At the high school level, at least, requiring most topics isn't bad, otherwise most students would not take anything. College is a different matter, though.

Indeed, neither lecturing nor homework are beneficial. — Banno

Not agreed. This is straight rubbish.

Providing guidance as to how one ought behave socially is pivotal to teaching; One might pretend that teachers are not moral instructors, but it would be no more than pretence. — Banno

Agreed.

If that's the case, seems like teachers wasted a lot of time lecturing, assigning homework, and testing on stuff most of us largely forgot that wasn't social. I guess we learned to mostly get along being forced to learn in a place with a lot of people we didn't particularly care bout for seven hours a day. Preparation for the office, I suppose. — Marchesk

Speaking of the United States, I don't think you realize the degree to which the state has its hands in teacher performance and how they have to teach. Tests, I would agree, have been over emphasized, but again, teachers are forced to put the focus on them, otherwise they'll see pay cuts or even be fired.

Let him be, then. No sense getting so worked up.

As I understand it, John rues being an asshat even though he's just being honest about his perspective. If this is what he means, I can't fault him much. Maybe he realizes that he can be a prick, so he tries not to be a prick at all, even if he ought to be at times.

But I'm not really afraid of being a dicklip to someone if I have no doubts about my being right. If I think that something needs to be said, I will probably say it. There's no sense being obtuse if one is bothered for good reason. And if someone takes offense without giving equally sound reasons for why they've reacted that way, then tough!

Teachers aren't intended to be moral instructors anymore. Yet, in reality, the expectations for most teachers in too many schools is for them to be like parents to children that have abysmal home lives, which necessitates them taking on certain responsibilities that are not in their job descriptions. This is the disconnect, at least in the US, between school and state. The assjamming of tests, STEM programs, and other drivels on teachers is just another way of ignoring the real problems.

Articulate clearly what "way" he has behaved in.

And have I said anything about myself for that matter? — Agustino

Then why are you critiquing John who also hasn't thought of himself in such a way? Come on, Agu.

I wouldn't imagine, say, a saint or a mystic saying things like he's saying, that's all. Would you? — Agustino

There's nothing saintly or mystical about anything you've written either, so I don't see why you've elevated yourself to sit atop a high horse.

It's rather naive to judge someone based solely on what they say on an internet forum. I've been a troll on other forums, even been banned for it, but does that really say anything about my character? Nearly everyone that I've met, physically, in my life haven't even been able to judge me after years of knowing me, so the idea that you can write people on and off some imaginary list of who's good and who's bad is straight stupid.

Ya just now realized that? >:O

Explain.

I didn't mean that in some monkish sabbatical sense, but more that ignoring someone isn't more productive than to talk it out, :D

Talk is richer than silence, though O:)

Material reality forms the basis of our experiencing dreams. There's nothing completely foreign in our dreams. This isn't to say that what transpires in dreams cannot be unintelligible, but they're always grounded in this world.

Ah, so now that Agustino has gone to bed, you've chosen me as the next plaything for your boredom? Sorry, but I find your lack of tact disturbing. Toodles, o/

which of those comments would you count as being merely honest expressions of the one's impressions of the other, and which would you count as being 'adhominous', as imputing something that one could not possibly know about the other, or as being deliberately insulting as opposed to attempting to be a corrective to a perceived lack of humility and generally obnoxious behavior ? — John

Because none of that claptrap is on-topic.

And please stop with the dopey gifs... — John

I was told by a moderator to only limit my use of Star Trek gifs, so... >:)

Plus that's how I looked reading your posts. I'm just attempting to be accurate.

What's a "man period" though? — John

It looks like: shoulders straightened, chest puffed up, dick out, (Agustino's imagining Borat at this point), tie straightened, fedora donned, wikipedia pages on philosophy at the ready, and then the moody slapping ensues...

To be honest if you think your philosophical ability is superior to all of those on this forum, then I would say you are woefully deluded. — John

I would not count you as being in the top twenty percent of thinkers on this forum — John

To be honest, your a young guy, and it shows; I see you as a philosophical pup, so to speak. — John

An argument to do what, to show what a fool you are? — Agustino

I did in fact write what I think and why. If you bother to read it. Really you're disappointing. — Agustino

I don't think you realize how infinitesimal you have become. — John

Maybe you're growing too old and senile John. — Agustino

If you had even one shred of the wisdom you claim you have, you would never have started any of this. I really think you should be ashamed of yourself. — Agustino

if you want to continue satisfying your jealousies, you can do so by yourself. — Agustino

Stop bitching. And I don't care if you're on your man period or not.

Welcome to the forum!

I think the problem here is whether or not fear is an innate quality in all things. Can something living have fear without either being conscious of said fear, or even what fear is in itself? Say I go and find a tribe in the south Pacific somewhere that's never had contact with modern Man, and I show them a toaster. They'll probably fear it (along with me), because they don't understand, but would you say that they feared the toaster before they knew what a toaster was? I wouldn't say so. But again, it's probably more important to decide whether fear requires consciousness. This question, like every question, only matters when one thinks about it, then tries to apply it to others. Does the zebra fear the cheetah without there being a conscious observer that analyzes the behavior and labels from there?

I'm still trying to figure out what went through Wayfarer's mind when he copy-pasta'd wikipedia,

This actually makes a bit of sense, damn...*scribbles down in diary*

By virtue of the accepted meanings of the words 'nothung' and 'everythung' — John

Stop being obscurantist.

How's that?

The world is nothing.

The world is in God. — John

Nothing is in God? If God is being in itself, how come it can have an essence of nothing?

Wayfarer, did you plagiarise this from Wikipedia? — Agustino

Agu, do you even know what plagiarism is? Here, let me tell you:

Plagiarism is the "wrongful appropriation" and "stealing and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions" and the representation of them as one's own original work.The idea remains problematic with unclear definitions and unclear rules. The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral and originality as an ideal emerged in Europe only in the 18th century, particularly with the Romantic movement.

...wait....what have I just done? :-#

Ah, so you do have to be blasted in order to believe in a god? This makes much more sense to me, now.

I don't think it follows that because thoughts emanate from the mind, then thoughts, therefore, are "trapped" within the brain, that that's where the location is.

If it doesn´t have a place/set of places than how can you argue that it "is"? What would it mean to "be" in that way which truth "is" to you? — Perdidi Corpus

Well I dunno. Thoughts "are" because they interact within the world. It's like wave-particle duality, if you're familiar with that, or more complex quantum mechanics. Sense of place isn't always very clear.

I can give you a speculation of the general region of space in which my thoughts were contained. — Perdidi Corpus

Oh? Where?

Can you do the same for truth? — Perdidi Corpus

I would argue that truth is not of material quality, therefore it need not have a specified "place."

Can you nail down precisely where your own thoughts are that made this post?

The suicide bomber has no doubt his action is moral. He literally bets his life on it. Yet he is mistaken. Does that surprise you somehow? Or does it surprise you that the man who gives to a beggar out of compassion but is not absolutely sure he has done the right thing is judged to have acted morally? Or that the woman who unthinkingly dives into a pond on seeing a drowning child is? — Baden

Lack of doubt doesn't just concern what I think. If you're attempting to blow people up in a market square or fuck bitches at the local bar, then your judgement is not the only one that must be taken into account.

More to the point, do you actually agree with this statement or not? — Baden

Yes and no. We all must still make judgments on the rightness and wrongness of things and what we do/do not do. Such judgement is less ensured by the suicide bomber because he's not removed all doubt through reason, he has merely sunk himself into delusion.

What does the gif matter, folks? It wasn't part of an argument. Can we get on... — Baden

If a gif can't be posted in reaction to something funny or puzzling or whatever else, then why do we have emoticons on the forum? Come on, we gotta be encompassing in our rules, here!

Again, it isn't wrong simply because it's done for pleasure. It's done because eating someone is wrong. It would be wrong even if it wasn't done for pleasure. — Michael

Why is eating someone wrong?

You just keep repeating the same fallacy. You need to show me that having sex is wrong because it's done for fun. Giving examples of things that are wrong because they involve abuse and killing people doesn't show me this. — Michael

Answer the above question and maybe I'll start to make more sense.

The lack of a mental narrative doesn't ensure the immorality of your actions any more than the presence of one ensures their morality. — Baden

How else might one come to moral judgement if not through reasoning with the mind the validity of a statement or action through the means of removing all doubt? Can something be moral, however you think of it, if there is doubt surrounding it?

All this talk of balls makes me want to fix some spaghetti and veggie meat balls for myself, because I'm a selfish, callous prick, >:)

The child molester isn't in the wrong because he's doing something because it feels good but because what he's doing is abuse. — Michael

The pedophile is in the wrong for many reasons, one of which being my qualm.

Whether or not it feels good is irrelevant. So

>:O How is this an argument?

this isn't a reason for consensual, adult sex for pleasure being vile behaviour.

Sure, so the cannibal who finds someone that has the fetish of wanting to be eaten alive isn't doing any wrong because the relationship between both of them involves consenting adults! :D

Again, it seems like a slippery slope fallacy. You're saying that because some things done because they feel good can be wrong then anything done because it feels good is wrong. It just doesn't follow.

Why? If a principle has exceptions then it's not a principle.

Well, generally moral systems require that for an action to be deemed immoral it must as a minimum result in some kind of harm to another moral agent (or at least another sentient being) either directly or indirectly. There's no more indication that drinking water from a river (whether it feels good or not) does that any more than raising one's arm all other things being equal. — Baden

I wouldn't say that morality depends upon physical harm.

It doesn't mean that either action is necessarily amoral either. There may be a moral element in the wider context. But it's not present in either example given. You just don't have information to make a moral judgement. The same applies to having sex simply because it feels good. Creating a mental narrative about why you do things doesn't conjure morality into your actions. And the thought that it does is actually quite dangerous. — Baden

I'm not conjuring morality into my actions willy nilly, Baden. If I had doubts about my actions, I would not do them. I've attempted to reason, and thus remove all doubt, from why I do what I do, and subsequently what I do not do. Seems like the person that doesn't consider the morality of their actions is rather the more dangerous individual, no?

mm - so character is always good? Someone can't have a deficient or evil character? — Agustino

I'd say so. "Evil character" is an oxymoron to me.

Because if love actualises the character, this implies that the character is good, because I suppose you won't tell me that loving someone will actualise their evil character would you? — Agustino

Hmm, love sparks the good in Man, although this is not to say that Man, therefore, is good. If we're still sticking with the poetic language, character is of the ocean, and the fallen nature of us is found in the desert once ashore.

Edit: I suppose that if one were to say that I had "poor character", they'd be referring to my shoddy inability to do the good, not that my character is somehow inherently bad. The struggle that I have found is to remain of good character even when love has been given less in my life, and only I am one who is giving my love to others. Unless I'm receiving as powerful a giving as I myself am giving, then I'm unintentionally draining my ocean of love, which can lead to cracks and fissures where I might lie, hurt someone, do something I didn't mean to. I know of a few people in my life that once had a surplus of character, but which has since eroded because of, well, lots of reasons.

To clarify: A person drinking some water from a river is immoral when done purely because it feels good because it involves someone taking from something (a river) whereas raising an arm for the same reason isn't immoral because it doesn't involve that? — Baden

Perhaps. How might this be incorrect?

Unless you're saying that having sex because it feels good is vile behaviour then this is a red herring. — Michael

I am, yes. And no, I don't see how anything I've said is a red herring.

And if you are saying that having sex because it feels good is vile behaviour then what's vile about it?

As I replied to you just before, if good feeling is the foundation of your having sex, then you're way in the wrong. The pedophile can use the same excuse as you by appealing to his desire to have a good feeling by having sex with a minor as being his first priority. Such is, however, especially wrong. Pretty sure we agreed on that, yet you're still uncertain for some reason I can't divine.

I forgot to give you my answer about character.

I'd say that at birth character is like an empty ocean basin that only love may fill toward having a more full actualization of itself.

I'm not currently down on the whole, "character comes out of no where, and some people are awesomely moral studs, while others are not. Why? lul, who knows, unlucky."

If it's necessary to kill the animal to survive and that reason is a sufficient moral justification for doing so then the action is moral. — Baden

No, the reason for the action is moral, not the action itself. Slaughtering the animal is still immoral, but it is necessarily immoral, in this example, because it brings about the good (one's moral reason for performing the action.)

Edit: This can be evidenced, say, in self-defense. If someone breaks into my home and attempts to choke me to death, but I choke him to death first - so as to prevent him from killing me, of course - then I've committed a necessary evil, to put it another way. I still killed someone, which is immoral, but I needed to in order to preserve the good. On the flipside, the person that breaks into my home and tries to kill me is attempting to do that which is unnecessarily immoral, because one need not choke someone to death unless, as I've said, you're acting out of self-defense, just as I would be acting in self-defense by trapping an animal out in the wild so that I might survive.

I think you misunderstand. He's using unnecessarily in a non-logical sense, which is why I didn't get it at first either. If I'm starving, and I kill an animal to eat, then it is necessarily immoral because I NEED to do that action to survive. So necessary has to do with your own needs, not with a logical connection. — Agustino

Yes.

But I wonder how far you would take this. What about raising my arm, for example. Is it immoral to raise my arm purely because it feels good? Does one have to have a conscious reason for every action to escape doing wrong? — Baden

Drinking water, eating food, having sex - these all entail someone taking from something or someone else that is giving. Raising your arm for pleasure seems amoral to me...up until raising said arm punches someone in the face. I'd be on board with stretching my argument all the way, though. I just wouldn't put as much value in the immorality of raising one's arm for pleasure compared to the immorality of someone shanking you with the same arm.

Do you want the poet's answer? :D