Tom Storm

Interesting quote from E M Cioran. Thanks. The above never really occurred to me. Kind of like that observation that in literature there are only 7 pl...

Goodness. I'll leave this to the pros. That's fascinating. As above. Thank you.

Really interesting. Sounds fair. Is there a risk with pluralism that one might simply select the logic one wants to suit ourselves? How do we determin...

Generally, as I understand it, a home is a physical place where one's tenure is secure, where one is safe and where one can peruse projects/hobbies wi...

I am very sympathetic to phenomenology but have a limited understanding of it. No body either? Not sure if using 'person' is much help. What counts as...

Totally agree. You saved me the trouble of saying this. Problematic assumptions are not good for philosophical enquiry.

Totally agree. I recall as a young child desperately wanting not to be innocent/ignorant because I wanted to engage with the world more fully.

While I might agree that there can be wrong ways to do things, I can't see how philosophy can have a 'correct' way. It sounds too prescriptive and uni...

Given anti-foundationalism, would some forms of postmodernism amount to logical nihilism? A performative contradiction?

Criminal codes like these are multicultural and well understood. They are only strange the way much human behavior is strange. I never saw it this way...

I personally don't see how having children matters in this. It's not like parents can always tell when a child stops being innocent, or whether innoce...

Don't know enough to say. Australian Aboriginal groups, for instance, have been remarkable peaceful in the past century, despite continued oppression,...

Fair enough. The famous soliloquy (at the play's half way point) isn't necessarily about suicide. Hamlet is a case of analysis paralysis. The boy simp...

This reads like uninspired journalism. It has a bit of a grandiose tone but doesn't really say a lot. In fact, I would argue the points made are moot....

I don't think so. Culture wars are frequent - certain groups/people will utilize moral arguments against art they don't understand or like. The most i...

Indeed, but this doesn't seem the same as some Muslim activists saying that it is not a part of Islamic culture. It ends up a bit like a no true Scots...

:cool:

Nicely written. Yep, you're going to get some 'robust' feedback. I'll read it again tonight when I'm free of other entanglements.

I agree with much of what you have said. How easy is this in practice? For instance, how women in some cultures are treated might seem a moral issue o...

Is it your view that the current Labour party is no longer really a Labour Party (like New Labour before it), just a managerialist, neo-liberal entity...

Female circumcision in Muslim countries - is this an expression of their religion or their culture? Or both? Muslim apologists in the West will freque...

I'm not talking about a morality as a code of conduct, I'm talking about whether or not right and wrong have any meaning apart from cultural and perso...

:rofl: That's funny. Yes, and I agree. I don't 'use' philosophy when I make decisions. I go by intuition, which no doubt is influenced by culture, upb...

What Joshs says. And my curiosity here is what 'ethical correctness' consists of. It's likely not the same thing as 'the good' given its contingent an...

Seems to me that people are forever banging on about 'the good', as if it were out there to be discovered, or simply a matter of common sense, but act...

Fair enough. Probably won't have time. I did read Nussbaum's Capability Approach. It all seems very middle class (human rights/human dignity). Does sh...

How do you identify what is good? Is good situational or intrinsic? Or is good, like truth, a range of potentialities?

How could we demonstrate that this is the case?

:up:

It seems obvious to me that change can mean going backwards.

Didn't W simply mean that philosophy clarified conceptual issues for philosophical problems in much the same way that therapy is meant to provide insi...

Not necessarily. You can change your opinion for the worse. It happens a lot. The radicalized terrorist is an obvious example. But also the person who...

What improvement might look like wasn't in scope in my comment. I was simply making the point that improvement in some way seems to be what 'change yo...

I know this isn't meant for me, but is there is a kind of bourgeois conceit that education (literature, good music, philosophy) will improve you? It's...

I think you nailed it. Certainly this seems how one of the more prominent theistic fictions would have it. By human standards (do we know of any other...

Fair point. A 'pro-lifer' is a member of a tribe, no matter how persuasive an argument might be, the matter is settled for them.

:up: Very interesting.

There's also the boldly autonomy argument to defend pro-choice. In this it doesn't matter when a fetus 'becomes human' what matters is the bodily auto...

Of course you didn't. You seem determined to not understand the point. I am saying that truth may be deliberately and carefully rejected by people bec...

Thank you. Nice to read I'm not the only one with this view. Agree, but it only works if you have access to others with whom you are in dialogue. I su...

I didn't find anything unassailable. I said this - I wonder if we can get past these factors? I'm framing it as a question, not as a claim. You’re doi...

The Emerson doesn’t do it for me, I’m afraid. Too cryptic. Many of the people I have known who championed introspection have been breathtakingly arrog...

You make me laugh.

Sure, that one is clearly a prick. But we can imagine any god being a nasty piece of work. It does not follow that if there is a god and that god hold...

That's' a very limited account. What if god is a mafia thug like Yahweh? He is evil. The truth may be horrible because it is horrible and we are corre...

You are imagining something. Nothing is the absence of any qualities or attributes. It can't be imagined because by that very act you are imagining so...

Indeed - there's still those matters of foreskin, the rights of women, abortion, etc, etc. How do we rule out a god (if one exists) who is also an int...

Good points.

No, as I see it. You have this scenario - People may decide that this god is a prick and that the truth they are peddling is bad for humanity. I may d...

]The options you have presented seem limited and skewed i.e., they don’t seem plausible, I do not see how ignorance and knowledge are the same. If you...