You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

gurugeorge

['Member']Joined: May 12, 2017 at 16:12Last active: September 01, 2018 at 16:362 discussions512 comments

Discussions (2)

Videogames

July 22, 2018 at 17:21 13 comments Ethics

Comments

I don't think it's that cut and dried. After all, secular humanists can enjoy the older, religious works of art, and religious people can enjoy some m...
September 01, 2018 at 01:05
Sure, but have you actually identified socially-made injustices, or are you confusing them with inequalities that are the result of natural endowment?...
September 01, 2018 at 00:55
Their head explodes.
August 30, 2018 at 20:21
As I've pointed out twice in this conversation, both things are possible: inequalities as a result of systemic imbalances and oppression, and inequali...
August 30, 2018 at 20:20
No, as an amateur of philosophy that's as far as my knowledge of detailed commentaries on the PI goes too! :) Although there are umpteen "introduction...
August 30, 2018 at 20:13
We just disagree on this. My experience of people is that they are generally very interested in philosophical topics and engage with them with enthusi...
August 30, 2018 at 19:52
No, it really is a rule structure that is in fact conducive to human flourishing (or any of that basket of closely related goals). The objectivity was...
August 30, 2018 at 19:49
Yeah, it's a kind of boostrapping process. There are natural Schelling points for co-operation that arise, even with "blind" actors (e.g. at the anima...
August 29, 2018 at 11:46
I don't think it is either, morality is an attempt at discovering a self-consistent ruleset that's objectively conducive to human flourishing (or any ...
August 29, 2018 at 11:30
The Hacker and Diamond/Conant recommendations above are good for the specific thing you asked for (Hacker's a bit out of date and a bit idiosyncratic ...
August 29, 2018 at 05:32
Some yes, but mostly it's binary. Planes either fly or they don't, etc. That's my point - what they get from those things isn't very good, it would be...
August 29, 2018 at 05:06
Curiously my post to which you're responding hasn't appeared, but what the hey. But that's what's yet to be demonstrated. If you simply pre-judge that...
August 29, 2018 at 04:51
The fact that you are trying to guess at an identity doesn't mean you can't in fact hit upon it. Of course the identity you're looking for is the one ...
August 29, 2018 at 01:47
But how the ordinary world behaves is of concern to the vast majority of people in their everyday lives, and part of philosophy's job is (or Rand and ...
August 29, 2018 at 01:45
Yeah, I agree with that, so far as navigating everyday life goes; but zooming out a bit more, I see identification as secondary (or subsequent to) to ...
August 29, 2018 at 01:09
Sure, that's always been obvious. But there are many possible reasons for that other than "She's a moron and her philosophy is shit."
August 29, 2018 at 01:02
Well if you put it that way, then Rand isn't "ignored," but a modestly popular taste on the Right. (Lots of books sold, remember?) And if you want to ...
August 28, 2018 at 20:38
It's a stupid idea. Much better to limit democracy. I think people have unrealistic expectations of democracy - its core function is simply to avoid c...
August 28, 2018 at 20:29
That's an interesting way of looking at it, and it would explain why Aristotle actually didn't formulate the Law of Identity as such, didn't seem to t...
August 28, 2018 at 20:23
I don't understand why belief in God has to be a "taint" on philosophical study. Belief in a world of matter is just as much a bedrock assumption for ...
August 28, 2018 at 20:15
Sure there are alternative logics, but the question of interest is which form of logic does the world happen to behave in accordance with? At the leve...
August 28, 2018 at 20:10
Generally a good guide, but not always. (Also, I'd be careful about that sort of appeal to authority - libertarians have the highest IQ of all the pol...
August 28, 2018 at 20:01
Well that's why I referenced him - like, come on guys, get off your arses, it's not totally alien to your own tradition. So what if you get it wrong a...
August 28, 2018 at 00:08
I think that a great work of art is basically a microcosm, a miniature universe, with its own internal logic, and its goal or function is, as Schopenh...
August 28, 2018 at 00:00
Well one obvious reason would be because she was a tremendously influential novelist as well. I mean, I like Anscombe as much as the next guy, but she...
August 27, 2018 at 23:46
I don't think there's anything wrong with an adversarial approach, and it doesn't negate a sort of "meta-love." Any competitive game is co-operative a...
August 27, 2018 at 20:18
I think it's both morally okay and entertaining to be abusive in the abstract (re. what one considers to be stupid ideas and whoever holds them in gen...
August 27, 2018 at 16:31
She wasn't "officially" a philosopher no, but she had a decent enough educational attainment (in the context of her milieu) to be not entirely discoun...
August 27, 2018 at 16:13
What was all that stuff about "stewardship" then, if not a rough sketch of your ideal? Yes, it's possible, but there's an opportunity cost to everythi...
August 27, 2018 at 13:17
Whether it is "pseudoscientific nonsense" and "racist "or not is a topic for potentially civil debate - but not on this forum, apparently, and since I...
August 27, 2018 at 13:10
In the first place, we all recognize that there's a well-meaning impulse behind SJW activism. But you can call a thing a name without the thing actual...
August 27, 2018 at 13:04
You realize saying that sort of thing makes you a "racist" and a "Nazi," right? :)
August 27, 2018 at 12:55
Yes, correct. None of what I said was in the least bit racist, sexist or transphobic. The fact that you think the opposite demonstrates one of the rea...
August 27, 2018 at 12:54
Which sarcastic one-liner evidently went over your head. The topic of the conversation when you came bustling in with your irrelevant tu quoque was th...
August 27, 2018 at 12:50
I don't know, it depends on whether I'm deplatformed by them or not.
August 27, 2018 at 01:22
And unless are you saying that there will be no necessity to sort peas or clean toilets in your ideal society, then you're implicitly admitting that y...
August 27, 2018 at 01:18
No, that's not the case at all. I expect that there will be some core principles on which we'll never agree (unless obviously one of us does shift our...
August 27, 2018 at 01:10
If there had been any genuine, heartfelt self-critique, the Left would not have continued to do for the past 18 months exactly what it did to lose the...
August 26, 2018 at 22:23
Again, this:- Contradicts this:- But you seem oblivious - it's like you have two hermetically-sealed compartments in your thought that aren't sparking...
August 26, 2018 at 22:18
Thanks for providing an example of what I was talking about :)
August 26, 2018 at 22:05
Given that the evolutionary remnant of dinosaurs are birds, and some birds (corvids, parrots) are extremely intelligent (about as capable of solving p...
August 26, 2018 at 16:30
Free choices are influenced by conditions, including political conditions (a free choice takes into account as many factors and conditions as possible...
August 26, 2018 at 16:05
Just wanted to add: the fundamental problem with the Left at the moment is that having had cultural hegemony for so long, they've forgotten the basic ...
August 26, 2018 at 13:20
This is silly semantic quibbling. It's legitimate in ordinary language, to call a government policy the cause of a statistical trend, even though ever...
August 26, 2018 at 13:11
Um, if it's implicated in depression?
August 26, 2018 at 06:57
Lovely stuff. This argument is reminiscent of the Ontological Argument isn't it? It seems to put in clearer terms the intuition that the Ontological A...
August 26, 2018 at 06:46
I didn't mean that minimum wages are the sole cause of unemployment, just that they do cause unemployment when implemented. The reason is obvious: if ...
August 26, 2018 at 06:30
Minimum wages cause unemployment, they are entirely counter-productive. Most especially, they prevent young people from getting a foot on the ladder o...
August 26, 2018 at 04:29
No, they are examples of "particular and rare circumstances." Vast, vast amounts of commerce have been going on successfully for the past few centurie...
August 26, 2018 at 04:12
No, apart from the wiki list (which actually partly contradicts some of your points) you're presenting tendentious, biased, ideologically-motivated pr...
August 26, 2018 at 01:43