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Cogito ergo sum

Here in the Philosophy forum we will talk about all the "why" questions. We'll have conversations about the way in which philosophy and theology and religion interact with each other. Metaphysics, ontology, origins, truth? They're all fair game so jump right in and have some fun! But remember...play nice!

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  • #31
    Originally posted by Paprika View Post
    Please take this disagreement over the meanings of 'democracy' elsewhere.
    Simple, I was responding to someone else's use of terms. Is there a problem asking for clarification? The statement calling something 'anti-democratic' does necessitate an understanding of how someone defines and uses 'democracy.'
    Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
    But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

    go with the flow the river knows . . .

    Frank

    I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by seer View Post
      I'm still not sure where you are coming from. If there was not real commonality in understanding then there really could be no meaningful connection. Look at it this way: You have a long movie line in the US, one in China, one in South Africa. In each line someone just jumps in up front. I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people in each line will see that act as unfair. A common understanding that crosses cultures.
      Let me see if I can put it another way, then. There are, I think, at least two different aspects.

      Aspect #1:
      People are complex. I like some things and dislike others. You like some things and dislike others. Some of the things you dislike may be things I like, and vice versa. BUT. It could also be that our likes and dislikes overlap in some places. For example, you might like lima beans while I can't stand them, but we both might really like classic rock. It's possible for us to connect over things we agree on while ignoring or minimizing the things we disagree on. The point is that 'no real commonality' as you express it is applied too narrowly. We might agree on some aspects of love while disagreeing on others. We can share some sort of agreement, and we can both recognize that the concept is more or less similar enough to allow us to use the same word in everyday discussions.

      Aspect #2:
      Topics are complex. It's not enough to say that fairness is recognized by all in a single instance, even if that could happen. I doubt that it does happen very often, and I'd suggest that you recognize the truth of this as evidenced in part by your 99% number above. Rather, you'd have to show that fairness is recognized by all in the same way for nearly every instance. Further, people may come to the same conclusion for different reasons. A society with a caste system, for example, could have members complain of unfairness because of treatment received from other members of their social level while having no regard at all for lower levels. A member of the lowest level may claim that all people should be equal and so enjoy identical treatment.


      At the end of the day, I don't think people share the amount of commonality you think they do. Sure, we use the same terms, and the ideas more or less look the same (at least superficially), but I could say that about a lot of things that seem to be the same but actually aren't (religious beliefs are a huge and obvious example). It's more likely that people assume everyone else has the same idea of charity as they do unless they witness other people acting in a way that doesn't jive.
      I'm not here anymore.

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by Carrikature View Post
        Aspect #2:
        Topics are complex. It's not enough to say that fairness is recognized by all in a single instance, even if that could happen. I doubt that it does happen very often, and I'd suggest that you recognize the truth of this as evidenced in part by your 99% number above. Rather, you'd have to show that fairness is recognized by all in the same way for nearly every instance. Further, people may come to the same conclusion for different reasons. A society with a caste system, for example, could have members complain of unfairness because of treatment received from other members of their social level while having no regard at all for lower levels. A member of the lowest level may claim that all people should be equal and so enjoy identical treatment.
        Carrikature, you can not dismiss my example so easily. I think you recognize, that yes, just about everyone in those lines would see the line jumping as unfair i.e. wrong. There is no reason to try and confuse the issue. And we would see it as unfair for similar reasons. If I were to follow your reasoning, you would think that there would be little agreement as to the unfairness of the act - but we both know that would not be the case.
        Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by seer View Post
          Carrikature, you can not dismiss my example so easily. I think you recognize, that yes, just about everyone in those lines would see the line jumping as unfair i.e. wrong. There is no reason to try and confuse the issue. And we would see it as unfair for similar reasons. If I were to follow your reasoning, you would think that there would be little agreement as to the unfairness of the act - but we both know that would not be the case.
          It presumes a society in which movie theaters exist. That's hardly universal.
          Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
            It presumes a society in which movie theaters exist. That's hardly universal.
            Then take any situation where people have been waiting in line, for almost anything. Waiting for food, medical care, clothing or to see the King. The reaction will be the same.
            Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

            Comment


            • #36
              Originally posted by seer View Post
              Then take any situation where people have been waiting in line, for almost anything. Waiting for food, medical care, clothing or to see the King. The reaction will be the same.
              Or for the porta-potties at World Youth Day, or entrance into a Papal Mass. Oh, wait, you don't get neat and orderly lines there at all. It's frequently a disorderly (non-violent) free-for-all. Getting there first doesn't guarantee you a good spot. Even the idea of waiting patiently in a queue is constructed. People will often try to get as close to the entrance as possible to get in as quickly as possible, and that's just the way some cultures work.
              Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

              Comment


              • #37
                Seer, your situation presumes several things: everyone in the queue is of the same social station and is seeking the same good with the same urgency. It is possible that people may be predisposed to accept an implicit social contract that the first person in line will be the first served, but that's not always the case, even with highly religious people.
                Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
                  Seer, your situation presumes several things: everyone in the queue is of the same social station and is seeking the same good with the same urgency. It is possible that people may be predisposed to accept an implicit social contract that the first person in line will be the first served, but that's not always the case, even with highly religious people.

                  I doubt it, no matter what "implicit social contract" we accept I believe that line jumping would viewed as unfair, even if we did not voice that opinion, or were resigned to the outcome. Men like Marx, Lenin, Mao, Robespierre, etc... had to appeal to a sense of fairness that transcended cultural norms and the 'explicit' social contracts of the time.
                  Last edited by seer; 04-24-2014, 03:48 PM.
                  Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by seer View Post
                    I doubt it, no matter what "implicit social contract" we accept I believe that line jumping would viewed as unfair, even if we did not voice that opinion, or were resigned to the outcome. Men like Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc... had to appeal to a sense of fairness that transcended cultural norms and the 'explicit' social contract of the time.
                    The very idea of an orderly queue with undifferentiated members is not universally present or even universally accessible. Do you doubt my examples?
                    Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
                      The very idea of an orderly queue with undifferentiated members is not universally present or even universally accessible. Do you doubt my examples?
                      Let me ask you - what if they were waiting for food to feed their family? Or medical care? But there can be situations where fairness is not expected. But having been to many outdoor concerts in my time, even there, jumping the line for a porta-pottie would have been frowned on.
                      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Originally posted by seer View Post
                        Let me ask you - what if they were waiting for food to feed their family? Or medical care? But there can be situations where fairness is not expected. But having been to many outdoor concerts in my time, even there, jumping the line for a porta-pottie would have been frowned on.
                        If they were waiting in line to feed their children and knew that there were limited food supplies, I rather doubt they'd be willing to wait in line and risk ending up with nothing.

                        Your experiences with concert porta-potties don't invalidate my experiences trying to get seats at crowded Masses.
                        Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by Paprika View Post
                          Joseph Ratzinger observes that in many erstwhile democratic systems, there are key, central antidemocratic elements, often referred to as rights. Now it may be that the majority of a society agrees on all the rights it legally recognises at certain instances of time, but the point of these rights - or at least one point of them - is to restrict the power of the majority, whether directly exerted through referendums or indirectly through elected representatives to change the law; vox populi is not vox Dei.

                          I believe that this observation is uncontroversial. The issue that it raises, however, is: what should these rights be? Are they merely subjective, decided by whoever is in power, or are they normative, at least in part? If normative, that is, grounded in some real objective moral standards, how are they to be determined in pluralistic contexts where there are differing norms?
                          Rights are subjective and agreed upon by society in general. The founding fathers got it wrong. It was their subjective view that all men are created equal, that we all have by God the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, of course their view didn't pertain to slaves. Only property owners in their subjective view had the right to vote. Apparently women weren't created equal either from their subjective perspective since they didn't have the right to vote either. In a democracy, rights are subjectively determined by the people through their elected representatives. Women had to fight to win their right to vote for instance. But if there is an objective moral standard pertaining to rights, could someone point it out?

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Originally posted by Paprika View Post
                            Quote Originally Posted by Carrikature View Post
                            I'd suggest that these rights are not purely objective or subjective in nature. To correct a minor point, though, either case can be normative. Normative is contrasted with positive, not with subjective. For all of that, I find the usage of objective and subjective to be more problematic than anything, especially in these kinds of discussions.
                            I believe you're right here. As tentative improvement, I suggest a division between pragmatic choices with the intention of securing or extending one's power vs grounding in genuine concern for others' wellbeing.

                            Regardless, pluralistic societies are still capable of describing a concept of universal rights, but it must be done carefully. The right to life is something all people desire. The right to non-interference is another. These two alone are sufficient, in my opinion.
                            I agree it can be done. My question would be whether the description of rights can be done coherently, especially when different groups disagree on the contents of the rights while agreeing that "rights" in the abstract should exist.

                            Personally, I don't have definite any answers to offer, and have discovered that my current approach is fatally flawed. Need to go back to the drawingboard.
                            It seems that your question was no so much about fundamental rights, which are innumerable. Rights of this type are mostly focused on what an individual person should be recognized as having. Instead your focus seems to be on either a societal level (what I should expect from my community pool or government) or a social level (what I should expect from my neighbor).

                            In the societal level, people have raised questions "should I expect fire protection? or Should I pay equally for fire protection if I don't have property?" Also "Should I have health benefits? Do we have an obligation to subsidize health care for people who don't wish to afford it or can't afford it?" Or are people not only allowed to eat the food they have ... but are also to be assured that they have a certain amount of food available to them?

                            It is interesting on this latter issue, the biblical requirement on Israel was that people be allowed to glean the harvested fields for remaining crops. As such there was a provision by which an impoverished family could still obtain food -- with some restrictions on the farmer.

                            Another interesting aspect of Israel was that each family was given a division of the land allocated to each tribe. So there was never an ultimate hoarding of land by rich people. I would think life would be more equitable if each family had their own land. (I'm not sure how water was shared and divided though.)

                            Then on the social level there was the requirement to use the tithe of the land not only for one's own feast -- but on a certain schedule they were to share the feast with a priest and a poor family -- if memory serves. Also there was the requirement to return a man's lost beast to him.

                            It gets to be a little more difficult to resolve on some issues arising in America's history -- when should a store owner or employee be allowed to discriminate against a customer and when is it inappropriate? Sometimes in these situations there is a threat against a person's life if he was willing to serve those whom others wouldn't serve.

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Originally posted by JimL View Post
                              Rights are subjective and agreed upon by society in general. The founding fathers got it wrong. It was their subjective view that all men are created equal, that we all have by God the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, of course their view didn't pertain to slaves. Only property owners in their subjective view had the right to vote. Apparently women weren't created equal either from their subjective perspective since they didn't have the right to vote either. In a democracy, rights are subjectively determined by the people through their elected representatives. Women had to fight to win their right to vote for instance. But if there is an objective moral standard pertaining to rights, could someone point it out?
                              Basic human dignity was not, in the eyes of the founders, tied to the right to vote. You can be human without having voting rights. Your responsibilities to the commonwealth would simply be different.
                              Don't call it a comeback. It's a riposte.

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
                                If they were waiting in line to feed their children and knew that there were limited food supplies, I rather doubt they'd be willing to wait in line and risk ending up with nothing.

                                Your experiences with concert porta-potties don't invalidate my experiences trying to get seats at crowded Masses.
                                No Spartacus, my point still holds. When people form lines to access anything there is an expectation. If you are in situation where lines are not forming, then there is no expectation. I have been at concerts where we would just pee in the woods. But once lines form there is an understanding. And I will maintain that no matter which culture, if you cut that line the others will see that as unfair.
                                Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

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