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Yep, he and Rorty never saw eye to eye. My sympathies are almost entirely with Habermas, who seems to me a much more careful and interesting thinker t...

Ah, that's more like it. A much clearer picture of Habermas's thinking about religion and secularism -- also see Religion and Rationality (1998) and B...

So you'd agree that our motives for action come down to feelings, Humean "passions." Is that a psychological fact about human beings, such that someon...

This strain in Habermas's thinking is often presented out of context. The NY Times quote is from a Habermas paper called "An awareness of what is miss...

OK. What do you think of the self-sacrifice example we've been discussing?

I'd have to think about whether these are indeed the only two options, but in any case I'm happy to go with the second: Values are discovered, not ded...

Yes, that's reasonable, otherwise you start thinking in terms of joyous martyrdom or some such. But even "bad" vs. "worse" is problematic. Should we i...

I think we could acknowledge that losing one's temper, and other semi-involuntary acts, are not covered by the thesis "we always choose what we like,"...

It's tough to make this work with examples of altruism and self-sacrifice. You'd have to stretch the meaning of "joy" awfully far. Jane throws herself...

Whew, you don't ask much, do you? :wink: Let's say I could do this, cogently and succinctly, in a paragraph or two. (I don't think I could -- I doubt ...

Of course there are limit cases, examples of behavior that is so contrary to good judgment that we would call it irrational even if the person involve...

In a way, that's right. From the point of view of moral realists like you and me, these terms are barely adequate, and don't go far enough to capture ...

Oh, OK, I thought that was a quote from somebody else! I think this argument runs into trouble from the start, with this: But why? Why assume that, ab...

But why need we do this? I myself don't view realism as a fancy sort of physicalism. There are all kinds of ways to get reasons, ideas, intentions, pr...

Sorry if I missed it. Do you mean this?: I didn't see an argument here, just an assertion. How do we get from "not desiring the good because it is kno...

This is good. I don't know what @"noAxioms" has in mind, but I take "mind-independence" to express the former, existential thesis. The semantic propos...

How is this an argument for the ethical non-realist to become a realist? They merely reply, "Not at all. Nothing of the sort 'seems to follow.' My act...

But you've introduced the term "values" into my quote, and that's something which the anti-realist doesn't countenance. The anti-realist doesn't think...

I really don't think it's that. The anti-realist is happy to acknowledge the fact that suffering is bad for the beings concerned, in the sense that it...

Yes. I would defend the following, more or less from Frege (and paraphrased by Michael H. McCarthy): 1. There is an objective reality, independent of,...

This is the dividing line between subjectivism and objectivism in ethics. The subjectivist (you, perhaps?) wants to say that the usage of words like "...

If we do stick with ordinary usage, we can find examples on both sides. Sometimes we say, "This non-dairy ice cream is worthy of my choice because it'...

I'm not sure I buy it either. I want to put the best possible construction on it, though. I think we have to understand "worthy" simply to mean "ought...

Understood. Or the way I would say it, calling something "worthy of choice" is the same as calling it "good" or "right," but focusing on the action of...

Thank you, but although we agree that "choice-worthy" isn't helpful, it doesn't follow from this that: That's a whole other question.

The context is helpful. You’re not concerned so much with things that might be unknowable in principle, such as the complete decimal expansion of pi. ...

OK, I did think that by "unknowable" you meant "unknowable by us humans". I admit I'm confused about what "unknowable, period" or "not capable of bein...

Sure, a valid question. Depends how much certainty you want to pack in to the concept of "knowing" something. I can say I'm certain that my cat will n...

This statement caught my eye, looking over this thread. Isn't it too strong? If philosophy should discover that some things aren't knowable, at least ...

I thought that was probably what you meant. What other values, then, other than "life is good," would we need in order to generate an ethics, do you t...

Whose life? (And welcome to the forum!)

Sure, that makes sense. I was trying to disambiguate the uses of "information" as a noun, based on @"wonderer1"'s comment, which I understand wasn't t...

I think @"JuanZu"'s idea is that information only comes into existence in the context of someone for whom it is information. You can of course use "in...

Thank you for this. I believe many of us have had similar experiences and journeys. It points up something important -- the choice of a specific spiri...

That's my view as well, but I still want to add "conscious" because this force has to have, at the very least, the same capacities I do. The Suzuki pa...

Fine. I used "it" to avoid gender also, but it sounds like this definition of God is intended to describe a conscious being -- a person, for lack of a...

A valid point. Still, if the Rawlsian lottery were extended to the entire Earth, I'd still pick the year 2025. I think I'd have by far the best shot a...

OK, but I think we need to pose C. S. Lewis's question: Is it conscious? Or perhaps Hart meant this to be obvious by including "omniscient".

Yes. I was thinking of mechanization as an improper model for understanding how humans -- and other forms of life -- coexist with each other. Otherwis...

Amen. Totalitarianism, mechanization, and, as you discuss so well, the tendency to treat humans as sophisticated bits of matter with "needs" and "goal...

Interesting. Then you certainly know more about it than I do. I see the connection with hermeneutics. This is a little risky on TPF, but I'll go ahead...

Good, this all provides a much more nuanced view, and helps me understand what you're saying. In particular, you're right that popular views, or assum...

I admit I'm congenitally opposed to thinking in terms of what's modern or not, so perhaps there's something to it. But I dunno, "a certain sort of Pro...

Could you explain this? I don't understand the context.

This quote is very important and insightful. I think it expresses an intuition or a longing that motivates most if not all philosophy. So I don't thin...

I might be missing the deeper point here. Couldn't we just as well say that every examination by a human (of anything external) must be done from the ...

Sounds good. It's just the word "seeming," which so often implies a lesser way of comprehending experience. But I understand that's not how you're usi...

Right. As I said, this is just physical reductionism. There's no required way to reduce either the mental or the neural to each other.

This would only be a contradiction if we accept a very stringent definition of "objective" as meaning something like "untouched by human perception an...

By a nice coincidence, I was just reading an essay by Theodore J. Kisiel called "Phenomenology as the Science of Science" and came across this: This i...