Janus

I won't be taking any flights, going to the doctor, or engaging pretty much anyone's services,in your world. As to democracy; I don't think we have it...

The "most immediate primal thing we have" is the sensed world, especially other people and our bodily, emotional and linguistic interactions with them...

We might all know when we are thinking, but it doesn't follow that we know what thoughts are. Similarly, we know when we are digesting food, but that ...

No, your position is self-contradictory. Divine Command theory claims that morality exists. Divine Command theory claims that if morality exists then ...

If one theory says that gods do not exist and the other says that gods exist, how can they be compatible? Some textual evidence from Hobbes and Nietzs...

Yes, and the further problem is how do we, with our fallible reason, know what is demanded by Divine Reason?

You always seem to interpret positions that disagree with yours as being the result of some kind of intellectual capitulation to taboo, "prohibition",...

:cool:

I can't see how Deacon's thesis will ever be testable, but you never know, I guess. I think it is just a way of looking at things that you might think...

Yes, it seems reasonable to think that it would be a majority community decision, and that the perceived benefit of the majority would be the driver o...

:cool: Off to work now; "see" y'all later...

Agreed.

I disagree with Hegel on most counts, but I think he got it right that thought is evolutionary and dialectical and that great philosophies are not gre...

:cool:

True that. Philosophies are not absolutely right or wrong, but more or less significant moments in the general evolution of thought. In that much at l...

OK, I see. I was just suggesting that actions might or might not be motivated by reason, regardless of whether they could be established to be, post h...

Yes, I know what you mean. But humanity operates from within the so-called "hermeneutic circle" of its present knowledge and understanding, and does n...

Meaning?

Yes, and the other problem is that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, in their various ways presumed God, not Reason, as the Divine Lawgiver, with Reason...

I agree with that too. But actions can be reasonable without being motivated by reason, no?

I agree with that.

How could they be reasonable, in the sense of "following the dictates of reason" if the reasons are given post hoc?

I think this should be "while there is nothing necessarily reasonable about that ultimate premise".

When Bartricks said earlier that what is right is what Reason prescribes but the "right" does not mean "what reason prescribes" I wondered whether he ...

Yes! :up: Although I would add that some X's are more reasonable than others insofar as they are more consistent/coherent with the totality of human k...

I don't "wave the flag at the Mardi Gras", but I am not a prude: that is, I don't disapprove of homosexuality. I don't know whether you do or not, but...

You're not a prude, are you?

So, none of our passions should be controlled?

You Dialectical Daredevil! :joke:

I think now on rereading that you are talking about something other than what I thought you were. And perhaps that explains why you didn't respond to ...

OK, I see now that you were referring to a different idea of potential energy with your "mass rest energy" than the usual idea of potential energy bei...

Inasmuch as he was being biased he would not have been being rational. No, I don't think morality has its genesis in rationality, but in emotion or in...

You've been given enough chances by myself and others to try to explain yourself reasonably, but now I'm done with you, Barty.

A rational argument could be one which reasons validly from unsound premises, to be sure. But the ideal of reason is that it be free of bias, and I wo...

That still doesn't explain how Reason could be thought of as a subject in the common sense of "subject". Are you claiming there is a real, sensing, ex...

sapient adjective /?se?pi?nt/ (literary) having great intelligence or knowledge I take it to mean "knowing" in the sense of discursive knowledge and r...

Sure, other social animals can have a sense of fairness that is not based on reason, but on instinct or feeling. But principles of fairness can be rat...

For me a claim is metaphysical if it cannot make predictions that can be tested empirically. I tend not to think that a proposition even counts as a c...

Can you explain the difference between them? I still don't think it is reasonable to say that we can see energy, nothing you have said convinces that ...

I imagine that hunter/gather groups were democratic, and were so naturally, without having any explicit notion of democracy. They probably would have ...

I know what the words mean. If an agent, or subject, is capable of rational evaluation then they are not merely sentient, but sapient.

Not true, there are rules for valid reasoning. What you mean is that not everyone reasons from the same assumptions or premises.

No problems, I need to stop now, too. I appreciate your politeness. We can resume at our mutual convenience.

Who is in who is out is determined socially, communally, not arbitrarily by individuals I would say. Of course in hunter/gatherer societies everyone i...

Give me an example of a group that wants murder, rape and torture for their own members (excluding ritual sacrifice).

Note I'm speaking about the orthodox view regarding the evolution of the idea of individuality and individual rights. Is that what you are speaking ab...

It's not relativism if its what people universally want. In other words they all want the same kinds of things, just for different people, and that ha...

The piece you quoted speaks of "nipping superiority in the bud" it says nothing of ideas of individual entitlement. You know as well as I do what the ...

The Jews were murdered in order to achieve social harmony in the twisted minds of the nazis. Of course many non-Jews would have been horrified, and th...

So, individualism is suppressed by "reverse dominance". Where is the notion of "rights of the individual" in that? I haven't said their societies were...