Mongrel

What do you mean by "empirical possibility"?

All you have to do is recognize that having Paris as its capital is essential to the thing we call France. And voila... it's necessary. I'm not sure w...

That wouldn't be the thing we rigidly designated as France. How do we know that? Per Kripke, apriori. Let's read Naming and Necessity. And... get.... ...

There is no possible world that contains the thing we've named "France" which has a capital that isn't Paris. That's Kripke's necessary aposteriori in...

Yay! I shocked mcdoodle. I'm shocked that you left out Tolstoy. Dude.

OK. So the OP kicked ass. This last post did. Where do you publish your writings? The US is a multi-racial society. I know of no country on earth that...

Trust me. Nobody messes with Saudi. Who blew up the world trade center? Who took the fall for it? How about that? You bring up an interesting issue. T...

A Saudi can be executed for blasphemy. Do you think we should withdraw from alliance with Saudi?

The national debt is partly the Cold War and attitudes formed during that time. Some portion of it is a recent effort to prop up the global economy af...

I got pneumonia in June. I was out of work until the middle of July. It sucked. I started watching the news everyday (I didn't used to). That's how I ...

I don't think backing out of NATO would have anything to do with that, but since you bring it up... The US national debt is around $19 trillion. I don...

I'm pretty sure the US will back out eventually. There's no good reason to provide defense for Europe.

There's a global economy and a global market for goods. The US and Europe are competitors. How would backing out of NATO change anything? It would be ...

Commentators claim it's still possible for Trump to be elected president. One silver lining I can see to that cloud is that it would forcefully inject...

I don't think its a waste of time in general to try to understand people. It's just you, dude.

I think the best strategy would be this: let's not try to understand one another. It's a waste of time. I love the Red Cross. Doctors Without Borders ...

It's common to treat them as if they're truth apt. This argument is basically from common sense. The structure of the argument (which isn't mine, btw)...

If you say we find the answer to this empirically, you're a natural kind realist (you're a realist about universals.) A naturalist might want to be al...

I used to think that morality is post event... looking back. Prior to that there's nothing to judge. I thought pre event is amorality. Nietzsche chang...

Normativity conjures a possible world and calls it the ideal. The actual world is weighed against this ideal. Ancients cast this story in the heavens....

Conflation? Could be.

Just.. why worry about solving problems abroad when you couldn't defend your own home if you had to? I'm not trying to be an ass... it's something I r...

I don't think there's going to be any humanitarian military intervention. Benkei comes from a country that is not contributing its fair share to NATO....

I hate writing "That's not what I said." I hate it so much I usually opt to drop out of conversation as soon as I'm misquoted. Every once in a blue mo...

It's not deception, then. It's that which diverts attention from the victim. That, and hypocrisy. You know, the invasion of Iraq wasn't advertised as ...

The British Empire would have executed Assad and put in place a British governor. It wouldn't have been for humanitarian reasons, though. The BE's age...

I was trying to understand what that point was. The problem in Syria does not stem from geopolitics. I'm sure you realize that. It's a direct result o...

I understood Thompson to be suggesting that ethical statements are generated in basically the same way normative statements about sight are. I don't s...

True, but why is that worrisome to you? I'm asking earnestly. Is it because you encounter frustration in your quest to understand current events? Or j...

Intervention in Bosnia.... that sort of thing. You have to have cojones to engage in humanitarian military intervention.

Kripke makes an interesting case for the necessary a posteriori and the contingent a priori. Scott Soames' history of AP rocks at explaining succinctl...

Trump expresses regret for past remarks. The remarks I liked best were when he strung together these three sentences: 1. Putin uses the "n" word. 2. P...

I'd grant that the use of the concept of a life form is apriori knowledge. I don't see that protecting naturalistic normativity from the Sojourner Tru...

I personally wouldn't reach for Kant here. I'd go straight for Quine. The ability to apply logic to new situations has to be apriori knowledge. Quine'...

The world's never going to be perfect. I learn that every now and then. Then I forget it again. I think every time leftism has had a chance to demonst...

Ignore this if it seems derailing, but in regard to violence is the US... isn't it partly that we're somehow proud of it? Like we're all bad motherfuc...

Obama has a history of sponsoring legislation to monitor racial profiling and to videotape homicide investigations (this was before he became presiden...

I didn't understand your view. Was it that there's no such thing as a Jew? Or just that Jews don't qualify as a race?

Good point. (Y)

I'd classify MLK as a civil rights activist. That puts his views in line with those of a 19th Century Liberal. So it makes sense that his point was th...

How muddled? I thought he was aiming to say that when we identify what a thing is, we end up talking about a form. Its like he's talking to an audienc...

One of my playlists provides a poignant vote for Un's point of view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ejga4kJUts

Cool. Good discussion.

Nobody's advocating silence. Malcolm X's point was that those who imagine that the democratic government of the US, with its ample talk, would ever so...

Failed because they couldn't defend themselves. How do you assess it? This is probably where we diverge. Sometimes speeches and other forms of communi...

OK. Where I'll put my foot down is this: anarchists absolutely can not engage in military action. Ever. That can't happen. It's impossible. It's a con...

Good point. (Y)

That really seems wrong to me, Moliere. It must be that I'm not familiar with your definition of authoritarian.

I think today's liberalism is tomorrow's conservatism. Here's an answer to MLK's dream speech: "It's time to stop singing and start swinging." https:/...

There's a fair amount of liberation that did happen as a result of military action (or so it would seem), for instance the American Civil War. Are you...