frank

"The government which governs least, governs best." Do you know where this statement comes from and what it originally meant?

Nussbaum says that GDP doesn't tell us how well a nation is developing because it's been observed that GDP can rise, but due to income inequality, the...

I agree that child labor is immoral. I've kind of moved on from this topic now.

That would be awesome! Thanks.

Thanks. I'll look into it. I don't favor laissez faire. I wanted to examine a contemporary approach to the issue.

Unfortunately this isn't entirely true. I've discussed in this thread some of what it gets right. That makes its moral blind spot all the more dangero...

I pursued your interest in child labor laws because I wanted you to say this: that what's wrong with social Darwinism is that it's immoral. It sees pe...

Is it that you see it as wasted time to examine your bias in favor of child labor laws? If so, fair enough. Thanks for the discussion.

If you recall, the main obstacle to child labor law was that individual states couldn't outlaw it without crippling their own economies relative to th...

Child labor is illegal in the US because of a movement fueled mainly by women: specifically: mothers. Their argument was exactly as you stated. What i...

Do you think we should leave child labor illegal? Why? China traded the health of their people for its present economic position. And that position tr...

Cool. I committed the naturalistic fallacy. Like most who glanced at this thread, you remain in the ditches instead of looking at the horizon. To all ...

I recently learned that if I want my 20 year old washing machine to work, I ought change out the coupler between the motor and the drum because it's w...

It's a pretty radically amoral perspective, so how did either of those fallacies creep in? A good gardener learns from nature. She works with nature. ...

:up: Still, Laissez faire says we should let Nature tell us what works instead of the other way around. That part of it I do agree with. Laissez faire...

Yep. As you mentioned, knowledge isn't the issue here. It's more about reference.

So to mean N is to hold some fact about N in mind?

So what is it to mean N?

I've never thought that meaning consisted of holding a mental picture. Did you ever think that?

True. Likewise, if I see a stop sign, I don't ask myself if that's a stop sign. I just know it is. Under some circumstances, I might stop my car when ...

Right. I could question it, but I usually don't. Therefore we know that thinking of N is not a matter of passively recognising a mental image. Is that...

It's either true or false that he recalled the correct image of N. Case A. His memory is accurate Case B. His memory is inaccurate. It's possible that...

If we look back at the quote: Is this quote supposed to imply that thinking of N reduces to something later said or done? Or what exactly?

What follows in your post is an examination of intention, not reference. Or do you see the two as inextricable?

Face recognition software analyzes a picture and compares it to a standard. The computer could ask someone to verify the accuracy of the standard, but...

Are you ok with affirmative action?

*loads tranquilizer gun* :blush:

I think you're overlooking the possibility that you're just a brain in a vat (and someone is about to pull the plug.) Did ja ever think of that?

Ok. Then I think we can all have our cakes and eat them too. Language on holiday for everyone!

No. I didn't say that. Social Darwinism isn't based on science. In practice it has a history if producing social volatility.

Ordinary language philosophy

You can't be post-structuralist and OLP at the same time.

The fact that social Darwinism isn't scientific makes a good intellectual argument against it. The volatile hx of laissez faire also does. Neither of ...

:razz:

I'm pondering arguments against it and what sorts of foundations those arguments have.

Cool. What would you say?

It does. Consider a world where there's a vegan hotdog factory which others can use as a ladder out of the gutter. It's true that the hotdog factory c...

2015 Polish movie: Demon. On the eve of his wedding, a man falls into a pit full of corpses and becomes possessed by a Jewish woman who thinks it's he...

For Israelites, good meant to adhere to the Covenant. If a person fell on hard times, it was assumed that failure to please God was the cause. This is...

There is no evil in social Darwinism. Is that a problem for you?

Do you expect a potential interaction with the Big Bang? How so?

Social Darwinists favor death for the weak, so why would they mind if some portion of the population moved to Sierra Leone? The kind of engagement I w...

Nah. It was me taking you as seriously as you took the OP.

Canada? I would liked to have seen you engage the question earnestly, but I'm guessing you're busy.

Aren't you already in one?

I guess my background question has to do with events in the US from the1870s to WW1: the idea of eugenics settled pretty quickly and deeply into the n...

Sorry, I was having a mood. Social Darwinism doesnt seem mechanical to you? Freud likewise sees us being motivated in a mechanical way.

You can refute other people's solipsism. You can't refute your own.

If the load across an 8 volt battery is two 1-ohm resistors in series, the voltage drop across each resistor will be 4 volts.

'If we double our wealth and conquer the stars and be unequal to this issue, we will have failed as a nation and as a people. For it is true of a nati...