optimism I believe is overall a healthier frame of mind and probably does equip us to make better choices. — Pantagruel

What if optimism tells us, "hey, God will save us all, don't worry, we are made in his image, just forget it."

Good luck then to you.

Optimism alone or pessimism alone are ridiculous measures when it comes to fighting a physical phenomenon that threatens mankind.

But which of the two is more pragmatic? — Mark Dennis

Neither pessimism nor optimism plays a role in pragmatism. Your personal opinion on the future of a physical phenomenon is completely negligible. It is null and void. It is immaterial, it is totally irrelevant.

@Creativesoul:Jerry and Tom call Tyson's mother a whore. Phil, the strongest boy in the class who is a good fighter, does nothing, though he knows that it's an unfair call. Phil knows that Tyson's mother is not a prostitute, and he does not step in to stop the daunting of Tyson by Jerry and Tom, which continues. Tyson is way too weak to fight Jerry, and he is way to weak to fight Tom, and he definitely can't fight the two at the same time.

Do those behaviours break the rules of acceptable conduct at your workplace? Are you allowed to act like that? — creativesoul

I don't think any reasonable employer would allow his employees to spend time on the job gambling illegally, instead of doing work. I am surprised you had to ask.

@Creativesoul:

Jerry calls Tyson's mother a whore. During math class, Tyson retaliates by starting a fight.

Tyson's behaviour is not acceptable.

-----------

I am not going to give you any more examples that refute that your statement of what's ethical is not PERVASIVE and UNIQUE to ethics.

You can carry on the vehement and adamant claim that your statement is pervasive and unique to all ethical acts. I won't respond.

I will respond to you on other threads, though. I have no ill will for you, and I am not pissed off, I am just simply not prepared to fight against frivolous claims, it tires me out and it leads to nowhere.

That's the answer. I stand beside it. — creativesoul

I can't fight against private opinions. I disproved that your description stands. You stand beside it, but IT does not stand.

Understand.

Creative soul, if at work which is computer programming, I start to play loud music, or else start to sing loudly, or play roulette with my co-workers, I display unacceptable behaviour, but they are not unethical.

If they ARE unethical, then please show me what is the underlying ethical consideration that makes them unacceptably unethical.

-------------------
@Creativesoul et al, please don't start bombarding me with untested, random or near-random, and in any way inconclusive stabs at what you think is a feature of ethics. Please think it through, before you post it. I don't wish to spend my time refuting something that a five-year-old child can do. I ask you to please only come up with features that stick to the requested parameters, and I ask you to rigorously test them before you post them. Thanks.

You've shown that principles might have non-ethical applications, not that this invalidates their ethical ones. No more than a tire used on a car invalidates the use of a tire on a bicycle. — Artemis

Just a side-issue: You denied that the example we talked about was a principle of ethics; you said it was only a feature (again, I may have misquoted you) of ethics.

I wish you would settle with one qualifier, that is, you'd settle what you call the thing that we talk about. I'll gladly go along, but I wish to avoid a defence by you, in which you say "no, that's not a principle of ethics, it's a quality in ethics, please stop misquoting me, god must be atheist" and at the same time and in the same respect you could also say "no, that's not a quality in ethics, it's a principle, stop misquoting me, god must be atheist".

I wish to avoid that. But that's not a major issue right now. Right now I am curious to see that you can show a feature (principle or quality) of ethics, which is unique and pervasive to all ethics. Both UNIQUE and PERVASIVE.

You've shown that principles might have non-ethical applications, not that this invalidates their ethical ones. No more than a tire used on a car invalidates the use of a tire on a bicycle. — Artemis

Precisely!! You got it right.

Now show me that ethics is a different thing from everything else, by showing at least one quality (which may be a combination of qualities) that applies only to ethics. If you show that, then you prove that ethics exist.

I claim that you can't show that.

Much like that car tires and bicycle tires are both round, and made of a material that has a high coefficient in their resistance to pavement, but the difference is that car tires can support a car, and bicycle tires can't support a car; furthermore, car tires don't fit bicycle wheels and bicycle tires don't fit car tires.

This way I showed that at least a difference exists between car tires and bicycle tires, and they are different, from, say, tables, mind bottlenecks, spokes, and ratchet screwdrivers.

I wish you to show something in the same vein that shows that ethics is different from everything else, in combination of qualities or by a single quality. I put it to you, that you can't.

Which part did I ignore? Maybe we cross-posted. I so totally did not ignore anything you wrote. If I did, please point it out.

P.s. I am going shopping. Be back and sometime later today I'll resume responding if you wrote anything new.

And I already stated a common ethical principle: avoid causing unnecessary suffering. — Artemis

Right, but it does not apply exclusively to ethics. Please read my car seat example as a support of my claim in this matter.

So you can say that ethics has to do with humans. But so does love, hate, and pilfering.

Or you can say that ethics has to do with fair trade and with respect for the next guy. That also applies to a whole range of things.

But if you find one thing that pertains to ethics, all ethics, and to nothing but ethics, then you showed me that ethics indeed exist.

Why does it have to be exclusive to ethics? I don't understand that criterion. — Artemis

This is so that we can separate ethics from other things. I say ethics as a universal quality does not exist. If you can give just one thing that is exclusive to ethics and applies to all ethics, then while at the same time it does not prove ethics, and while at the same time it does not define ethics, the fact that there is one quality that is typical to ethics, and only to ethics, the existence of that one quality will give some respectability to the validity of the claim that ethics exists.

However, if you can't find even one, then I rest my case, and feel satisfied that you failed to show me that ethics exist.

I will have to get back to you later about the video. — Artemis

Thanks, look forward to it.

It's just a matter of how much you want to change and whether you can accept help or not. — Terrapin Station

I believe in freewill to some degree but I am not confident about my ability to change in any fundamental way. — Andrew4Handel

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but it will take ten years of analysis at $400 a session, and the lightbulb itself will need to want to change.

Some countries or societies approach mental health as a public responsibility and try and help the person in the community with diverse community input. — Andrew4Handel

I lived in such a country. Basically they kick the mentally and/or emotionally problematic people around. The community gives them the scraps of everything in life, and some have to stay up all night to take the contents of the septic tank in buckets to the river and dump it there.

but this was like free pleasure. — Andrew4Handel

"There is no such thing as a free lunch." = proverb. If you feel guilty about sex, that's the price you pay. Other people pay strippers, or hookers, or whatever. You pay in guilt. Same difference, you pay, they take, you give, you get.

"Can't buy me love." -- The Beatles. You can buy sex, via guilt or via prossies, but you can't buy love. You fall into it. And in about three months to a year (my average has been 6 months) you fall out of it. It's called "honeymoon phase", and it's nature's (evolutionarily developed) way to catch you in a legally and socially binding relationship. During which in our evolutionary past you got married, irrevokably, and that was binding, so much so that when the honeymoon phase fizzes out, you are still stuck there with your wife or husband. For life.

"Losing My Religion" -- R.E.M. After the honeymoon phase you regain your identity, you again are looking out for numero uno, that is, for your own interest. But you don't need to leave your pregnant wife or your no-good husband.,.. you can work things out, and half the joy of life is the struggle to make the best of what really is an intolerable situation. The other half is swallowing the guilty pleasures of life.

"'Till death do us part" -- a long marriage with a compatible partner ensures a steady, comfortable, stable existence, with normally much longer longevity for the man in the partnership compared to single or divorced men. A two-horse carriage can not only double, but octuple the load of a single-horse carriage, and can cover six times the distance.

"Don't let me down" -- The Beatles -- when in a courtship, look for the real part in your future partner, not what you imagine her or him to have. And give your true self. Don't put on airs like you enjoy severe beatings and torture by your partners, while you in effect don't. Honesty ensures a lasting relationship. If you like shooting rats at an abandoned railway yard, don't spring that on your partner after four years of marriage -- instead, invite her to a shoot on the second date.

"When a man loves a woman, he give all his comforts... he'll sleep out in the rain, if she wants it." -- Otis Redding. You and your spouse will need to do some sacrifices, and if one of you refuses, the other had better suck it up, or else.

"In Burmingham, they shot the gov'ner" -- Lynyrd Skynyrd -- eventually one will survive the other. the death comes at a terrible price of mourning, and with a sweet surprise of the gift of independence. If you get divorced, it can really decimate you financially, the both of you, and depending on the penned-up anger, it can become really ugly.

What ever you do, try not to make plans to off your wife or husband. Prison is a lonely place, though you are closer than arms-length with most other inmates.

It goes hand in hand with the phrase power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Everyone is susceptible, nobody is immune. — Metaphyzik

God is the ultimate miscreant. He's been in power for the longest-running reign.

You say there are commonalities between ethics globally. I hope I did not misquote you this time.

Please name a global commonality between ethics globally that pertains to nothing but ethics. It does not have to be all inclusive; but it can't be applied to anything BUT to ethics.

This commonality does not need to be a single quality; you could name a combination of qualities, but in combination they must apply to all ethics globally and to nothing else but ethics.

As you can see, I am not asking you to define ethics, or give an inclusive description of it; all I ask is one characteristic that is ethics-specific, and not specific to any other thing.

If you can show me such a criterion or characteristics of ethics, then I will agree to disagree. Otherwise I still maintain that there are no ethical principles as such.

As long as you fail to show a characteristic of ethics as a quality that applies to ethics and to nothing else, your ideation that there is a commonality amoung ethics globally is not a philosophically acceptable propostion, but a personal opinion of yours. Nobody can take it away from you, but you must realize that you can't argue on ethical grounds for anything, as ethics mean to you something different from what ethics mean to other philosophers.

That's why Wayfarer referred to the need for a "summum bonum". So your claim that non-religious systems are more easily justified is false because the 'justification' you are referring to is not justification at all, but an illusion of justification. — Metaphysician Undercover

Is there a philosophy of good, such as the epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge, and ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with morals, and aesthetics is the branch that deals with beauty.

If there is no formal discussion on what constitutes good, then the quality of good is like a sore missing tooth in the grinding jaws of philosophy. ("How can a missing tooth ache?" You may want to ask.)

Good is wholly undefinable. That something is good or not is a subjective judgment, and therefore to justify X as good because it leads to Y where Y is also good, is only justifiable by personal subjective means.

If you or anyone else justifies moral actions on whether they are good or not in intention or in final result, then you or anyone else is walking on thin ice.

"As if you had anticipated my question, you say "don't cause unnecessary suffering" is the ultimate code of ethics."
— god must be atheist
Interesting choice of paraphrasing. I did not say "ultimate." I suggested that it is one example of an underlying principle that I believe to exist in most cultures across the world. Now, I haven't exhaustively studied all world religions/ethics, but I have yet to come across one that actually contradicts the wrongness of unnecessary suffering. Though people might disagree on what things are necessary or are suffering, generally all ethics seeks to reduce the sum total of suffering.

Or can you give me a good counter example? — Artemis

You're right. It is not a code of ethics. It is a CHARACTERISTIC OR PROPERTY OF ETHICS. But it is also a characteristic or property of many things.

(An example would be car design. You could design a car seat for the driver that has tacks on the seat, pricking the driver. It would cause unnecessary suffering, yet it has nothing to do with ethics. Or more at hand, some car seats are more comfortabel than other seats for drivers, while some two drivers may find the seat that is comfortable for one, may be uncomfortable for the other, yet it is not unethical to put the particular seat in a car in the course of the manufacturing process.)

So we are back at square one. I still claim, because you yourself denied that you defended the idea successfully that there is an ultimate and pervasive ethical principle that applies to all cultures. My point is that such principle does not exist. Your point is that it exists. I opine that if you insists that it exists, then it is your responsibility, or rather, that the onus is on you to show that your claim is true, and there is an underlying principle. My job is to show that such principle is not universal, or not ethical, or not applicable.

It is definitely tougher for you, inasumch as you have to prove something exists that nobody has found yet. My job is not possible until I have something concrete in front of me that you show me that supports your claim.

As for your second paragraph; I don’t believe this is true as there are plenty of animals on the endangered species list with little to no discernible benefits to our species save for our appreciation of its existence. Why are we valuing them I wonder? Why do things need to have a benefit for us in order for us to just appreciate the fact that they exist? — Mark Dennis

They may or may not play vital role in the preservation of the interconnected food chain. Their poop may be a delicacy to those microbes that are the feed for other bigger microbes, that feed the algea with nitrogen, and the algea feed blue whales and halibut... which feed us.

This what I wrote is conjecture, but I can see some merit in figuring that humans have not uncovered for their own edification some vital links in the natural preservation of life on this planet.

Again, I must call attention to a Youtube video. I am not allowed to post links, but I can post here the search terms to find it. Try
ethics private and public 2019 09 22

The guy talks about ethics as a dual mechanism: drowning kitties and puppies is abhorrent, and more abhorrent is drowning your own children. Nobody does that**, and people even go into a burning building, much like cats do, to save their children. The guy calls that private ethics, and he juxtaposes that with public ethics, and he claims that public ethics grew out of private ethics, by transferring the reward-punishment system from one, which preserves the closest relative possible, to ethics that preserve society as such. He names a number of parameters, most of which I can't remember, that are different between what he calls private ethics and public ethics, but the jist is that private ethics are DNA driven, inborn; public are taught by peers and by other educators. Oh, and private ethics are universal, unavoidable, not a matter of choice, (see **) but public ethics are varied, and the individual not necessarily makes all of them his own.

Luckily he has some typed charts at the end of his video, because his accent is incomprehensible.

I would really like to see what @Mark Dennis and @Artemis have to say about the proposition the video makes.

** A few people with the applicable genetic mutations might.

The answer to the problem of different cultural ethical norms is simply that different cultures are (or were at some point in history) wrong about different things.

And anywhere in the world you find the same underlying principles to ethics: don't cause unnecessary suffering, for example. — Artemis

When you say something is wrong, it is a judgment, and judgments can be derived only by comparing a deed to a code, or by personal gut feelings.

I wish you to state the code of ethics, that universally seperates "wrong" ethics from "right" ethics. I don't want you to make up one; judgment by code USES and already defined code. What is this code, why is it undefeatable, by whose authority or by what logic is it absolute, that it may be used to judge some ethical decisions wrong, while others to be right?
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As if you had anticipated my question, you say "don't cause unnecessary suffering" is the ultimate code of ethics.

It is not found everywhere in the world. So it is not the code that you can derive universally from all behaviour. In fact, there are many cultures in the world that encourage behaviour, that calls for unprecedented unnecessary suffering. I claim that there are benefits to some participants in a society that view the same action as necessary suffering, while others view the very same suffering as unnecessary.

A few simple, common sense, defensible, and easily teachable ones...


What would happen if everyone acted like that?

Be helpful.

Do what's good for goodness sake. — creativesoul

Artemis, Tim Wood, Mark Dennis, et al, I still think you are misguided in thinking that there is an overriding, or underlying, or penetrating ethical principle.

Creativesoul just helped me illustrate this case. You all call ethical what's good. You all call ethical what reduces suffering. But I claim that you just gave a different name to "good deed".

That's A.

B. is that most ethical "good deeds" as I insist, is bad for some other people. Some case studies (thought experiments, not recounting of facts):

1. Claim: I am good because I give money to the poor. Therefore I am ethical.
counter-claim: you actually hinder the poor to find his own footing and help himself to a better life. You actually deprive the rich of more money than they could have if you gave your money to them, not to the poor. You actually deprive many other poor people because you gave your money to one poor person, callously ignoring the plight of the rest of the poor.

2. Claim: I am a factory owner. I believe in fair trade, and I pay my workers more than other factories do in my industry.
Counter-claim: you make your product incompetitive on the market, because with a same margin of profit, you have to charge a higher price for your products than your competitors do. Since you can't sell a comparative product at a higher price than your competitors' price, you go bankrupt and you have to let your entire work force go.

3. Claim: I am a soldier. I serve my country, its leaders, its people, and the women and innocent children, by fighting the enemy.
Counter-claim: you, as a soldier, kill people; spend a long time in training how to kill people. You deprive your country of the productive work you could be otherwise performing, which woudl benefit all. You fail to pay taxes. You are liable to torture enemy subjects, and to rape their women, when you think you can get away with it.

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Simply put: most good deeds are bad in one way or another. If ethics is defined as "good deeds for most", then the balance of good vs. bad would make almost all actions ethical, even those that we intuitive call unethical, because the good that society produces is more than the bad that society produces. If you disagree, and say that society produces more bad than good, then the balance would indicate that most deeds are unethical.

I strongly believe that "the most intolerant wins".

You change the world, bit by bit, by being stubborn, intransigent, intolerant, and recalcitrant. — alcontali

Albert Einstein, Karl Guttenberg, Keppler, Galileo, the inventor of the Steam Engine, the sheep, the wheel, intromarital sex, the Information Superhighway, were all stubborn derrieres?

Then again, Ghenghis Khan was, as well as Lenin, Hitler, Moses, Jesus, and God.

The Masters is actually in Ethics but it’s still a branch of philosophy so totally counts — Mark Dennis

I always thought that ethics was not defined and it is undefineable. Because it is societal indoctrination, which does not even stick with everyone, and it can hugely differ from society to society, as it is culture-dependent. So how do you prepare to defend a thesis about something undefinable and undefendable?

But I guess the same can be said of Ethics, and metaphysics. So 'tis a go, after all. Just don't try to apply ethical theories to something in the real world.

When you're doing philosophy, you can focus on various subjects, various types of phenomena, etc. For example, there's philosophy of (or about) science, philosophy of (or about) art, philosophy of (or about) morality, etc. Some of those focuses have unique names, like aesthetics (philosophy of art) and ethics (philosophy of morality). Philosophy of science doesn't have a unique name, by the way. It's simply known as philosophy of science.

Well, epistemology is simply philosophy of knowledge. The focus is on questions like "What is knowledge," "What are the criteria for saying that we know something," etc. — Terrapin Station

Thanks, folks, we found a winner.

Thanks, TS.

The first thing we need to clarify when we're answering this is just what is an explanation? Just what are the criteria for an explanation? Just what do explanations do?

And likewise, given what you're actually saying in the post (as opposed to the title), just what is understanding? Just what are the criteria for understanding? — Terrapin Station

I could not define an explanation, but I sure recognize one when I see one. Same with understanding.

There is no need, in my opinion, to define these terms. Every definition eventually boils down to either a finite regress that does not make any sene, or else to familiar terms.

I think "Explanation" and "Understanding" are familiar enough for the normal or better human being so these two words need no definition.

I think it was Wittgenstein who first coined this reasoning, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, which actually ended the movement of modernism. It is we, humans, who communicate with other humans, not with some total alien life form, which can't get inside our heads, unless we write a complete guide to language and meaning.

I dont think they want guns at all. They want windmills. — frank

Finally we agree on something. Europeans don't want guns, just like you said, and Americans insist on having guns. Europeans want clean, renewable energy, you're right. Americans, too.

None of that matters all that much, we come from the same catholic cultural root. — ChatteringMonkey

We come from that, but so does Russia.
And other than people in America and in the Vatican, most the citizens of western-type democracies have dropped religion.

Americans are known for this as well: bible-thumping idiots who rather belive the scriptures than facts.

Social democrats and communists have allways been sworn enemies, because the social democrats betrayed the revolution. — ChatteringMonkey

This is blah-blah. You are so far removed from Realpolitik and the European reality, that you can't even fathom your distance.

There are no communists left in Europe! Not any more than in America. The entire continent turned socialist, which is NOT patterned after the USA system, but after the Eastern Block socialist systems before the iron curtain fell.

Amazing. I really appreciate your good will, and the effort you put into answering my honest question. The sad (and said) truth remains, @alcontali, that it seems that this expression, "epistemology" is too rich, roo ambitious for what I can take in and digest as knowledge. I can't grasp its essence, because its essence, as per the Vikipaedia excerpt, is numerous. I can't conceptualize this word, because it does not cover one concept, but a whole slew of concepts.

I don't. I can't.

@Schoppenhauer1, I created some time ago a similar progression on how soon a need entered the life of the organism in evolution.

Love and greed and charity and art appreciation etc. are needs that last entered the specimens' needs in the evolution of the species. The lack of their fulfilment is not felt; their fulfilment brings joy; they don't kill you if you never experience them.

Survival skills present in a person's life as needs: Intellectual needs, paritcularly as it pertains to food acquisition, does not give you pleasure, it gives you sadness and hardship, but not necessarily death; however, it can mean death (if, for instance, in the wet season of an otherwise arid land, the species does not learn how to preserve water for the lean months; etc.) Ditto for shelter and body cover. These presented in human's lives after they got off the trees, so to speak.

Finally, there is the first survival order of needs: eating, drinking, avoiding freezing, breathing. All these will kill you very fast if you don't follow their demands.

The only exception is sexual pleasure. It is not a survival skill, but a species-propagation skill. It works mainly on a positive reinforcement basis, instead of a negative one. With the exception of prolonged unfulfilment -- try to go for a week without orgasm.

===============

Besides, ideologically Europe, and a large part of the world for that matter, is much closer to the US than to China or Russia — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, but most of the Asian and South East asian countries understand the Chinese more than they do the USA, and Europe borrowed most of its modern cultural icons from the Russian Bolshevik revolution. They would much rather stick with their free and superb medicare, the idea of which had been inherited from communist states, than to introduce sky-high private fees which is the order of the day in the USA. They much rather invest in education and welfare goods, learned from the Russian system, than to introduce abject poverty in their homelands, like in the USA. They much rather have no guns in the hands of private citizens, except for Switzerland, than to have the American dream of having randomly shooting up or bombing by private citizens their kindergartens, post offices, sporting events and music concerts, as is the grass-root folk tradition these days in the USA.

I don't think you know what you are talking about when you claim that most of the world feels closer to the USA than to Russia. Most of the third world is scared shitless of the USA, and most of the people in the developed world detest US domestic and foreign policy.

Furthermore, very few people who come out of that system have the slightest clue about epistemology. — alcontali

Heck, I am one of the great many unwashed who has no clue what the word "epistemology" means. I have got by nevertheless as a computer programmer, forum respondent, and diabetic type II in the world.

What does the word "epistemology" actually mean, @alcontali? I'm not pretending to be stupid. I am really ignorant.

Reliable statistics could be built that show that most people think Albert Einstein himself did not know what "epistemology" meant.

Can God be known? Of course. — Old Brian

But we don't know god. From our point of view now, God is not known. He is in hiding. We don't know what he is like, what he wants, what he wants of us. All these are matters of faith.

Can god be known? Yes, but only if he exists. And we have no clue if he exists or not.

The foregoing posters mixed up three concepts: isolationism in politics, isolationism in trade and economy, and isolationism in war.

The OP nailed the first one. @Bitter Crank nailed the second one, the economic one. The third one can't be done.

The US economy has been sustained on a growth basis because excess production of goods was diverted to military production. The same idea Hitler invented, without the persecution of Jews, and which nullified the Marxian Overproduction Crises in the USA. The Great Depression ended because weapons production kickstarted the economy.

Plus the historically strongest American value has been to work. Everyone must work.

In Europe, with the feudal past, people can morally afford to be lazy and not work. So Western Europe avoided the overporduction crises by socializing the lazy. In America it's impossible, so they have married, on a continual basis, strong work morals with military world domination.

The excess workers became soldiers, and the economic overproduction was diverted into war stuff.

So America needs warring, no matter what. Without an external enemy, the war effort is futile and would look stupid.

So no, although economically and politically American would benefit at this point in time from isolationism, they need a global area to drop bombs and decimate the local population.

"Come home and have a one-night stand... go kill the yellow man. Born in the USA." -- Bjorn (Bruce) Springsteen. (He was actually Bjorn in Norway, but only very few know that.)

Which countries would those be? — Echarmion

Republic of Haiti, Mozambique, Papua-New Guinea, etc. Maybe even Hungary, if things continue to go the way they do there.

As part of my degree I had to take a paper called 'English Moralists', and I had a deep dislike of both groups, though, in fairness, the persons studied tended to be neither. — iolo

If English is not your first language, I pre-apologize for the harsh criticism in this post of mine. Please only regard the following if you earned any of your degrees in an English-language environment.

Check your degree again. It may be fake.

- you don't take a paper. You take a course. You take a letter. Or you take a sheet of paper. When you take a paper which is not yours, you are shoplifting.

- "English Moralists" grammatically and to the uninitiated is one group. Yet you deeply disliked both groups, the other one not named, not referenced. Makes awkward reading.

- "The persons studied tended to be neither." Neither English moralists, nor...????

Maybe you meant neither English nor moralists. You have a deep dislike for the English as a group. The first thing that pooped into my mind with this interpretation was "prejudiced". Are you Irish, from south Belfast? Or a Quebecois, from Quebec City?

In all, you must have liked the course and admired the writers whose papers you read then, because they were not English, not moralists, and not English moralists and you have a deep dislike for the English, for the moralists, and therefore for the English Moralists.

Whew... I saved myself. I never had any children.

I guess it does not matter then that I fornicated left-right-and-centre back in the late seventies and all through the eighties. And add to this about a thousand times more incidents of auto-erotcia.

God should be pleased with me.

I was saying that you are more than you think, or are conditioned to think. That there is a kind of enquiry through contemplation of self, as well as philosophical enquiry, or scientific enquiry.

Is that ok? — Punshhh

If you must.

I would say I can also be less than what I think.

Let's settle with "most likely I am different from what I think I am", although in exceptionally rare cases, a person can be precisely what or who he thinks he is.

Frank Zappa wrote a song about this, titled "What kind of girl do you think we are?" He was in an all-male band.