No. I've interacted with him enough to know he's sincere.

Less, I would say.

Cf. Thorongil's comments on the professor who would prefer Islamic theocracy to living in America: I take it he's telling the truth about that, anyway! — The Great Whatever

I am, I assure you. My fellow grad students who took the class can confirm it, as it's a running joke between us.

I doubt the professor reads this forum, so I can give a bit more detail. We were talking about one of the caliphates one day in relation to Foucault. According to Foucault, power in liberal democracies is highly diffuse and invisible, meaning that it infects all aspects of life without one necessarily realizing it, instead of being concentrated at the top or seen in the form of visible institutions. This makes the people in such societies more oppressed, dominated, surveilled, and punished than in other societies. So the professor concluded, based on this line of reasoning, and with a smile at first, that he would prefer to live in said caliphate than in modern day America. When pressed, he doubled down on his assertion.

Interesting anecdote, Erik. I made a similar point in one of my classes this semester during the week we covered postmodernism. It seemed to me that postmodernists were "essentializing" the Enlightenment, science, Western civilization, and so on just as much as their perceived opponents were allegedly doing so to other things. Two semesters ago, I had a professor who literally admitted that he would prefer to live in a medieval Islamic theocracy than modern America. I had to ask him if he was being serious, and he said he was.

I think the alt-right is another example of how the relativism of their worldview comes back around to bite them in the ass. You can't enthrone victimhood and identity politics and not expect white men to start playing the game at some point. And because of the postmodernist's commitment to cultural, moral, and epistemological relativism, there's not a damn thing they can do about it; except, of course, to contradict themselves by making the essentializing claim that white men can't be victims, which they often do. Rational consistency does not matter to these people.

He is a man of integrity, which I respect, but his proposed policies are from cloud cuckoo land.

Aaand it's back to equivocating. I think you may be a lost cause.

To simply be "white" isn't to do anything wrong. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Good. I have no further issue with you on this point.

pyrrhic — Marchesk

But I haven't suffered any loss.

Ooh, now a red herring? I think we can declare victory. Going to bed.

Equivocating about what? — Marchesk

What the word white refers to.

It appears you and TGW think that the entire European continent belongs to an objectively real category, one discoverable by science. — Marchesk

:-O

My argument was never about the range of melanin in Europeans. — Marchesk

Oh? So stop equivocating, then.

The "post-enlightment" doesn't demand anyone be ashamed who who they are per se, at least not unless they are doing something wrong — TheWillowOfDarkness

But then postmodernists conveniently claim that simply being white is to be in the wrong, the very point of dispute here. This is have one's cake and eat it too, so don't talk about the Enlightenment eating itself. It doesn't propose any such monstrous relativism.

It's irrelevant to this particular discussion on whether "whiteness" is a relatively recent invention. — Marchesk

Once again, the lack of melanin in the skin of Europeans was a fact about them before there was a society to allegedly construct it. There's nothing to discuss here. TGW has so thoroughly interred your stupid claim into the ground that you now appear a sucker for punishment.

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

Like Wayfarer says, for a being to have intrinsic value, it would have to be an end in itself. I think it's a very fine thing to treat others as if they were ends in themselves, but as to whether they are such ends, I think not.

Their lighter skin color compared to certain populations in other parts of the world? — Marchesk

Yes. You're catching on.

What is the usefulness in calling an entire continent of people "white" or "black" or whatever? What role does it serve? — Marchesk

Not much. It's just a very generalized descriptive fact. I'm with Morgan Freeman:

Do you think the Vikings considered themselves kin with Italians? — Marchesk

No, but they would have noticed that the Italians had a similar complexion to themselves, one noticeably lighter than their Moorish friends, for example.

The point is that people in Europe didn't consider themselves to be white before a certain point. — Marchesk

Nonsense. Are you honestly going to tell me that ancient Europeans failed to notice their own skin tone? If not, then by "white" you mean something other than "white," in which case you ought to use different vocabulary so as to avoid equivocating.

How about, people have considered themselves and others to belong to varying groups over time — Marchesk

Here we see the motte and bailey technique of the postmodernist on display. Make provocative claims when skirmishing at first, such as "being white is a social construction," and when challenged, retreat back into safety by making an utterly banal and unchallengeable point. People have considered themselves and others to belong to varying groups over time? Gee whiz, you don't say! Next you'll be telling me that people have dressed differently over time! But see, that wouldn't prove that cotton, silk, or wool are "social constructions."

You can't get away with making a prima facie absurd claim like "being white is socially constructed" as if it were self-evident. The "better way of saying it," as you put it, is in fact not a way of saying it at all. It's to say something completely different. So pick one and stick to it.

I stated that being white or black (or Asian, etc) is a social construction. — Marchesk

Postmodernism alert!

*ducks*

Think what you like, but wait for the facts to come out regarding those things before you start gluing your tin foil hat firmly on your head.

Just look at the smug condescension of those Berkeley hipsters, haha. I encounter that soft bigotry of low expectations in academia too.

Nailed it.

it is in the interests of large corporations and the fattest of fat cats — Sapientia

This isn't entirely true. Corporations don't like him. They didn't give much to his campaign (whereas loads of them donated to Hillary) and they hate his trade protectionism. Look at the markets today, too. They will rebound, but there was real uncertainty about his presidency coming into the day.

Of course not. For one thing, it would be illegal.

Absolutely amazing.

I don't quite buy it. Yes, the word "religion" is of Western origin, but that doesn't mean it can't still pick out non-Western (or non-Abrahamic) systems of belief and practice. And for Buddhism to be a revealed religion, it would have to be that its scriptures were inspired by a god. For the most part, this is not what Buddhists claim.

The Vedas and the Upanishads are shruti, or revealed texts, true, but as your link makes clear, a diversity of opinion still exists within Hinduism. Can one be an orthodox Hindu and reject the existence of the gods and so reject the divine inspiration of certain men, the rishis? Yes. One could disclaim divine inspiration in the case of Christian scriptures, but then one would essentially be a Jeffersonian Christian and so not be considered orthodox at all. Most churches require belief in divine inspiration.

Because they're based on American comic books written by American authors for an American audience?

"Noumena" is more like a grammatical demonstration of an illegal move within his construction. — sime

This is actually close to what he considers the noumenon to be, as I see it. Think of the noumenon as a necessary limiting concept. We have to admit its existence even though it cannot be known. Why do we have to? Well, given the nature of cognition itself. Basically, if we admit that what we have knowledge of are appearances, then we admit that of which the appearances are too. Something appears, becomes known, in other words, which remains forever unknown to us in itself.

Consider too the title of his work, the Critique of Pure Reason. He's saying that there are certain limits on what we can adequately theorize about in metaphysics. The limit is the noumenon, which is a stand in for what in prior systems would have been intellectual objects like God. The noumenon is stripped of all positive content (like the attributes of God, for example), and so becomes simply a quirk of the mind that cannot help but posit its existence, albeit in negative terms.

second hand accounts — sime

There's your problem!

I ought to read CPR — sime

Yes.

Is the noumena deduced? — sime

You mean the noumenon here. Noumena is plural. Kant ambiguously tends to conflate the noumenon with the thing-in-itself. If we assume he meant them synonymously, then he starts with the existence of things, which are presented to the understanding by means of sense perception. What we know of things, therefore, is how they appear to us by means of the forms of the understanding (the twelve categories), not what they are or may be in themselves, a part from said forms. On the one world interpretation (which is more tenable than the two world, in my opinion), there is one object which has two aspects, that which we see when the object is cognized, and that which we do not see, which is what the object is when not cognized.

Is the noumena inferred through logical induction as a necessary but unknowable transcendental cause? I can't see how, because I understand that for Kant, causation is a category of understanding for relating empirical observations. — sime

I think this is more or less it. The uncharitable reader would say that he has contradicted himself in referring to the noumenon causing the appearance, and there are plenty of passages that damn him in this regard. However, the more charitable reader can find other passages wherein Kant seems to be saying that we are obliged to think of the noumenon causing the presentation simply because causality is an a priori concept, and so gets applied to everything. It is not a causal relation in reality, but we are forced to think of it in causal terms because we cannot but do so.

In other words, the conclusion of transcendental idealism given its stated premises, seems to be neither ontological nor epistemological. The conclusion cannot be a positive assertion of mind-dependent knowledge and phenomena on an empirical level of appearances on the one hand, and of an unknowable reality of "things as they are in themselves" on some 'transcendental' level. Neither can the conclusion be merely epistemological in still accepting the conceivability of noumena but denying knowledge of its nature or existence. — sime

Here's where perhaps the ethical comes in to address your concern. Kant speaks of the intelligible and empirical character, the former being one's noumenal self and the latter the subject of knowing. In other words, do not forget that you are the noumenon and so are the ground of all acting. This is necessary to posit to account for freedom.

There are no "authorities" in Western philosophy, either. There's no official church of Plato, church of Kant, etc. There are simply individuals who read and interpret their ideas.

The six realms of rebirth is not a monolithic concept. It can and has been interpreted in a number of different ways, so your request to "prove it" betrays your naivety once again.

Doing evil in order to achieve the good is not justified in Christianity and Islam, generally speaking. They are not consequentialist religions.

I used to subscribe fairly strongly to an atheistic notion of death (I.e. You cease to exist and rot in the ground ), but lately I'm not so sure. — dukkha

This isn't an "atheistic notion" of death. Atheism is the denial of the existence of any god. One could therefore be an atheist and hold to belief in an afterlife of some kind.

Let's say I cease to exist at death. What is going to prevent me from coming into existence again? What's going to keep me dead? — dukkha

The answer to this depends on your metaphysic. If you are a materialist, then the fact that the material world is the only world there is would prevent you from coming into existence again, since the dissolution of your body would be the dissolution of "you" entire.

This is kind of worrying me, I don't want to be burdened with existence again and again. How do I make sure I stay dead and reality doesn't bother me again? — dukkha

There is none if in fact it turns out that you will be reborn. You have to show that it is possible to not do so in order to make sure you stay dead.

Second, a real pet peeve of mine is the reference to Eastern theology in response to philosophical questions. We're all pretty attuned to the inappropriateness of references to Western theology (i.e. biblical cites), but every now and again we have to hear about Eastern systems like they matter here. — Hanover

The sheer arrogance here! As Wayfarer points out, there are no Eastern "theologies." Secondly, I doubt you've read more than a page about them, because if you did you would realize that Eastern systems do matter and do provide compelling philosophical answers to philosophical questions. The analogy to biblical citations is absurd, as there is no notion of dogma or revealed scripture in the East, generally speaking, that is comparable to what one finds in Abrahamic religions. Even the word "system" is too limiting, when one considers the plethora of different schools of thought, which, though often outwardly opposed in many ways, are still accepted as orthodox according to the religion in question (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc).

No, no, no, yes.

Just what I said.

I just see claims being made, not claims being argued for.

Well, seeing as my currency is brilliant ideas, I don't doubt that I gave you some. I'm very charitable in that regard.

Willkommen.

Btw, were you on the old forum? I can't remember.

Man, this thread is hilarious.

"Colin" is pulling your legs, guys.

I was once a master philosopher. — colin

>:O