me. — Bob Ross

It's a good question.

Edit: Didn't meant to post that. Happened while I was copying into a PM chat. — Banno

And so we learn that Banno is sending PMs to try to drum up sentiment for the notion that Bob is a bigot, behind his back. This does not seem out of the ordinary for Banno, namely working privately behind the scenes to try to influence public threads without the knowledge of those he opposes within the threads. Is this good faith engagement on TPF?

Thanks. :up:

Again, I appreciate your engagement. But yeah, let's be done. :lol:

.

Here's the TL;DR that you seem to require:

• "I was on an international philosophy forum and I encountered someone who holds fundamentally different beliefs than I do, in good faith! He even transgressed one of my local taboos!"
• "That's horrible!"

Nope, not a personal attack, except perhaps against his judgement. He might be doing this unwittingly, with the best intentions. But he is doing it regardless. — hypericin

Okay, fine. But as has been pointed out, there are lots of LGBT individuals who agree with Bob, and who would find many who oppose him within this thread to be, "implying they are bad, immoral, and crazy." Do we care about them? Or do they not count? Is inadvertent offense objectionable when you are the one inadvertently offending people?

And so your answer is "no". — hypericin

I literally gave you an example of bigotry. If you don't know by now that I think bigotry involves a mode of belief and not a material proposition, then you haven't read anything I wrote.

And so if they are not, why should believing or promoting these propositions be bigoted either? — hypericin

Feel free to check out I've pointed to a few times already, along with the accompanying conversation.

You are right in saying that if a material proposition is not inherently bigoted, then believing that material proposition is not inherently bigoted. What is needed is a particular mode of belief, such as obstinacy (for example).

A common form of taboo occurs when bigotry becomes correlated with certain beliefs in a given time and place. Given our current time and place, Holocaust denial is correlated with bigotry. When this fact is combined with the condition where Holocaust denial is beyond the Overton window (and therefore is correlated with bigotry according to the vast majority), a society will prohibit Holocaust denial.

Prohibitions based in aversion to bigotry are one form of taboo. All taboo is culturally situated. If it is taboo to say, "Women are defined by their sex," in country X, and it is taboo to say, "Women are not defined by their sex," in country Y, then each country will view those claims differently. People will be offended by two opposite claims in each of the two countries.

If those two countries come together, they cannot simply impose their taboos on one another (which is what you are doing). Instead they must recognize that what is at stake is a taboo, and engage in rational and good-faith discussion about their differing points of view. See especially the bolded:

I want to emphasize that these are not easy things for someone like Jamal to navigate. I don't even know what I would do if I held to Western European sexual ethics and I were in his shoes. The answer is in no way obvious, and I don't want to pretend to oversimplify the issue. In any case, I think that folks like @Bob Ross should try to understand how difficult it is for Western Europeans to countenance traditional sexual ethics, and the Western Europeans (and those who agree with them) should try hard to entertain the possibility that some people who hold to traditional sexual ethics really are acting in good faith, and are not bigots. (But in my personal opinion, I think Western Europeans need to be more open to debating their sexual ethics given the fact that their sexual ethics are geographically and historically idiosyncratic.) — Leontiskos

(I.e. The taboos that accompany the sexual ethics of Western Europe are also geographically and historically idiosyncratic.)

Bob is not only participating in... — hypericin

I'll take that as a "yes," which contradicts what you just said. You say no one is personally attacking Bob and then you continue to personally attack Bob. That's the sort of gaslighting that Bob has been dealing with throughout, and it's not odd that he would defend himself.

Let's play a game. Make a claim that you believe is actually bigoted, if you think any exist. — hypericin

The problem is with your claim in (1). Bigotry involves a mode of behavior or belief, and therefore cannot be identified by merely pointing to a behavior or belief. For example, if bigotry is defined as "obstinate attachment to a belief," then the holding of a material position can never be sufficient for bigotry. This is because obstinacy is a mode of belief, and no belief is inherently obstinate. — Leontiskos

I've pointed out your error from the start, wherein you fail to understand that bigotry is a mode of behavior or belief, not an intrinsic quality of a proposition. Your response has been to reject the idea that bigotry requires obstinacy, and more generally to reject the idea that bigotry requires a mode of belief. Maybe have a look at the first sentence of 's post which you quoted approvingly.

So if one wants to point to bigotry, they cannot merely point to a claim. If you want me to point to bigotry, I can do so. In fact I already have, if indirectly. The corollary of what I say in the following quote is that those who Davis failed to convince were bigots:

Whether any claim, "X is Y," is obstinate, intolerant, based on "dislike of other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life," etc., depends on the context. Again, bigotry is a ↪mode of behavior or belief. To give an example, Daryl Davis is a famous black man who convinced dozens to leave and denounce the KKK, simply by interacting with them and showing them that their views were mistaken. Davis convinced some and failed to convince others. The ones he convinced were, in some relevant sense, not bigots. They were not obstinate given that they changed their belief when presented with evidence to the contrary.

If you were right and everyone who says, "Black people are less intelligent on average than white people," is inherently a bigot, then it makes no sense that Davis convinced some and failed to convince others. The fact of the matter is that some of those whom Davis encountered held that belief in a mode that involves bigotry, and some did not. Or if someone wants to insist on a particular definition, they must at least admit that some whom Davis encountered were more bigoted than others, despite holding the same material proposition. — Leontiskos

I don't mean to be too hard on you. As , you have engaged in substantive argument against the OP (or something vaguely related to the OP) more than anyone else in this thread. For example, you've disputed the factuality of the medical claims upon which some of @Bob Ross' arguments depend. It's to your credit that you are often one of the persons who is trying to offer a reasoned account in threads where others are not.

If you want to call it a day, that's fine by me. I'm a bit tired of the topic as well.

What is at stake is not Bob Ross's personal attributes. No one here knows him well enough to even be interested in arguing this. — hypericin

Er, but that has been a huge part of this thread, namely personal attacks and accusations on Bob. You yourself are arguing that someone who says what Bob is saying is bigoted, are you not?

I defined rhetorical bigotry. — hypericin

And I pointed to the problems with your definition and your approach before offering .

And you, in your exhausting tendency to right fight each and every point, no matter how contorted your position becomes, as well as interpolating positions of mine that I don't hold, while seeming to ignore my actual arguments. — hypericin

Do you not admit that your argument has been very strange and "contorted"? You have been arguing about whether statements are "definitional" or "non-definitional" in order to try to support your claims of bigotry. When you take that pedantic route and erect curious and undefined terms like "definitional" and "substantive" you should expect similarly pedantic responses. Throughout I have been trying to get you to clarify your terms and your arguments, to little avail.

Yes, but I think the Joker, Tyler Durden of Fight Club, and other similar characters play to a slightly different ethos. The Joker burns all the money he receives in the Dark Knight. He isn't pursuing meglothymia through a sort of "capitalism by other means," but is turning against society itself (often to point out its own fraudulence). He is beyond the need for recognition. There is a bit of "divine madness" there ("holy fools" also shunned custom to engage in social commentary, although obviously in a very different way). I think these sorts of characters are extremely relevant to the appeal of "trolling" mentioned in the other thread on that topic.

For instance, when the Joker gives two boats, one full of regular citizens, one full of prisoners, the power to blow each other up in the Dark Knight, and then threatens to kill everyone if one side won't murder the other, the whole point is that he is exposing the "real" human being that lies beneath the niceties of the "old morality" (or something like that).

Hannibal Lecter is also a good example here because his total shedding of custom and ability to endure suffering turn him into a superhuman of sorts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, and the interesting question arises: If evil is privative, why does our culture find it so fascinating? Presumably value is being found in the distortion that is evil because one sympathizes in various ways, or because one has experienced the same desire for overreacting.

I'm growing weary of nonsense such as this. The KKK grand wizard was not unbigoted because Davis managed to turn them. Davis is remarkable because he was able to turn a paradigmatic bigot. — hypericin

And I'm growing weary of your fallacious approach and your inability to engage arguments. Again:

Whether any claim, "X is Y," is obstinate, intolerant, based on "dislike of other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life," etc., depends on the context. Again, bigotry is a ↪mode of behavior or belief. To give an example, Daryl Davis is a famous black man who convinced dozens to leave and denounce the KKK, simply by interacting with them and showing them that their views were mistaken. Davis convinced some and failed to convince others. The ones he convinced were, in some relevant sense, not bigots. They were not obstinate given that they changed their belief when presented with evidence to the contrary.

If you were right and everyone who says, "Black people are less intelligent on average than white people," is inherently a bigot, then it makes no sense that Davis convinced some and failed to convince others. The fact of the matter is that some of those whom Davis encountered held that belief in a mode that involves bigotry, and some did not. Or if someone wants to insist on a particular definition, they must at least admit that some whom Davis encountered were more bigoted than others, despite holding the same material proposition. — Leontiskos

Your approach is apparently to claim that all of those who Davis encountered were equally bigoted, because they each held to the same material proposition. That makes no sense. If you cannot admit that someone who changes their mind is less bigoted than someone who won't, then your own inability to change your own mind is something that should give you serious pause.

Very, very well said. — hypericin

It is a strawman to think that this turns on propositionality. Everything I said holds just as well even if we eschew propositionality. There is no premise that Davis engaged in some sort of formal, propositional argument (although he did at times engage in formal argumentation with his interlocutors on the matter of racism).

Heck, the whole underlying reality here is that we all know @Bob Ross is not bigoted, not because of any propositional presentation, but because we have interacted with him. It's precisely the same.

Everyone looks at that story and says, "I'm the black person." But often times we are just as likely to be the white people in the group. Its why dialogue is so important. — Philosophim

That's right. Both parties came to the table to engage in earnest dialogue. Those who refuse to do even this do not allow themselves the opportunity to learn whether they are the one who is the bigot. They do not permit any scrutiny of their own beliefs, even by themselves.

Would it be helpful if I formulated objections for you? I think I understand what you would want to say.

Objection 1. “It is unjust to oppose a person for their homosexuality in the same way that it is unjust to oppose a person for their race. It is unjust to oppose a person qua race because people have no control over their race. In the same way, it is unjust to oppose a person qua homosexuality because people have no control over their sexual orientation. Both cases are the same insofar as they impute fault where no fault could exist. (Furthermore, it would be wrong and unnatural for someone to abstain from exercising the sexual desires they experience.)”

Objection 2. “It is unjust to say that the thing in which someone finds their core identity is not good; traditionalists say that homosexuality is not good; some people find their core identity in homosexuality; therefore traditionalists are unjust.”

Objection 3. “The forms of injustice depicted in Objection 1 and Objection 2 are so obvious and self-evident that it is extremely likely that the person who transgresses justice in these ways is a bigot.”

Is that approximately what you would want to say?

And I responded. Words change all the time, that's what language does. This does not make a definition a substantive claim. Definitions are claims about words, not claims about the world. — hypericin

That's right, and that's why you are mistaking a predication for a definition. A claim like, "Schizophrenia is a mental illness," is a predication, not a definition. Someone could say, "I am defining Schizophrenia as a mental illness," but the basic claim we are talking about is a posteriori, not a priori. Bob is obviously not saying, "Homosexuality is_df a mental illness." He is using "is" in a predicative manner, not a definitional manner.

Here's the problem: How can a claim which depends on a substantive claim be non-substantive? For example:

1...
2...
— Leontiskos

You are mistaking a definition for a logical argument. That isn't remotely how words work. — hypericin

You're just avoiding the argument. You claim that something which is known tautologically, by definition, depends on extrinsic a posteriori knowledge. That's a logical contradiction.

Not a new claim — hypericin

It is a new claim given that you have never made that claim in the thread prior to this point.

The idea is not exactly that it is false, but that it falls into to a conceptual pattern of harmful, prejudicial, demeaning claims, which are additionally seldom (if ever) true. That bigotry is noxious should be well evident from its history. — hypericin

Bigotry is noxious, but we are asking whether Bob's claim is bigotry. You are still begging the question.

It is a widespread view of how a word is used. One can believe that schizophrenia is psychological in origin while still using the word correctly. Just like one can believe that serotonergic, not dopaminergic neurotransmission is the neurotransmitter at fault. But to use the word without knowing that it is a mental illness is to use it incompetently. — hypericin

I mean, "Schizophrenia" was coined in a psychological context to replace the older, "dementia praecox." So you could argue that it is "definitional" ("non-substantial") to claim that Schizophrenia is a mental illness. The problem with your argument is that none of this is true for homosexuality.

Indeed, the claim that a posteriori claims are somehow bigoted is actually rather crazy. We make non-"definitional," "substantive" claims all the time. It is not bigotry to do so.

Do you think "Houses house people" is a substantive claim? — hypericin

Suppose it is. Would it become bigotry?

We're going in circles. Again, the point is that bigotry is not a phenomenon of material propositions. It depends on how someone holds a proposition, not what they hold. Something you never answered:

Whether any claim, "X is Y," is obstinate, intolerant, based on "dislike of other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life," etc., depends on the context. Again, bigotry is a ↪mode of behavior or belief. To give an example, Daryl Davis is a famous black man who convinced dozens to leave and denounce the KKK, simply by interacting with them and showing them that their views were mistaken. Davis convinced some and failed to convince others. The ones he convinced were, in some relevant sense, not bigots. They were not obstinate given that they changed their belief when presented with evidence to the contrary.

If you were right and everyone who says, "Black people are less intelligent on average than white people," is inherently a bigot, then it makes no sense that Davis convinced some and failed to convince others. The fact of the matter is that some of those whom Davis encountered held that belief in a mode that involves bigotry, and some did not. Or if someone wants to insist on a particular definition, they must at least admit that some whom Davis encountered were more bigoted than others, despite holding the same material proposition. — Leontiskos

When Kierkegaard speaks of 'Christendom', he refers to his congregation where they confess a faith that requires a life lived differently than the "worldliness" that most are comfortable with. — Paine

Right.

Christendom also cannot be dismissed as simply "fake" because it is through its survival that the conditions of 'worldliness' have changed. That is what I meant to emphasize in the passage from Works of Love — Paine

Yes, I agree.

Life in Christendom is not complete but is an agent of change in the world. In this sense it is the source of the equality of individuals expressed through many works of the Enlightenment. They have value but are insufficient for the engagement Kierkegaard is calling for. The highest wisdom one can look for without that engagement is that of Socrates, whether one lives in Copenhagen or Athens. — Paine

Yes, good.

That is the crisis missing from Penner's depiction of the secular. — Paine

I assume you don't have access to the Penner chapter? If that is so, I will restrict myself to what has already been quoted from that chapter.

The part of Penner that I was focusing on was his idea that Socrates presents something superior to Enlightenment secularism. This is because secularism wants to be a teacher instead of a midwife, and yet for Socrates (and Kierkegaard) this is confused. One must restrict themselves to being a midwife and forgo the role of teacher, which is reserved for God. (Except, of course, insofar as one teaches precisely through midwifery.) This bears on the OP.

But of course you are right that the "pseudo-Christianity" of the Enlightenment is not without value.

Life in Christendom is not complete but is an agent of change in the world. In this sense it is the source of the equality of individuals expressed through many works of the Enlightenment. — Paine

Incidentally, do you see the individualism such as is found in the West as uniquely Christian, such that it would not come from other cultures? I've seen some folk claiming such a thing recently.

- Take care. :roll:

There are a lot of LGBT individuals who disagree with the sexual ethics of Western Europe, though they are denied a voice:

The kicker for me is that I know lots of gay people who agree with Bob, and we have had great conversations about these topics. I realize it is very hard for the activist to reckon with such a fact, and of course when the fact is spied out coercion from the LGBT activist follows almost immediately. It would be hard to overemphasize the extent of bullying and coercion such people feel at the hands of LGBT activists, even to the point of falsely speaking for them and refusing to grant them any voice at all. They are subject to some of the most vicious attacks if they fail to fall into line with the cultural orthodoxy. Two of the people I have in mind are afraid to "come out" publicly because they fear the LGBT community. Their support meetings have been pushed underground after the meetings were infiltrated by reporters who doxed certain members, destroying their careers and lives. — Leontiskos

No, so long as it’s taken to be an oversimplification of real-world applications, where the criteria that determines better or worse is context-dependent and often multidimensional: Take intelligence for example. Einstein’s intelligence is not Darwin’s intelligence, such that each is far better than the other’s in the relevant context addressed. Neither are these two intelligences equal nor is one intelligence better than the other in any objective sense. Then there’s the artistic intelligence of, say, Michelangelo. The architectural intelligence of Gaudi. That of Kafka’s. And so forth. — javra

Okay, but I included the proposition, "If X is better according to some criterion, then X is preferable according to that criterion." Perhaps you would prefer that I explicitly include another proposition, one which I took to be implied, "If X is better according to some criterion, then X is not necessarily better in general." I of course agree with this proposition.

But even when assuming that 100% of the human population is in fact bisexual — javra

But I have not assumed such a thing. I literally said, "if we accept that there are bisexual people who can choose..." I did not say, "If we accept that 100% of the human population is in fact bisexual." Indeed, my argument makes no use of such a premise, nor do I see it as plausible.

...your post neither addresses why homosexuality ought to be exterminated from the population nor the how this ought to then be done. — javra

Because I don't think such a thing should be done. Why would you assume that I think such a thing should be done? Nothing in my post says anything to that effect. Isn't it strange and uncharitable to simply assume that your interlocutor wants to exterminate an entire class of people?

You actually seem to have managed to ignore almost the entirety of my post, along with imputing to me strange and uncharitable positions. Specifically, I explicitly asked you four questions. You only answered one or two of them, namely the preliminary ones.

(This is why I don't tend to argue these topics on TPF. Over the years it has become a place where one cannot present an argument and have that argument addressed without being imputed with all sorts of strange, uncharitable, and extraneous positions.)