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Right, yeah if humans can't even get their shit together on Earth then it's hard to see how it would be any better on Mars. The conditions of people o...

Colonizing Mars would probably open up a can of worms as it would expose another vector for domination of humans by both other humans and technology. ...

Treblinka, Jean-François Steiner

The Civilization of the Middle Ages, Norman F. Cantor. An exceedingly pleasurable read, though not without its shortcomings.

Democracy was threatened even earlier, with the advent of radio. A booming voice spouting propaganda could be broadcast across an entire continent, in...

On Disobedience, Erich Fromm The Present Age, Søren Kierkegaard

I'm not sure if anyone can really make any absolute statement about Rittenhouse's state of mind at the time, but just suppositions based on his behavi...

:up: Lots of things here I agree with. Leopardi has a nice response to some of the issues you raise, I quote him here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/...

Nothing. What makes God real? The fact that people believe that God is real?

:up: Cold War #2...

Obedience To Authority, Stanley Milgram.

It also seems likely that corporate surveillance will rise, as companies will wish to monitor their employees, in order to "make sure" they are actual...

These problems are, in many cases, introduced or exacerbated by technology, and can only be solved with further development of technology; technology ...

On the contrary, Stephen Hawking is dead, and philosophy is very much so alive.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt.

Thanks for the write up :100: I have reading Peirce on my agenda, but I am reading Kant right now. I recall Peirce had a high regard for Kant and thou...

Again, remember that I have not rejected the notion that causality is not applied to phenomena. The examples that you call "real world" are all subjec...

Well, I have already said, the phenomena of a computer, as a phenomena, evidently follows the rules of causation. That is not the point I am disputing...

But this was just exactly my point. Causality is applied in order to understand phenomena; it is not a phenomena itself. The operation of the computer...

Scholasticism, Hegelianism, Hinduism.

Not solipsism, transcendental idealism. The objects that you describe cannot be described independently of a reference to the mind. They exist in spac...

Why is that? Historically, elaborate metaphysical systems have often been used as a justification for an existing hierarchical political system.

I got my degree in CS, I know how these things work...regardless, none of it necessitates that causality exists independently of the human mind. Rathe...

The internet and the computer I use are phenomena that are conditioned by the mental apparatus. Things in space and time have no independent existence...

Third possibility: "causation" is a concept of the mind, and does not have any application to things as they exist independently of it.

Most of it is rigorous daydreaming; a pseudo-scientific posturing about things that cannot be known, usually with a surreptitious (right-wing) politic...

It's fucked up, but well worth it.

"The Good Old Days": The Holocaust as Seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders, Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, & Volker Riess

Yes.

If it has already been demonstrated that it can be worthwhile to continue a life but that it cannot be worthwhile to start a life, then it is simply f...

No, I meant the usuals on here.

Life can be worthwhile to continue (i.e. finish gracefully), but it cannot be worthwhile to start, for reasons that you and I both know, and that ever...

Something I have been ruminating on a lot recently are the hoops and ladders that people will go through to justify things. In no discussion of antina...

What We Know About Climate Change, Kerry Emanuel. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky.

Thanks. I am most curious about the science behind climate change. I'm looking to polish my understanding of the facts.

Anyone have any recs for books on climate change?

Kant actually says in the Preface to the First Edition of the CPR that he eschews from using examples because it would make the text longer than it ne...

Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler

Medication + therapy first. Then philosophy. I got pretty close to offing myself several years back, some people here might remember my first posts in...

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess.

My intention was to formulate a simple argument that demonstrates the absurdity of believing that suffering is the only moral end, in order to stimula...

I will grant that there is no logical necessity between having a life and suffering, however I think it can be reasonably assumed that any real life (...

I will grant that the definition of negative utilitarianism in premise 1 may be imprecise. The argument can be modified so that it refers to any ethic...

Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer.

Agreed, I think autonomy is at least one of the other major ethical concepts that may come into play in this case. Disgust with the monstrosity/banali...

The more interesting issue imo is the justification for premise 4. Can it be clarified, what it is that makes premise 3 morally repugnant? Remember th...

It is conceivable that a person can simultaneously have a desire and also desire that they do not have this desire, e.g. an alcoholic who wishes they ...

The Drowned World, J. G. Ballard. Holy shit what a novel.

If there is an end to history, it would be when there isn't anything else to do. When a civilization exhausts its possibilities, when there is nothing...

There are good reasons to believe that YHWH is actually Yaldabaoth the Demiurge, a malevolent deceiver-god that wants you to think he is all-powerful ...