You are using too shallow a definition of happiness. Surely when Jefferson wrote the sentence, he wasn't suggesting something on the order of "you jus...
You are correct. I was a student at a midwestern state college in the 1960s. The student body of my midwestern state college had no hippies; it was co...
You are reducing a significant question to a matter of mere personal whim. Morality is the distilled product of humans trying to settle on common rule...
Of course! Family is where we all come from, and we are approximately as screwed-up as they are. Good, bad, and indifferent genes have been biological...
You are conflating romance, love, and marriage. The first two may lead to the third, but not necessarily. It is in the marriage ceremony that we agree...
Some people over-value their cognitive resources and under-value their affective or emotional resources. It's through the limbic part of the brain tha...
I don't know why Jack Cummins thinks that compassion has been "thrown into the rubbish bin of philosophy ideas." Compassion doesn't get a lot of airpl...
You didn't ask me, but I don't see why you are having a problem with "compassion". The minimum definition is 'concern for the sufferings or misfortune...
It can be independent of religious context, certainly. But there are far more people whose ethical direction comes from religious teaching than there ...
I do not know whether compassion has been dumped into the rubbish bin or not. Personally, I don't look to philosophy per se for guidance on acting com...
To quote a line from Phil Ochs, "I'm sure it wouldn't interest anyone outside a small circle of friends." The actual importance we ascribe to a life i...
Very true, and they greatly increased the deficit by continuing larger discretionary expenses and decreasing income. Of course the Covid-19 stimulus p...
Bernie Bros are a faction because Sanders represents the kind of representative that we would like to have voted for, but was/is almost never on offer...
I would expect some differences between an open vote and secret ballot - for any group of people where volatile issues are in play. There are many day...
How can you tell the Trump Republican politicians from Republican politicians being held hostage? How much difference is there? They are all just so m...
Of course that happens. But attraction depends on more than an assessment of intelligence. The force that through the green fuse drives the flower has...
Over the years I have had a series of running and biking accidents (starting in 1983). These resulted in broken bones, painful muscle injuries, and wr...
Absolutely. The pragmatist philosopher, William James, thought there was a connection between behavior and emotion. He posited that fear could be ampl...
Oh no! Were you walking or were you on a bike yourself? Did you get hurt--scraped up, lacerated...? Getting run over by a bicycle is not as bad (and p...
Who is the subject of the the experiment; who is the experimenter? You? Us? God? Benevolent (or not) overlords? God made the World in six days flat On...
Were you against sexism because you had first hand experience as the victims of sexism, or were you indoctrinated by others who were, or thought they ...
Warm, snug, semi-posh, academic progressives--hmmmm. Yes, please. Unfortunately I missed the boat on that one. But then you add the word "seemingly". ...
"I'm not a murderer, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." (attributed to Mark Twain) It's not problematic a bit. Your memory associat...
I try to be critically aware of how I feel about groups of similar people. Yes, I am biased, I am prejudiced -- not severely, but still. I have been r...
We can probably thank Christian and Moslem missionaries for Africans' difficulties with homosexuality. Some Africans (specifically, Ugandans) I've tal...
Humans are probably not born "pre-loaded" with a set of highly specific biases and prejudices, but we may well be born with a propensity towards being...
One of the annoying features of god-talk is defining god (particularly the Abrahamic God) at the start, then getting tangled up in the barbed wire res...
College often erodes religion, not so much because of what is taught in classes (though that may well have an effect) but more because of the social a...
I wasn't proposing that we sentence even one of them to a firing squad. I would divest them of their ill-gotten wealth. After that, they would have to...
Yes, my education helped me achieve much more of my full potential than I would have without it. I shudder to think where I would be without it. Givin...
Actually, one could argue that the living don't know their own time all that well. It's just damn hard to know what the hell is actually going on. Can...
How important it is "to be right in relation to ... the ideas we have" depends on how much tolerance one has for ambiguity, ambivalence, and dissonanc...
That's because you have a strong libertarian streak and view the government as your most probable enemy. Meanwhile, the capitalists are screwing you o...
You are taking an extreme position here, and of course you have company. It's a rare idea, indeed, that only one person holds it. A whole folk/pop-psy...
Rather than "reparations" for past crimes committed against whole peoples (genocide, slavery, ruthless economic exploitation, etc.), we should defund ...
i oppose censoring speech (verbal/written/symbolic). At the same time it is plainly clear that speech has consequences, quite positive as well as quit...
There used to be a few blocks on Boston's downtown Washington St. called "the Combat Zone'. There were bars, strip joints, porn stores, pizza by the s...
You are more accommodating to the interests of employers than I am. Workers are paid to perform a service or produce a product. When it's convenient, ...
— Kenosha Kid I'm cautiously pessimistic about this. True, most people no longer openly express crudely racist, sexist and anti-gay statements, which ...
Maybe. But you are quite correct: when it comes to speech, there is no such thing as the right to free speech at work. One can speak as freely as one ...
regarding the film clip: I'm not sure how representatives are the brats in the film clip claiming that if they are offended, they have the right to si...
Some gay people consider not being able to have children (two guys, no pregnancy), and generally not having children, to be one of the major advantage...
No, that's covered by "regulating the labor pool". Back in the 60s, never mind which year, Edgar Z. Friedenburg described one of the functions of educ...
Success often depends on "belief in the efficacy of ... . So, people who believe vaccination will protect their children get them vaccinated. People w...
I've been thinking about education since I started teacher training back in the '60s. It's both an appealing and appalling field. I was self-deluded i...
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