Comments

  • What it takes to be a man (my interpretation)
    ↪Bitter Crank
    Yep - sounds like a recipe for disappointment and blunder.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    Faith as bad faith. Go figure. — Banno

    It has a nice ring to it.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    All the religious approach does is move the decision form "what ought I do now?" to "which creed should I follow?". The fact of moral choice remains yours. — Banno

    So important: even within the one creed, we only ever encounter the subjective preferences of believers - hence we see Baptist Protestants who may either hate gays, or fly a rainbow flag for Jesus. Even the term 'moderate Islam' reveals the human choices and construction work inherent in any spiritual belief.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    And back to Kant. He gave his categorical imperative three formulations. I think this one is particularly relevant to this discussion - "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." — T Clark

    Which leads us to telling the Nazi's where the Jews are hiding if we know. God forbid we should ever usher in lying.
  • profundity
    Any more detail? Can 'I did it my way,' ever be the madman's final insult, which is more like an evil 'so f*** all of you,' I don't care how many died because I did it my way?
    The person who gave up all they had, lived very basically, spent their lives helping the poor and hungry of the world? Can they truly die happy without concern about what's still left to do and whether or not there is someone who can/will take their place?     — universeness

    This seems to be setting up a scenario drenched in unnecessary moral rumination and hand-wringing. Most people live and die and do not require the consolations of philosophy or deep dives into ethical concerns. In life, they do what they can - they love, they raise children and maybe even take care of some friends/neighbors along the way. They have meaningful relationships with others, do a job they enjoy and generally stay out of other people's business. Job done. I've known many of these people and they tend to die happy and leave others who regret their death.

    I love the two questions 'who are you?' and 'what do you want? — universeness

    Those sorts of questions sound like something you'd hear asked on an NBC news profile. The problem with them is they force people into narrow pathways.

    The first question assumes that people think of themselves in a such a way that allows them to describe their life in sound bites. People tend to feel who they are, they don't communicate it. But of greater concern is the question itself - what does it mean to ask 'who' someone is? My answer to that question would be: What are you trying to find out?

    The second question 'what do you want?' is equally stilted. Just what are you asking? Again the question feels like it's trying to narrow the range of human experience into a constricted template that doesn't fit a life lived. Again, I am not sure what you are asking. What does 'want' mean or refer to?
  • profundity
    I love the two questions 'who are you?' and 'what do you want? — universeness

    Unanswerable - those questions are stilted and already loaded with assumptions.
  • profundity
    Do you think that it's possible for any human being to currently claim the following at the end of their life:
    I did it my way!
    I die truly happy!     — universeness

    Yes. I think it happens a lot, actually.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    I'd submit without that faith foundation, nihilism and amoralism results. — Hanover

    Certainly not an uncommon assertion. Would you class secular humanism as foundational?
  • The 'New Atheism' : How May it Be Evaluated Philosophically?
    Jung's epistemology was based on his idea of knowledge not being possible but gained through intuition, which he derived from Kant. — Jack Cummins

    I always understood that he arrived at this through Gnosticism not Kant.

    Personally I always understood intuitive knowledge to be faith dressed up in big boy pants. It is still the case that anyone can justify anything via intuitive knowledge. The last racist I argued with told me that certain people were inferior to white people because in his words - 'I just know.'
  • Scotty from Marketing
    I'm still too burned I won't believe he will lose until I see it. — StreetlightX

    Agree.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    I think the question is, is there any true good? Is there anything which is unconditionally good, not a matter of either social convention or individual conviction? — Wayfarer

    Exactly, and I would imagine that in your case (and this is not a criticism) you would locate the source of transcendental values in idealism?
  • Can morality be absolute?
    If rape is wrong because we have agreed it is wrong, it is good when we change our mind. — Hanover

    This is like a William Lane Craig rhetorical flourish, huh?

    I think societies have 'agreed' it is wrong because in most cultures it is held that actions which harm human wellbeing are wrong. Is rape right in the worldview of, say, Islamic State? I think it may well be, particularly if it is held that women are property and do not really hold full citizenship.

    As a moral realist, you hold that an action is right or wrong outside of human experience and whatever decision making processes we employ. Morality must in some sense be transcendental. I don't think we have any evidence that this is the case, nor can I see how in practice we can determine how this might be the case. How would you demonstrate, for instance, that rape is wrong based on moral realism?
  • Can morality be absolute?
    First of all the OP clarifies that refers to objective moral judgments not Absolute morality. (I quote " On a given subject, is one particular moral view objectively right and the others are wrong, regardless of what people believe? ") — Nickolasgaspar

    Hey Nick - I was responding to the first part of this and was perhaps a little loose in the OP quote I used.

    Any views on this topic, or about my position? — PhilosophyRunner
  • Can morality be absolute?
    How is "This moral view is objectively right" different to "this moral view is right"? What does "objectively" add? — Banno

    I think it adds Ayn Rand.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    the video says:

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    The uploader has not made this video available in your country

    Yes, that does say something profound about human morality.     — Banno

    I think that's because under Scotty from Marketing, morality has been suspended in Oz.
  • The ends of the spectrum
    ↪Benj96
    Are you asking will we recognise behaviour traits without reference to the person's actions or behaviour?

    Personally I don't subscribe to 'evil' as an actual category. For me it's a poetic term, a remnant of earlier models of reality. I have worked extensively with people who are considered 'sociopaths' in the old language or, more currently have 'antisocial personality disorders'. I have never met anyone who I would call evil. They have done 'evil' things, if you like, but are generally damaged by life experience (most commonly serious early childhood sexual or physical abuse). And yes, many of these folk I can recognise within a minute or so of meeting them. The extent of their capacity for destruction, is not apparent unless witnessed or read about in a file. But the ones that worry me most wear suits, speak softly and run corporations.... I don't meet many of those.
  • Can morality be absolute?
    I have spent some time recently thinking about whether morality can be absolute. On a given subject, is one particular moral view objectively right and the others are wrong, regardless of what people believe? — PhilosophyRunner

    Generally only theists and idealists believe that morality is absolute - because for them god/s or the Logos are foundational sources of all that is good and true. The problem with this idea is that we have no good evidence that there are god/s or that idealism is true. And even if they are, how do we know which moral beliefs are right? It will always be someone's personal preferences regarding idealism, or what they think a particular god regards as moral.

    For most of the rest of us, there is no foundational anchor for morality. Morality is simply the term we use to describe codes of conduct we have created to support cooperation and our preferred social order. Further to this, we have empathy and we are a social species, so it follows that nurturing, collaboration and playing nice are rewarded in a multiplicity of ways and are therefore widespread across cultures.

    To address your issue of relativism, it is possible to build an objective moral system subject to a particular standard. Many secular humanists today base moral decisions on using the standard of human flourishing as a starting point. Any behaviours assessed as detrimental to human flourishing are viewed as morally wrong. Why flourishing? Why not? Most humans would agree that happiness is preferable to sadness, health is preferable to sickness, life is preferable to death - it's not hard to see how flourishing might be a good start, but it's not perfect. Nothing is.
  • The Absurdity of Existence
    Yes! But not being bombed by Russians helps. — Banno

    Fuck yeah! Not being in Treblinka is also quite helpful....
  • The books that everyone must read
    My preference is for essays.
    — Tom Storm

    Any in particular?     — T Clark

    It's a bit of a cliché I'm afraid - George Orwell, Gore Vidal and Pauline Kael (film essays), Susan Sontag, PL Travers, Clive James, Martin Amis, Andrew O'Hagen, Gideon Haigh, Martin Gardner, Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, Hunter Thompson, Evelyn Waugh, George Packer.
  • The books that everyone must read
    ↪Dermot Griffin
    Interesting - care to explain why those books? Not trying to be a dick, but they seem to reflect a very deliberate and mid century, Jordan B Peterson type sensibility. :grin:

    I've read many of those, and some I started but they were too dull and/or irrelevant to my experience. I don't hold to a worldview wherein everyone should read key books. Dostoyevsky I find awfully turgid - I like The Gambler over all his other works, concise, biting - a wonderful and gruesome depiction of addiction, perhaps the only subject D really knew.

    I can't say I am a big reader any more and I generally don't read for pleasure. My preference is for essays. I draw little from poetry or Shakespeare... As far as Solzhenitsyn is concerned, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich will suffice - the other stuff is interminable but of historical significance. I would read Anne Applebaum's Gulag for a stunning overview of the Soviet approach.

    Some of my preferred authors have been: George Elliot, Saul Bellow, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Bruce Chatwin, John Steinbeck, Patrick White, Joseph Conrad, Cervantes, Flaubert, and Joris-Karl Huysmans.

    I can't say I have read any philosophy that has made a big impact - but I have not been voracious in this area - Nietzsche, Seneca, Schopenhauer (I enjoyed some essays), Montaigne, Camus, Thoreau, Rorty, Murdoch, and lots of essays/papers by everyone from Thomas Nagel to Susan Haack. Mostly forgotten now.

    If I was recommending a couple of books to a 20 year-old, they might be The Great Gatsby (for it's acute observations about people and its use of English) and Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt for its arse-kicking politics. My favourite novel might be Voss.
  • The Absurdity of Existence
    Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is already within yourself, your way of thinking. — Marcus Aurelius
  • The Origin of Humour
    The question of all questions is: Is life funny? — Agent Smith

    Everything is funny to someone.

    What do you mean by life?
  • The 'New Atheism' : How May it Be Evaluated Philosophically?
    It's their fear of something that they can't understand to be really there, making them search for rational means to exclude "the concept" by reference to procedures they embrace. — Haglund

    That might be true, but can you provide evidence for this claim, or is it just a cheap smear you are using because you resent atheism? Please advise...

    Oh, and while you are about it, do you have proof of God? :wink:
  • The Pure Witness / The Transcendental Ego
    Why should the average person "take on greater philosophical nuances and self-reflection"?
    Why should the less educated folk "enlarge their perspectives"?

    Will they be happier then?
    Will they suffer less?
    Will they completely stop suffering?
    Will they be more caring then?
    Will the world become a better place?
    Will they be safer?
    Will crime and wars stop?     — baker

    How would I know? I can't speak for others, but maybe you're on track with some of these, hey? Whys, as any child soon learns ends up in an infinite regression of answers followed by more whys.

    Why should anyone seek to enlarge their perspective? Why not start a thread on this?

    Personally for me, it's to be wiser, which I suspect will lead to better interactions with the world and others and in me being a better person. But why does that matter, Baker? It's whys all the way down.
  • The Pure Witness / The Transcendental Ego
    It wasn't sarcasm, it wasn't a jibe, it was an honest question. — baker

    I'd say honest questions don't read like this -

    Seriously, can you answer that?

    And is it even possible to answer that without sounding like yet another patronizing bourgeois?     — baker

    You made a deprecating remark about some people (apparently aiming it at me), then stated the obvious, and asked a loaded question. — baker

    Seem like jibes...

    You keep raising this:

    Why should the average person "take on greater philosophical nuances and self-reflection"?
    Why should the less educated folk "enlarge their perspectives"?     — baker

    As I keep saying, this was answered and they were specific questions for @Joshs who, as an academic philosopher with a psychology background, often writes responses based on close readings of complex texts and theory.

    Essentially I was asking for his views on how people outside of the academic world, who have an interest in personal growth could approach the sorts of ideas he was referencing. As you may be aware, Josh's has a commitment to people learning and enlarging their perspectives. (sorry Joshs if the language isn't quite right) This may well be the project of philosophy summarized. Perhaps you didn't see the answer because you are rewriting what I said as some kind of elitist nonsense. But the fact remains, people are interested in complex ideas but can't always understand or gain access to them. That's the background I come from, so it's personal.
  • The Concept of Religion
    The issue is how can we or how do we consider a certain moral standard or moral judgment relevant, binding, as something that is more than mere opinion. — baker

    It's always opinion, even when it is theistic. That's the point. It's always going to be an interpretation of what someone thinks a god wants or what someone thinks is best for humans. No way out of that.
  • The Pure Witness / The Transcendental Ego
    ↪baker
    If you can't work it out from what I wrote I'm not going to spend more time on it. And I think @Wayfarer may be right, your sarcasm and jibes are not helpful.
  • The Concept of Religion
    Yes, you and ↪Wayfarer are correct, and I will accept my share of the blame, for lowering my replies to the repetition of old moral arguments, and being distracted by musical critique. — Banno

    It wasn't intended as a criticism of anyone. :wink: I'm easily distracted and have participated joyfully here in my own hobbyhorses...

    I must confess the concept of religion is hard for me to understand, but having been brought up in the Baptist tradition, my sense is that most religion is like supporting a football team. People and their dreams coalesce around shared symbols and lore and vary in their level of interest or fanaticism. It's generally about social contact and feeling like they belong to something special. Oh, and sometimes god is invoked...
  • Philosophers and their country.
    Is this a silly question? — TiredThinker

    It's not a terrible question, but there are limitations to how one might assess this. For instance, to what extent is a nation in 1720 the same nation it might be in 1920? How do we determine what a shared view looks like between countrymen? Or, do we look at the themes of philosophers and see if the same preoccupations are consistent in particular locations/contexts? Then we might ask, to what extent are these preoccupations a reflection of an ongoing discourse within a discipline in one place rather than a reflection of the tastes and temperaments of a people? Could Nietzsche have been French? Could Derrida have been German? Could Ortega Y Gassett been Australian? Fucked if I know...
  • The Origin of Humour
    I don't usually do things Google can do. — Agent Smith

    Inaccurate, much of what we all write here can be found on google as you well know. Ok, I take it this has hit a nerve of some kind. Let's forget it.
  • The Origin of Humour
    ↪Agent Smith
    How does google assist with this question? My question is can you think of an example of satire that is engaging with serious philosophical thinking? You might say, 'Succession' (which I dislike...) do you follow?
  • The Origin of Humour
    Well yeah, but that's too narrow a definition in my humble opinion. Satire comes closest to what Wittgenstein said about how serious philosophy can be done with nothing but jokes. — Agent Smith

    Can you give me an example?

    Comedians are not always happy people. — Agent Smith

    The sad clown is a cliché but having met some comedy writers and performers over the decades, I'd have to say that most were very anxious and depressed. The idea that you would want to make people laugh as a career does pose some questions.
  • The 'New Atheism' : How May it Be Evaluated Philosophically?
    I found the Dawkins' book I read a general primer on evolution, and I can't imagine it threatened any theists other than Creationists. — Hanover

    People are often snooty about Dawkins (even in humanist circles), nevertheless I've found that atheists I have met over the years were once Catholics or observant Jews or Baptists and came to their atheism largely through reading Dawkins as a first step towards secularism. I've not read much of his stuff to be honest and I'm not a big one for atheist manifestos.
  • The Concept of Religion
    There is no god. We make our own purpose.
    — Banno

    Which is what? To help your fellow man and woman, love and educate your kids, be a force of happiness to all? Why? Seems meaningless to simply make someone's stay as comfortable as possible if you admit there was no reason for them to come and stay in the first place.     — Hanover

    Forever the same on thephilosophyforum. — Wayfarer

    Indeed.

    I think this is a good summary of the ongoing debate here. And for all our rehashing of this theme I'm not sure we've really explored it in depth. Maybe I haven't been here long enough or paid close enough attention.
  • The Concept of Religion
    Freeloaders take advantage of the cooperative nature of others for personal gain. That doesn't seem selfish to you? — praxis

    I'm not sure what this is about, but isn't a type of freeloading built into the human experience in as much as we benefit from the work/ideas/civilization of all who came before us, without making a single contribution?
  • The eternal soul (Vitalism): was Darwin wrong?
    I am human and I am a humanist, by which I mean we created human value and meaning. That's a good thing. I love humanity. I feel a connection with my fellow humans. But meaning doesn't mean anything outside of a human context. As I see it, the only way there could be meaning beyond a human scale would be if there is a God. I am not a theist. — T Clark

    :up:
  • The Origin of Humour
    Jokes aside, what is it that makes things hilarious?

    The philosophical joke I'm familiar with is the reductio ad absurdum (reduce to an absurdity). How much of a thigh-slapper it is depends on whether you contradicted yourself or your opponent did (schadenfreude).

    Then there's satire which I feel is the highest form of humor! There's critical, life-changing, messages in them, plus you get to :rofl:     — Agent Smith

    Satire is highbrow populism.

    Humor, like sex, is idiosyncratic and people are turned on or repelled by different things. I generally dislike and avoid anything that is created to generate laughter - stand up comedy especially, but also comedy movies or TV. There are enough funny things in the world already - people, events, animals, conversations, situations, philosophy fora... I greatly prefer unintentional humor to contrived mirth.

    what is it that makes things hilarious? — Agent Smith

    Given people find different thing hilarious, there may not be an 'it' as such - perhaps being generous towards a joke or a comedian or being susceptible to comedy is more akin to mysticism.... :gasp:

    I notice too how humor has a status unlike most behavior in humans. To describe someone as having 'no sense of humor', is in most cases an immense put down.
  • The 'New Atheism' : How May it Be Evaluated Philosophically?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    The problem with the word god is that it is used with cavalier imprecision and, as a concept, often becomes blurry as believers realize how problematic and inadequate the idea of god is. I've lost count of the amount of people who have told me god is 'energy' or 'love' or 'nature' or 'meaning' or 'transcendence'.... there are endless creative and pointless definitions that really get us nowhere. Best to leave the term 'god' to personalism and to scriptural accounts, and use more precise terminology to describe other categories of meaning.
  • Metaphors and validity
    Yep, I remember how I tried to modernize Plato's Allegory of the Cave and simply couldn't find anything in today's world that could replace "shadows" and "cave". — Agent Smith

    I think the update is simulation theory.
  • The Concept of Religion
    Too far afield here and really a massive strawman. — Hanover

    Ha! :wink: Not a strawman if you were arguing for divine command theory which is why I wrote this. Since you aren't, I can now say it doesn't apply to your argument and your rebuttal is fair enough (although what I said will apply to others here who often say there is no morality without a theistic basis).

    I'm arguing moral realism, asserting an actual right and wrong beyond the opinion of humans. — Hanover

    That's great. Keep arguing. I am happy to be convinced of moral realism. Where does morality live if not in the minds and choices of humans?

    We're not just flittering randomly over time regarding what is good and evil, but are getting closer to the truth. — Hanover

    Does this not sound suspiciously like a liberal talking social justice and identity politics? I'm fascinated that you are able to identify truth and say that we are moving closer to it. Great if 'true'. Could this not merely be a case that our preferred form of social order is currently privileging rights and pluralism, albeit only by the mutual agreement of a shared subjectivism held by those whose views we support?
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