Originally Posted by kerry

How did you figure out that from the article?

Originally Posted by JollyRoger

Maybe the guy was just a prick.

Originally Posted by aklim

why don't we make it simple. The liberal talks of accepting all but doesn't really live up to the hype. Just like their belief in "free speech". Well, say what you want but if i don't like it, you have to stfu. If i like it and you don't, tough. We support free speech.

Problem is people expect that people do as they say when the truth is way different. Solution? Lower expectations. Way less disappointments.

Originally Posted by Matt L

Here is a thought experiment, if you will.

If one claims to be inclusive, does that mean that one must not only listen to racist bigots, but give credence to their arguments?

Originally Posted by LUVMBDiesels

Who said anything racist? Here we go... Conservatives MUST be RACISTS< BIGOTS and NAZIS. right? They need to be marginalized at the very least and sent to concentration camps to get them away from right thinking people...

Originally Posted by Matt L

I was NOT trying to imply that you are a racist. However, I have met many real racists over the years, and they do expect you to take their views seriously. It's the same idea applied to someone other than yourself.

Originally Posted by LUVMBDiesels

Who said anything racist? Here we go... Conservatives MUST be RACISTS< BIGOTS and NAZIS. right? They need to be marginalized at the very least and sent to concentration camps to get them away from right thinking people...

Originally Posted by aklim

Know many people that DON'T expect you to take their view seriously?

Originally Posted by RichC

Shoulda guessed you would take this oppertunity to turn yourself into the victom again.

You spew all this filth aginst people you think are liberal.
And then whine about an attack, that never happened.

Do you see that you are creating your own problems ?

Can you see that you are the one that is close minded ?

We all have to accept that our problems are of our own making.
Untill you can do that, you will never grow up.
Continue pointing the finger at everyone else, and you going to continue being miserable.

Originally Posted by Botnst

January 2009
Guarding the boundaries

by Anthony Daniels

Since I’ve received no education in philosophy whatever, it is no doubt very rash of me to make a broad generalization concerning the subject, but I shall risk it nonetheless: that in the whole history of philosophy not a single important philosophical problem has ever been solved beyond all possible dispute.

I know that the late Sir Karl Popper claimed to have solved the problem of induction not merely to his own satisfaction, but also to the satisfaction of all rational men; alas, I do not think that all rational men have reciprocated by agreeing with him. Pace Popper, the philosophy of science is not now at an end, any more than is mental, political, or moral philosophy.

Unless I am much mistaken, the metaphysical foundations of aesthetic and moral judgment have not been established with anything like the certainty with which, say, the circulation of the blood has been established. I know that it is fashionable to state that all scientific knowledge is provisional, and itself rests upon metaphysically uncertain foundations. Perhaps in the abstract this is correct; yet I do not think anyone seriously expects a future researcher to discover that the blood does not in fact circulate. Evidently, there are degrees even of scientific tentativeness.

If every moral judgment is metaphysically uncertain, unsupported by any philosophical lender of last resort, it appears to some people that the only answer to the question of how people ought to behave is a complete relativism, possibly backed up by some version of John Stuart Mill’s principle that everything is permissible that does not harm another person.

This conclusion is strengthened by the observation, first made by Herodotus, I believe, that what men have thought good (or for that matter beautiful) has been infinitely various, or nearly so; and since there is no reason to believe that any group of men has become either better or more intelligent than men in Herodotus’s day, our judgment of what we consider good (or beautiful) is arbitrary, or aleatory, that is to say contingent upon such matters as when and where we are born, into what social class, with what mental apparatus, etc.

Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so; and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What we think and see in matters of moral and aesthetic judgment is to a large extent determined by our circumstances; for neither goodness nor beauty is out there in the world awaiting discovery, like the planet Pluto, by men armed with telescopes and mathematical equations.

Now let us, for the sake of argument, grant that this is so: that we can not place any moral or aesthetic judgment on firm, which is to say indubitable, metaphysical foundations; and that as a matter of observable fact men have formed very different judgments about the good and beautiful over the ages and in different regions of the world. Does it follow that the only resort left to us is a kind of multiculturalism in which each ego is an entire culture of its own?

I do not think so. Men can no more avoid making moral and aesthetic judgments than they can avoid eating: It is built into their very nature to make such judgments. Accordingly, there is no human society that has no concept of the good or of the beautiful, even if it is only pre-philosophical, which is to say implicit rather than explicit. Of course, what societies believe to be good or beautiful may vary, as their diet does; but judgment is as inescapable as nutrition. Even the popular desire to make no judgment is based on a judgment, that it is wrong to make a judgment. I remember a patient of mine who told me proudly, with the unmistakable smile of the anointed, that her greatest virtue was that she was non-judgmental; more recently, in response to an article I wrote, I received an email which denounced me as a judgmental illegitimate.

More at: http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Guarding-the-boundaries-3979

Originally Posted by LUVMBDiesels

Oh my god, you are right! I am evil and must be stopped!

Originally Posted by RichC

Even if I am simply backing out of my driveway and get plowed into by another driver.
It is my fault for choosing to drive at that time.
And for driving the small little sports car that colapses around me, instead of a safer vehicle that I would not have gotten hurt in.

Originally Posted by MS Fowler

Does the other driver bear no responsibility?

Originally Posted by RichC

Yes, he is also responsible for his actions.
But he is not responsible for yours.

You cannot put the blame on someone else, there is allways something on your side of the fence, that you can clean up.