baker

Human wellbeing and human suffering necessarily take place at the level of the individual, for the individual. It is self-evident that one person's ha...

Then why the tomes of theories and discussions about the good and the bad? For millennia, have all those moral philosophers been laboring with an erro...

Okay, thanks, I looked up those. Not yet sure how they compute in all this. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Obviously, life lives off of life, lif...

Thanks. Yes, thought about that. Unfortunately, the situation is such that the unmanaged storm water would cause damage to our house as well by riskin...

I haven't jumped ideological ships quite yet, but I do radically question what I have believed so far. It's that firm grounding that I'm looking for, ...

We have several cats who are used to the luxuries of having a considerable garden. Moving/renting would mean that we'd have to move to a much smaller ...

The latter are religions, and the former still require metaphysical hinge commitments that one cannot take up at will. Thanks, I'll have to look into ...

We can't insure or sell the house, it's been rendered worthless. Us moving would be just the final jewel in the crown of his victory. See, this is pow...

Yes, Christianity tends to be portrayed that way, although I don't see why. Christians have pretty much always been in the position of power anyway. B...

Wonderful example of bad faith. Oh, the irony: You're the one preaching concern for everyone, but you yourself don't live up to your own ideal, but in...

Then what does it mean? *sigh* In order to avoid starting new threads on an already existing topic, I looked up existing ones. You said: This can go a...

I'm pointing out that your views on morality are completely unrealistic. You seem to think that a theory of morality is an anything goes kind of proje...

The question is, how do they do it? I mean, without resorting to religion, because a religion is not something that one could take up at will. How?

For example, my neighbor, who cut into the slope our house is on, destabilized the terrain, so that our house is in danger of collapsing. As if that w...

Which is what he's doing: Just yet another authoritarian know-it-all with an utopian bent ...

This is what you get from my words???! I was asking you about your motivations for wanting to know the truth about some particular matters, in this ca...

Like it or not, this is exactly what is happening. Yes, and all too often, they wander off into lalaland. And I've got my neighbor's chimney and AC ex...

The question is, how does one come to hold the position of moral fictionalism if one doesn't already hold it?

On topic!

And in traffic. I once witnessed the following situation on a highway where traffic is at 110 km/h: Road workers have just driven onto the highway, st...

free will as effective moral judgement In short: Moral egoism; moral narcissism.

That's a shame.

And his way of coping with his underdog status was to be convinced he is of divine origin with special powers and special rights. Hardly a heuristic t...

Oh, you're still living in lalaland.

Which means what? Something like, "Whatever enhances my wellbeing and diminishes my suffering is moral (morally good, morally right, just, righteous),...

Eh?! Why MHD, arguably, the least comprehensible stage of German??

All hail moral realism!

What can be expected of people who were born and lived in a kingdom called the "Holy Roman Empire", Römisch-Deutsches Reich ...

It seems people generally think that the joys of life outweigh its sorrows, and that as such, life is worth living and the socio-economic system is wo...

No, we were born to pay bills, and die.

But does Kierkegaard offer anything that would resemble pasada?

What do you mean by this? Are you not familiar with the Buddhist suttas that talk about dukkha? If anything, the concept of dukkha can be classified a...

Oy vey!

But maybe it is as good as society can get.

Who have far from a uniformed understanding of them. One person's truth is another's lie, and so on. Yes. But it is a silly question and thus a mislea...

Gee, I wouldn't know -- who is the authority on what those values mean?

Given your Buddhist background, I'm eager to read your impressions of it!

This is what started this: Followed by: So your stance is something like: Truth, justice, kindness, democracy, and respect for person (which can mean ...

Because the arguments you put forward are simply not convincing. It's ill to care about whether someone else even exists or not. So when someone propo...

Actually, it seems like a way to justify refusing to take up the hassle of being a parent. Specifically, the whole antinatalist argument reads like a ...

Bah. I don't buy this oh-so compassion and oh-so empathy. What are you, Jesus? Why on earth would you care so much about others and their suffering? I...

And this is the whole point of antinatalism, isn't it? It's about a person who doesn't want to be a parent, but who feels a need to convince society t...

So manipulation is a higher purpose than profit?

The default (whatever it is) must be and is beyond comprehension, beyond human power to control. Otherwise, it wouldn't be the default.

Those "higher ideals" can mean anything anyone wants them to mean. This makes them useless, other than for purposes of manipulation.

This really isn't rocket sicence. Duh. Have you never been to church or some such?? There is The Truth, the How Things Really Are. And a particular pe...

I can just see a rich right winger advocating truth, justice, kindness, democracy, respect for person.

If only the meaning of those wouldn't be so easy to define in accordance with the motive for profit ...

Higher Ideals than The Profit Motive What would be a higher ideal than the profit motive? Do list at least three such ideals.

I'm saying that "compelling reasons by one's own standards" aren't usually considered as good enough. Accepting "compelling reasons by one's own stand...