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I might have already asked this question, but are there any KOTOR fans here? I just started my fifth play through of the series. Some of the best game...

And during a large sequence in the former half of the twentieth century, it looked as though fascism was to become the dominant form of government on ...

Yes, I suppose I agree then. Thank you for clarifying. Antinatalism is indeed an ethical position and not a rational hypothetical.

I'm not sure if I follow what you are saying here, Willow. Why call material arguments for antinatalism shallow? If suffering exists, and we apply a v...

I try to make a distinction between religion as a cultural and social phenomenon and religious philosophy, like theology, eschatology, soterieology, e...

The good is sentient welfare, as viewed through the eyes of sentients themselves.

Fuck Richard Dawkins, the intolerant dumbass. Entertaining story.

Just because they don't work doesn't mean they aren't candidates for morality. They don't work, not because they aren't good, but because there's some...

Probably because we are able to conceive of realities that are not.

Please respond with an argument and not just a handwave. I have clearly shown to you how your emphasis on "natural-ness" is derived from a prior appro...

No, you also give emotional arguments because you have placed value upon the "natural" state, thus making it susceptible to moral discussion. Nothing ...

Yes, but you still have to argue for what the standard should be that we should attempt to strive for. Yes, but why should we consider communal best i...

Right, so you are under the framework that what has been done, and what we currently do, is what we ought to continue to do because it's natural and r...

I'd like to see you attempt.

A scientific belief is a type of philosophical belief. To attempt to separate the two is to drive a nail in a complex and symbiotic relationship betwe...

You're conflating hypothetical imperatives with categorical imperatives. You use "rational" (i.e. self-interest) as the motivating reason to adopt a m...

Umm...ok?

But there needs to be a justification for why humans are special. Perhaps we're special because we can vote or do philosophy. In which case, yes, we s...

So you're appealing to the historic application of rights to argue that we ought not to apply these rights to other creatures. "Human", in the case, c...

Quite the contrary. If there is any doubt in our mind that an organism is capable of suffering, then it is the skeptic that must provide evidence that...

Thank God Chalmers cut his hair.

Certainly it would be an ad hominem to attack Schopenhauer's philosophy simply because he was a dick - but it really was the case that good ol' Arthur...

Well, sure, but we'll have to have solid evidence to show that they can't feel dread. In any case the murder of a non-human sentient would be similar ...

I mean that it is not consistent or rational. Well, because having a feeling mind carries with it certain liabilities, like the capacity to suffer. An...

Hot damn, that was a fantastic rant.

Yet we can refine our moral considerations and reject the notions of common sense morality that make no sense. But why should we limit these rights to...

Or rather, you should see this as your problem and look into why the constraints of common sense morality are largely arbitrary and defenseless.

In which case, I would urge us to reconsider our prior beliefs. Ancestor worship is irrational, the deceased are no more and cannot be harmed. Only th...

When I say empathy is a starting point, I mean that empathy gives us an initial motivation to help another person. We need no extra justification to h...

:-} In any rate, pessimism is an argument for pessimism, so it's not too surprising to myself that there exist people who are discontent with the syst...

Oh sure, I agree, it was cliche. But it talked about relevant pessimistic themes that people ordinarily would not look into. Ooooo, a whole planet.......

You claim that pessimism is a reaction to modernism, yet pessimism was around long before modern society emerged. The Wisdom of Silenus would have bee...

In any case, apo's appeal to the majority doesn't even make sense because it fails to account for other majority views that contradict his own. A curs...

Because they weren't capable of doing so. But now humans have entered the stage, and I'm arguing that it's time we put down the mirror of narcissism a...

I agree completely. Oh, they're "familiar", just not in the way you're using them. Yes, which is why I asked him to make a thread on this that would r...

Point being I think you should make a thread (I meant thread not post) on this because talk of enlightenment vs romanticism, absolutism vs relativity,...

Then it's mutual. Because I see no problem with it. Maybe you should actually make a post on this instead of having a assert it every single time.

Freud's theories are more often rejected than accepted, but he legacy spawned a quite respectable psychodynamic field that is systematically misinterp...

How psychoanalytic of you... :-} Calling people desperate, it seems to me, is a sign of desperation. Right. The goal is what we're arguing out. And I ...

Bingo.

Yet a scientific ethics does not necessarily satisfy what we perceive to be moral. Tell a person whom you're helping that you're helping them because ...

Way to misrepresent my position. Animal starvation is a prime example of what we ought to NOT allow. The only way to cut down on this, and other sorts...

No, it's not genocide. It's humanitarianism. Animals cannot take care or advocate for themselves in the way humans can. They live more on instinct tha...

You literally just said that our morality should be based on scientific discoveries. Doesn't get any more naturalistic than this. But why? Why should ...

Benefit, in this case, is defined as the minimization of harm - harm that is more significant than the harm being applied to the lab rats. The doing/a...

It's not absolutism. If lab rats are being used to cure cancer, and this is only way to do it, then I'll support the effort. After all, I am a consequ...

No, it's not anthropomorphic nonsense. These penguins are acting in what we perceive to be distinctly human. We should view them as capable of sentien...

Species are made of individual organisms that have a family resemblance to each other. They are fluid and ever-changing, yes, but we can organize them...

I'm talking about radical restructuring of the ecosystems of the world in the same way first world countries restructure the political and economic st...

As soon as someone leaves the realm of the intelligible then they deserve to be ignored. Post-modernism has, by and far, left this realm.