You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Isaac

Comments

Well said. The issue here is quite easy to resolve, in fact. If @"Wayfarer" can explain string theory without any reference to established an universa...
April 25, 2021 at 05:49
What I'm trying to establish is why everyone would have some perspective on how to live life well. All that everyone past middle age has done is lived...
April 25, 2021 at 05:39
No, it's about whether we have any cause to believe your expertise. Everything about the way you've acted since you started posting has indicated that...
April 24, 2021 at 12:16
How on earth are you interpreting 'science' such that practicing it cannot include more than one interpretation of the raw data?
April 24, 2021 at 10:19
Yes! Full house! Is anyone else playing Dunning-Kruger bingo?
April 24, 2021 at 10:03
I think this is key. Much of what makes hero archetypes toxic in modern society is nothing to do with the virtues they exemplify but the way in which ...
April 24, 2021 at 10:01
Why would you bother with that challenge?
April 24, 2021 at 07:53
The problem with this is that it is almost an inevitability that some people will have kids. There will be a next generation which will have to live i...
April 24, 2021 at 07:09
See my response to @"Antinatalist". Life is not analogous to being trapped in a game. Being trapped entails that there are other options you'd prefer ...
April 24, 2021 at 06:56
Nonsense, it's incredibly easy, just run out into traffic. Under fives do not have the desire to take their own lives (thank goodness), and if you thi...
April 24, 2021 at 06:25
No, because a trap, by definition, restricts free movement, removes choices for activity which would otherwise be available. That's the whole reason w...
April 24, 2021 at 06:17
Again, this is exactly what the paper disproves. We do not necessarily have the emotion 'fear' deriving from our desire to live and avoid pain. We con...
April 24, 2021 at 06:10
Yes, indeed. I get what you mean. It is fascinating though, to me, the way beliefs interact with the articulation of them in the shared space. We crea...
April 23, 2021 at 10:34
Yeah, it's important to emphasise (and I should have been clearer in my post really), that I'm making a hypothetical argument. I don't really think th...
April 23, 2021 at 08:20
Well, mostly by trying to resolve it (if one has the time and inclination) or ignoring it if not. Since most people engaging here are doing so as a ho...
April 23, 2021 at 05:11
@"schopenhauer1" has already dealt with the main substance of this so I won't repeat too much, but basically, yes, it is evil to act on evil intention...
April 23, 2021 at 05:04
At no point was there any choice. There are no yet-to-be-born souls wishing someone would ask them. If people really truly don't want to be in the gam...
April 23, 2021 at 04:59
Yep, agreed. Again, agreed. Neither are the point at hand though, which is the argument for hard antinatalism.
April 22, 2021 at 18:00
Maybe, but I was referring to the specific use @"schopenhauer1" made in his kidnapping for a fantastic game example. No-one harmed at all, but 'dignit...
April 22, 2021 at 17:47
That's what the paper disproves.
April 22, 2021 at 17:43
Yes, probably. Neither of which have any bearing whatsoever on the question of whether that group were correct about ttier esoteric knowledge claims. ...
April 22, 2021 at 17:43
Agreed. And if the very situation itself was overall negative then we'd have a problem, but since it isn't we've no problem at all ... yet. This is ju...
April 22, 2021 at 17:29
I can explain this better with your oft-used kidnapping example. What's bad about kidnapping a person to play a game (even if you think the game is br...
April 22, 2021 at 13:45
This is not strictly true though. What we perceive as desires and emotions are constructions, models we build from physiological inputs and socially m...
April 22, 2021 at 13:17
But being in a net is a bad thing, so we're talking about harms here not dignity. I accept that one can set up affairs such that some harm will befall...
April 22, 2021 at 12:45
How was dignity violated at a future point? What is the dignity violating event that's happening at this future point?
April 22, 2021 at 12:19
Well, I'll bear that in mind next time I ask a cobbler to fix my shoe - 'must not use him as means to an end'. Don't know how I'm going to get this so...
April 22, 2021 at 06:33
This is a philosophy forum, not a fan fiction site. Discussions about whether made-up entities are compatible with philosophical positions are a waste...
April 22, 2021 at 06:21
What decision is made against a child's will at the time of birth? Yep, but no decision is being made at that time against it. Yep I agree. I was aski...
April 22, 2021 at 06:12
OK. So with harm the bad thing is harm. No harm can befall the non-existent child. But the child will be harmed in the future. Now with deciding somet...
April 21, 2021 at 22:01
Well no, they're not. We know that if that child is not born we could also bring about much pain and suffering (in fact are much more likely to), so t...
April 21, 2021 at 18:42
I was looking for some support for that position. As it stands it's not a common intuition, nor have you given any reason why we should think this way...
April 21, 2021 at 18:35
Lots of things could be. The important question is whether they need be, how useful it is to assume they are, what problems arise if we do etc. So wit...
April 21, 2021 at 10:46
Yes, that's right. It's just nonsensical to say the alternative would be 'better'. 'Better' is judgement, a state, of a human mind, without the human ...
April 21, 2021 at 09:54
Yes. The assumption which I keep raising that @"Wayfarer" and other apologists keep repeating is that because science (or materialism) doesn't deal wi...
April 21, 2021 at 06:35
You're just dodging @"janus"'s question. The question was That has nothing to do with an assumption of realism. One could be a thoroughgoing idealist ...
April 21, 2021 at 05:41
Not at all because in euthanasia there is still a population of humans living in a world with less suffering in it as a result. The completion of the ...
April 21, 2021 at 05:08
I'll put it here too since you seem to want to espouse it in both threads. Conception is unique - it's not like throwing people into a game you can on...
April 21, 2021 at 04:52
See, this is why you get accused of proselytising. It's not because you're 'discussing' a philosophical position, it because you keep repeating points...
April 21, 2021 at 04:40
I've read the whole thread. It's not about catching up, I just can't see where you've answered that question.
April 20, 2021 at 16:53
So when you were a lawyer you thought differently about law?
April 20, 2021 at 16:51
So you are/were a practising lawyer and you refuse to acknowledge certain laws as law. How do you handle that when defending a client, for example, if...
April 20, 2021 at 16:42
So you're basically saying that if a law does not derive from this Natural Law™, then you refuse to acknowledge it as a law? So are there any laws whi...
April 20, 2021 at 16:29
Well then your counter begs the question. It becomes "Reference to the body of the law as a whole... is reference back to Natural Law...if it is a ref...
April 20, 2021 at 16:17
No it isn't, or at least not necessarily. Say laws specify a passcode for a door. The first law says the passcode for door A must be 2435, another law...
April 20, 2021 at 15:49
If there's a question of interpretation, a judge will try to do so within the 'spirit of the law', is that right? He'll interpreted it on the basis of...
April 20, 2021 at 09:50
Good answer.
April 20, 2021 at 06:11
In: Pronouns  — view comment
Not just frequency. We share a language (or at least we used to - doesn't seem so much interest in shared enterprises any more). It's about being incl...
April 20, 2021 at 05:43
In: Pronouns  — view comment
Absolutely. But they normally do so gradually and by following use, not by dictat determining use. I think that's begging the question. It would be un...
April 19, 2021 at 19:15
In: Pronouns  — view comment
It's not as simple as that though. You presumably don't comply with any and all of your student's requests, just out of civility and respect do you? Y...
April 19, 2021 at 17:54