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Here's the determinist position summarized in song and dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7TT4jnnWys
December 20, 2018 at 04:40
Why blame us? We were not compelled by circumstances to look after you. It's not our problem. Sucker.
December 20, 2018 at 04:28
No hemlock for you. This court feels revulsion and disgust towards your lame attempt to explain your criminal actions by a not even half baked defense...
December 20, 2018 at 04:20
So, Mr. Wallows, I am judge Crank and I demand that you provide this court with evidence in support of your claim that deterministic factors overrode ...
December 20, 2018 at 03:03
I wasn't thinking of traits like hair color either. I was thinking in terms of "life outcomes". How adaptable we are, how volatile, how insightful, ho...
December 19, 2018 at 23:27
Why do you think that genes, which direct the formation and operation of a person, would not determine outcomes? Granted, genes are not the only opera...
December 19, 2018 at 16:23
If you want to read a basic text about socialism, try The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. The first publication date was 1844, ...
December 19, 2018 at 07:21
Utopias have their attractions, but there is a hidden flaw in utopian schemes: Once everything is perfect, everything must stay perfect, and in order ...
December 19, 2018 at 03:51
\\ Hear! hear! I've been the weirdo non-conformist in many settings, so I get the importance of acceptance and authenticity. I'm fine with letting fol...
December 18, 2018 at 23:44
@"Athena" In general, I think primates, people, dogs, cattle, bees--all sorts of creatures--do have a strong tendency to be on guard around the strang...
December 18, 2018 at 23:30
I don't see why a pear list couldn't be an atheist. Not only that, I don't see why a pear list couldn't also be ambiguous about the extent he was cert...
December 18, 2018 at 17:27
We can not, so we don't have to worry about this option. Philosophers focus too much attention on the quiet, logical, rational activities of the pre-f...
December 18, 2018 at 17:14
In any society there has to be a system for exchanging goods and services. Markets are an ancient institution, whereas capitalism is a relatively rece...
December 18, 2018 at 16:44
As Churchill said, Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect...
December 18, 2018 at 05:01
Yes, getting deplatformed is unpleasant. But, there is a long tradition of deplatforming which goes back before the concept of an internet platform ha...
December 18, 2018 at 04:48
As odd as it may seem in a society long saturated with implicit and muted sexual imagery in advertising, where porn has been freely available since 19...
December 18, 2018 at 04:37
In: Brexit  — view comment
Are you hung up on being consistent for consistency's sake here? You know what that Transcendentalist Ralph W. Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is...
December 18, 2018 at 04:04
Do you remember Cointelpro? Your probably do, or heard about it at some point. Then there is the infiltration of the KKK, spying on Martin Luther King...
December 18, 2018 at 03:55
Bin Laden is Saudi. Well, was. Is but was. is was... too confusing. I don't remember a lot about the Soviet / Afghan war. Thanks for added info. I sho...
December 17, 2018 at 06:22
I'm not at all sure what, exactly, the war on terror was supposed to be. Invading Iraq was doomed from the get go and I said so at the time. I said we...
December 17, 2018 at 05:28
In: Brexit  — view comment
I'll assume that the electorate was fully informed and understood what they were voting for: Leave. But leaving in this case is a bit more complicated...
December 17, 2018 at 05:06
I hear you saying that when Philosophy started budding science (quite some time back) the big picture facility it bequeathed to science got lost along...
December 16, 2018 at 22:56
In: Brexit  — view comment
In the US there have been referenda to do one thing and referenda to undo that very thing. Gay marriage was one of those referenda: first rejected, th...
December 16, 2018 at 22:42
I've read a number of articles about how identity politics have not been all that helpful. That hits close to home, since I was an active participant ...
December 16, 2018 at 20:02
Philosophy used in that way becomes much too large a blanket to be meaningful. In the same way "literature" meaning everything that had been written w...
December 16, 2018 at 19:46
You were correct in the second sentence, no need to mitigate your judgement in the third one: Other people are definitely frustrating in almost every ...
December 16, 2018 at 18:37
Thanks to Google Image Search, we know the picture is the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus, The Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus or "Great" Ludovisi sarcophagus...
December 16, 2018 at 18:14
It was from a Tumblr blog devoted to history--I didn't save the link, just the picture. I noticed the trousers on the figures because I had just been ...
December 16, 2018 at 17:45
That was a joke, inverting the natures of the Trinity and the BVM. Joke? Sure, in many religious cultures (Russian, Irish, Serb, etc.) there is a stra...
December 16, 2018 at 17:28
If you widen the scope of "philosophy" and acknowledge that philosophy spawned new specialized fields, and you accept the several fields of knowledge,...
December 16, 2018 at 06:32
No. After Eden God said, "No more of that free will shit for sentient beings; from here on out, it's strict divine determinism all the way." And so it...
December 15, 2018 at 19:25
I have been where you are. If praying helps, then pray. Fuck the philosophers who think it is inconsistent.
December 15, 2018 at 17:37
@"wayfarer" It is Pygmalion's situation: Pygmalion was a sculptor and king of Cyprus who carved an ivory statue of a maiden and fell in love with it. ...
December 15, 2018 at 17:23
Clearly western civilization extends beyond the anglosphere to include the languages and history of all Europe and the Americas, Australia and New Zea...
December 15, 2018 at 05:32
Regarding clothes making the man, here's a piece from the late Roman empire showing a German wearing trousers, the romans wearing something more like ...
December 14, 2018 at 22:59
Yet another way in which God favored males.
December 14, 2018 at 20:03
Maybe I was over-sharing a bit there (blushes slightly). Vestis facit hominem they said in old Latium, Clothes make the man. Whether it's fine Italian...
December 14, 2018 at 20:00
One of the 'mysteries of the orgasm' is how Tumblr made money. I viewed only a tiny fraction of their content; they have... more than 5 million accoun...
December 14, 2018 at 19:18
So tells us about the meaning that is going on here in this little Christian pagan party.
December 14, 2018 at 07:16
In: Brexit  — view comment
It is emphatically not possible for a state to withdraw from the Union of states. That was settled during the Civil War - 1860-1865. There are some wh...
December 14, 2018 at 07:04
According to a book I have been reading, Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages, the Roman system of Pater Families began to be deconstructed by the R...
December 13, 2018 at 21:55
I am quite content to let transexuals live out their delusions. I too live out some delusions; maybe you do too. Society itself may be something of a ...
December 13, 2018 at 17:03
Lurking in this paragraph is an interesting question about whether we are responsible for our character. Good question. Character is almost by definit...
December 13, 2018 at 07:21
The ancients didn't have a concept for "homosexuality". Their ideas about proper male and female behavior were fairly straight forward. People behaved...
December 13, 2018 at 05:05
Song from the 1920s about gender ambiguity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tQH79p5Ulk
December 13, 2018 at 03:45
I have taken what I view as a down right retrograde position: Transsexuals are suffering from a delusion and gender reassignment specialists are colle...
December 13, 2018 at 03:38
We can, we do, and we ought to draw lines for ourselves, and for those for whom we are responsible. There is a lengthy list of things we do, and do no...
December 13, 2018 at 03:00
In: Brexit  — view comment
After 1000 years of annoying the French, what do the English expect? https://d188rgcu4zozwl.cloudfront.net/content/B007COJYCM/resources/1465850786
December 12, 2018 at 23:00
Goodness gracious; she's not in favor of freedom of expression! My psychoanalytic theory is that there is a connection between believing intimate beha...
December 12, 2018 at 00:46
@"Hanover" So, just how outsized is it? Share of population using Facebook North America 72.4% Latin America / Caribbean 57.3% Oceania / Australia 48....
December 12, 2018 at 00:37