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To begin with the question of justice, I'm not that convinced that there really is any univocal understanding of 'modern' justice. I say this insofar ...
September 04, 2019 at 04:14
Nietzsche at least, wasn't anxious about death per se: he was anxious about deaths that did not sanctify life: "Many die too late, and a few die too e...
September 03, 2019 at 16:39
Really? A quote taken from somewhere else entirely with no relevance to the discussion is a supposed to... have relevance to the discussion? Yeah, nah...
September 03, 2019 at 13:48
Why not both?
September 03, 2019 at 12:51
In: Brexit  — view comment
Oh look, a neoliberal in the wild.
September 03, 2019 at 11:30
Funnily enough, for Aristotle, who had neither the word nor concept of 'machine', slaves were what he called 'animate instruments' (ktema ti empsychon...
September 03, 2019 at 09:01
Quick note: it’s worth considering those ethical moments which follow from necessity: “why did you save the child from drowning?” “I couldn’t do other...
September 03, 2019 at 04:21
There are lots of models of ethics and responsibility that make no use of free will. Ancient ethics, to take one example (internally differentiated, i...
September 03, 2019 at 03:16
Is an insignificant choice - quite literally, a choice that has no significance, makes no difference - meant to be a mark of our... freedom?
September 02, 2019 at 19:02
Without having followed the thread, one quick remark on emotion and evolution: emotion may well have developed as adaptive feature of our psychic live...
September 02, 2019 at 18:54
Don't really think that imagery is helpful or useful. The point is that free-will responds to a very specific problematic, and marks a massive transfo...
September 02, 2019 at 17:37
Nope. Bunch of mistranslated bullshit. You won't find freedom articulated with the will in any of Cicero's writings - the liberum voluntatis or arbitr...
September 02, 2019 at 16:41
That's about right, but things are complex. Arendt, for instance, fudges a bit Paul's role in the whole thing. She cites Paul as having 'discovered th...
September 02, 2019 at 15:16
I super like the idea of 'free won't', which has the merit of being able to be made sense of, unlike a certain 'free will'. Still, while I think that ...
September 02, 2019 at 03:57
Eating, fucking, building, working, lying, typing, listening, standing, staring, crying, holding, shooting, laughing, praying. Willing? Humbug.
September 02, 2019 at 01:01
Bataille tried this already. In any case no. The only properly atheist response to God is: 'what's that? Never heard of it; doesn't sound very interes...
September 01, 2019 at 19:06
Why? What warrants any of this? We did perfectly fine with any concept of 'will' for hundreds of years. It's hardly some primal datum of human experie...
September 01, 2019 at 19:03
No, I couldn't care less about God. That free will was invented as a theological solution to a theological conumdrum is taint enough. The problem, by ...
September 01, 2019 at 18:43
In: Hong Kong  — view comment
I would not conflate the people of HK with the people of China. While I can only speak for Beijing - I've not been outside the capital - the Chinese c...
September 01, 2019 at 18:03
For good measure, here's one last one from Albrecht Dihle's 1982 The Theory of the Will in Classical Antiquity: "It is generally accepted in the study...
September 01, 2019 at 17:39
Yes I can see how citing and quoting four authors (six, really, if you count Gilson and Brown) somehow becomes 'one or two' authors, while simultaneou...
September 01, 2019 at 17:08
In: Hong Kong  — view comment
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/harrowing-video-that-shocked-hong-kong-shows-cycle-of-escalating-violence-20190901-p52mv9.html "Black clad special f...
September 01, 2019 at 14:47
In response I'm just gonna whine a little bit: "The great scholar of late antiquity Peter Brown... points out that Augustine has been called the “inve...
September 01, 2019 at 14:10
I like how sources are 'whiny rhetoric'. While I suppose your completely baseless claims in which free-will is both logical and something innate and u...
September 01, 2019 at 12:15
This discussion was merged into I don't think there's free will
September 01, 2019 at 12:13
If not being ignorant is contentious then I'll concede it. Until then, I've cited my sources in previous posts here. I'm not convinced in the meantime...
September 01, 2019 at 12:08
It's not contentious. It's what any minimally competent understanding of philosophical and etymological history would provide. Free-will had to be inv...
September 01, 2019 at 11:59
Funny how an 'innate understanding' had to be invented by theologians a couple of hundred years ago before which it was nowhere to be found. Of course...
September 01, 2019 at 11:35
Those who believe in free-will be like /uploads/resized/files/w3/8zfoly7h4wh2a107.jpg
September 01, 2019 at 10:55
In: Hong Kong  — view comment
My point is simply that the entire point of protests - or at least certain ones, and especially the ones taking place in HK right now - is to challeng...
September 01, 2019 at 10:51
In: Hong Kong  — view comment
Protests are a means by which law - and what motivates law - is challanged. Those who would prefer that protests are carnivals may as well join the ci...
September 01, 2019 at 08:36
Lucretian swerves?
September 01, 2019 at 07:01
This discussion was merged into What is the difference between actual infinity and potential infinity?
August 31, 2019 at 17:31
This discussion was merged into What is the difference between actual infinity and potential infinity?
August 31, 2019 at 17:31
In: Hong Kong  — view comment
I hope they riot until Carrie Lam's head is on a stick. Or more probably, until she flees to the mainland licking the boots of her autocratic overlord...
August 31, 2019 at 12:52
Gas can't form a membrane. No membrane, no life.
August 31, 2019 at 11:32
A quick and dirty way to understand determination and freedom together is freedom as self-determination. They'd be a bit to unpack here but one upshot...
August 30, 2019 at 10:57
There's an interesting short-circuit here isn't there? An actual possibility. A possibility whose status is - actual. A possibility which is not merel...
August 29, 2019 at 12:35
Sure we can. There's lots out there that has. But humans are stupid for the most part and like sticking to the tried and tired ways. It would be nice ...
August 28, 2019 at 18:03
You might enjoy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sq-EjKYp_Q
August 28, 2019 at 14:08
Were philosophy able to do away once and for all with the dualisms of form and matter, substance and accident, essence and existence, it would for onc...
August 28, 2019 at 14:04
And? Again, the relavence is?
August 28, 2019 at 11:29
You tell me. If you think these distinctions, drawn by Augustine in different contexts, have any relevance to our discussion, you can explain their re...
August 28, 2019 at 05:15
Wrong. You can trace plenty of conceptual innovations back to Christian philosophy, and as lots of authors agree, free will is precisely one of them. ...
August 28, 2019 at 01:30
Whether or not he meant to reject it or not, that's what he effectively did, and that's what we were addressing. William Connolly's The Augustinian Im...
August 27, 2019 at 21:34
Or to quote from another source: "By attributing to the human mind (and hence the human person) the character of voluntary self-control and self-origi...
August 27, 2019 at 15:08
This is an attractive and pastoral (Nietzscheian) just-so story, but it is also has the distinct disadvantage of being wrong, or at least wholly misle...
August 27, 2019 at 14:45
You're right I need to attribute it to hysteric Christians and hysteric late (unnamed, uncited) Platonists, each about a 100 or so years apart from ea...
August 27, 2019 at 07:04
So no free will until the late Platonists and Christians, cool, gotchya, thanks for playing, come again, Wiki in hand.
August 27, 2019 at 06:45
Not at all. It follows freely from her explicit arguments that those who read either as employing a notion of 'free will' are imposing anarchronisms f...
August 27, 2019 at 06:15