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ChatteringMonkey

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Is that a normative claim though? Seem more like a meta-normative/a-moral claim to me.
January 24, 2021 at 19:48
Yeah ok, but I don't think Montaigne is saying that only to clean up his image, I think he means it, or at least it seems like he does to me.
January 24, 2021 at 19:30
That's exactly what I'm asking. A deformity would suggest that something caused it other than 'nature' or evolution, if it were natural we would call ...
January 24, 2021 at 19:14
Yes, because 'natural' is not really natural... nobody is expected to behave good as a baby. There's allways an education preceding the age where one ...
January 22, 2021 at 23:39
Yes, I think that quote is in line with what I said, usually Machiavelli is dismissed because of some moral evaluation, he is bad/immoral because of t...
January 22, 2021 at 22:33
She contrast Machiavelli to Montaigne, who were not that far apart, and to Montesquieu who live a bit later, but there she does make note of differenc...
January 22, 2021 at 22:17
Was it that European culture was especially unique in that regard, or that European culture just happened to be more technologically advanced at the t...
January 22, 2021 at 13:22
Interesting read, thanks. I'm not sure what to make of it yet. It's seems a plausible psychological account for what "putting cruelty first" would ent...
January 22, 2021 at 11:10
Yes that is true, it started as only a trade union and for that purpose it can do some foreign policy. And it has expanded a bit over the years since ...
January 21, 2021 at 16:52
I'd say the most important difference is that the EU lacks foreign policy and military competences, and an executive power that can represent the EU i...
January 21, 2021 at 16:21
Good analogy! It's interesting that a good analogy or metaphor can be more insightful, than trying to capture it in abstract categories like subjectiv...
January 20, 2021 at 11:53
Plato, Hume, Nietzsche and then straight to existentialist if that is your interest... i'd skip all the rest. Hume, "an inquiry concerning human under...
January 18, 2021 at 18:56
Hume is missing, I'd read some of him first. And yes I'd always just start with Plato, if you haven't already.
January 18, 2021 at 18:15
I'd think pointing at his speeches and his rethorics would be enough as proof for forging a populist movement... but that is not illegal I don't think...
January 18, 2021 at 13:36
I don't quite see it like that. There is certainly discontent among a certain percentage of the population with their lives and how the political syst...
January 18, 2021 at 12:02
My take on Trump is that he is kind of an exception to the rule in that he is both incompetent and malicious... which makes it hard to determine what ...
January 17, 2021 at 19:48
Yes, frequency would be an indicator I think. When someone makes what seems like a stupid decision, you might think it could be incompetence or ignora...
January 17, 2021 at 16:07
Yes, agreed, I should have said, "should be the same" instead of "would be the same".
January 15, 2021 at 08:22
At first I was kind of surprised that you would come to conclude that moral realism follows from what I said about values, because I would conclude fr...
January 15, 2021 at 08:14
Can we just assume there has to be an essence? A lot of philosophy historically has been about trying to extract essences out of things, to its detrim...
January 14, 2021 at 22:12
If you have a persistent headache, focusing on it seems to make the pain worse. Or rather the pain is probably still there, you just don't notice it a...
January 14, 2021 at 18:32
Morality is not only about screaming pain is my point. In some extreme case it might be the only thing that matters, but it usually is not. And yes an...
January 14, 2021 at 16:29
I don't think "greater good" is entirely reducible to pain, value-qualia or something like a primordial actuality... it also has to do with the identi...
January 14, 2021 at 16:03
Parents don't 'create you' like they directly create a tool with a purpose. They only make it possible by having sex. For the rest they don't have any...
January 14, 2021 at 10:18
I forgot this one... I mostly agree with you here, that in practice it does have some of the same problems... but you do have revelation, and popes an...
January 13, 2021 at 08:50
It seems rather strange to me that you would make a distinction between Gods idea of morality and objectively correct moral opinions. God having creat...
January 13, 2021 at 08:29
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January 12, 2021 at 16:13
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Yes, if you would have had a discussion with him, you'd think it was pretty evident... Knowledge is bad, nuclear missiles are very bad!
January 12, 2021 at 14:46
First let me say, I'm not a theist and not necessarily committed to the idea that it is all that convincing. I can see some reasons though why it woul...
January 12, 2021 at 10:27
Because theism allows for a purposeful being having created the universe. And if you have that, you have meaning from the start, fused into the descri...
January 12, 2021 at 08:32
Sure, it was the mindscape podcast, with guess Joseph Henrich. He has written a few books on the topic I saw. The question then presumably is how much...
January 11, 2021 at 16:15
That's what I think a lot of atheist do to some extend, i.e. P1 is false because there is some other nebulous non-specified reason why moral realism i...
January 11, 2021 at 15:20
Yes, I agree that it would be more reasonable, but I don't think there is a moral obligation that they should. Because it's not merely about defending...
January 10, 2021 at 09:29
I'd call myself a moral constructivist, and I'd say the 'local universalism' comes from shared culture and shared values, more than any shared attribu...
January 10, 2021 at 09:09
I mostly agree with your analysis but... It may be more reasonable to reject moral realism, but I don't think it's about reason for most people. They ...
January 10, 2021 at 08:28
You derive the universality from a shared biology then? While I would agree that we have many more similarities than differences because of our shared...
January 09, 2021 at 14:24
Ok, I expected you to make a stronger claim to universality because of the next sentences you wrote : The idea that the rules we make and laws we vote...
January 09, 2021 at 11:00
Yeah I think he was, as far as we can be certain, but I don't know if I can do his argument justice here, it has been a while. I'd have to read it aga...
January 08, 2021 at 12:45
Evidence of something causing something, is no proof of everything being caused always.
January 08, 2021 at 12:27
No I don't think so, chance pertains to how it was caused, not to what the cause was. I think Hume showed that the assumption of Causality with a big ...
January 08, 2021 at 11:57
Yes, the definition and use is ambiguous like I said, intention and cause are two different things. But that is often the case with common language wh...
January 08, 2021 at 10:23
Yes, not literally but figuratively. Note that 'by chance' is not the subject of the sentence in 'he scored that goal by chance'. It's not chance that...
January 08, 2021 at 09:00
I don't know why you are so hung up on this particular point, it's just a figure of speech, not literally a probability. People do say that a goal was...
January 08, 2021 at 08:17
Although, I'll grant you that it can also mean that that he did intent to score it, but that there was a very low probability to score. It's a bit amb...
January 08, 2021 at 07:44
The non-teleological one. He scored that goal by chance, means he didn't intent to score the goal... not that the goal was scored by some probability.
January 08, 2021 at 07:41
A word can have a different meaning in a different context.
January 08, 2021 at 07:37
There are lots of ways it can go horribly wrong, sure, but what I would want to question is if the upside is really there to begin with? Nietzsche, ag...
January 08, 2021 at 01:25
Ok, I think I agree with most of your points. Just to clarify though, you say I take it that you mean that, even though we choose individually, the pr...
January 07, 2021 at 23:36
Anyway, these discussion are all a bit besides the point I think. I don't think religions and Gods should be viewed literally or as accurate descripti...
January 07, 2021 at 14:31
Yes chance and probability are an expression of our epistemic uncertainty. In poker you put a probability or chance on you winning a hand because you ...
January 07, 2021 at 14:15