philosophy guff (2 Viewers)

[snakybus]

goddamit, I disagree with that too!

 

[Alan Remorse]

what about human rights?

There are parts of the world where, for example, women are treated hideously, genital mutilation etc… and it is presented by those societies (albiet by the oppressors) as a custom or a trait of their society (although im sure the women of these societies prob think otherwise). Are we to say “well, that’s fine for you. We thought the women had a problem with being oppressed and mutilated, but I guess we were wrong”?

There has to be some universal standard when it comes to human rights: employing relativism just isnt ethical. The relativist would say that it would be “imposing” our standards on other societies, but are we to let this kind of thing go on? Was the UN just making up laws to obeyed by some and not others? Relativism does not work when it comes to human rights.

Relativism doesn’t work when it comes to important issues because it will always come back to “well, that’s your opinion” which does not help anything. There have to be universal laws when it comes to certain things, because the view of “if it works for you, then that’s great” cant exactly be employed in every situation.

This is why I said “relativism is bullshit”… I wasn’t saying “if you like morrissey then you’re a cunt because ive no respect for your opinion on music.”

Well, I’m saying it now, but I wasn’t then.

 

[UnIt SevEn]

hi!

 

[Alan Remorse]

ah, unit seven, i see you have a dismemberment plan signature? Was it you who was askin me about them a few months ago? You liked them then?

 

[UnIt SevEn]

yes. it was me and that's for that. very bang on the money. i didn't actually buy any of their stuff yet, but all the downloads from that site are really good. excellent lyrics. i downloaded a few 'q and not u' songs too and thought they were very good.

any more where that stuff came from??

yes, i think taste is relative to objective relations and materialistic dichotomies of the functionalist paradigm.

 

[Alan Remorse]

yeah, travis morrison is an amazing lyricist, they prob have my favourite lyrics of any band. Havent heard his solo stuff yet, but i doubt it would have the same magic as DP's stuff.

umm.. if you 're looking for familiar stuff to DP and Q And Not U, I'd suggest bands like Les Savy Fav, Archers Of Loaf, Robocop Kraus, Brainiac, 12 Rods, Faraquet, Koufax, French Kicks, Red Animal War, Unwound.... that's all i can think of now! Most of those bands are poppy, but are very original... You should be able to get stuff off their sites or on Epitonic (or Kazaa)

Btw if youre gonna get a DP album, get Emergency & I first, one of my fave albums ever. They're all good though.

 

[coast to coast]

copernican turn!

 

[the bongo]

follow me now:

despite arguing from a largely rationalist position, i will hereafter maintain a distinction between "facticity" and "truth". both are states of things, however, they are subtley distinct. note, a kettle has facticity - it is a kettle, or rather, it is a thing that exists. this kettle, however, is not "true", nor does it have "truthfulness". it may point to the truth of the kettle's being, qua Being, the truth being a state of understanding of the being of the thing. the kettle is a thing, but the truth of the kettle (that lies outside the kettle) is its kettleness.

the simple way to achieve the truth of a kettle, is to sit and think about it for a month. also, read the nature of the work of art, by heidegger. aleitheia, he calls it, or coming into openness.

next, to say "there are no absolutes" is not an absolute statement. for one, it is a normative statement, one in which the "i believe that..." is unsaid. in the same way that "this music is bad" is actually "i think this music is bad". because it is stated from the relativist position, the normative aspect is inherent to the enunciation. inalso, to argue logically against absolute truth is not to make an absolutely true statement. it is merely a logical truth. logic is afterall an artificial system itself. with pure logic your argument comes out like this:

P - there are no absolutes (which, in your terms is an absolute, so the next line)
- P - there are absolutes
therefore:

P & -P
so:
P
-P

in your terms, it is a contradiction, and in this equation i don't dispute that, but in pure logic this means you can posit both positions.

next, a possible argument against rigid relativism. a subjective value judgement is in the mind of the individual, yet, it can be said to be existant. all things that exist, exist objectively, therefore subjective value judgements are objective (the objectively exist).

goodnight children.

 

[Alan Remorse]

.....

so anyway, dont you love Q and not U?

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Re: New Colour Soul in the top 20!!!

Doesn't mean relvativism is bullshit. There's no logical contradiction in saying "From the standpoint of humans in this universe there is no absolute truth", and that's what counts

But isn't that statement from the human standpoint? Actually I'm not even clear on what it's supposed to mean. Please elaborate.

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Re: New Colour Soul in the top 20!!!

Anyway, arguing about relativism and absolutism is kinda daft. Like you say, they're just words. Just you can formulate words in such a way as to ask a certain question doesn't mean that the question has an answer, or even is a meaningful question

Yeah...but surely there's a definite difference between say music being a matter of taste and having objective standards? As in with the latter it makes sense to debate whether something is good or not, but not the former. I realise I've shifted from relativism re truth to relativism re value here...but then that's what we started off with in the first place, so there.

More generally, just saying language leads us astray and throwing one's hands up in the air is codswallop. We should be trying to rearchitect language/concepts so the contradictions/confusions don't arise. For me the best example of how one could progress like this is Cantor's work on infinite sets - before that there were lots of paradoxes that infinity threw up, and so clearly the old idea of infinity was inadequate, but Cantor redefined it in such a way as to keep most of its properties while changing some other ones, but thereby making it all consistent. Same for these philosophical conundrums.

 

[Jimmy Magee]

what about human rights?

There are parts of the world where, for example, women are treated hideously, genital mutilation etc… and it is presented by those societies (albiet by the oppressors) as a custom or a trait of their society (although im sure the women of these societies prob think otherwise). Are we to say “well, that’s fine for you. We thought the women had a problem with being oppressed and mutilated, but I guess we were wrong”?

There has to be some universal standard when it comes to human rights: employing relativism just isnt ethical. The relativist would say that it would be “imposing” our standards on other societies, but are we to let this kind of thing go on? Was the UN just making up laws to obeyed by some and not others? Relativism does not work when it comes to human rights.

Relativism doesn’t work when it comes to important issues because it will always come back to “well, that’s your opinion” which does not help anything. There have to be universal laws when it comes to certain things, because the view of “if it works for you, then that’s great” cant exactly be employed in every situation.

This is why I said “relativism is bullshit”… I wasn’t saying “if you like morrissey then you’re a cunt because ive no respect for your opinion on music.”

Well, I’m saying it now, but I wasn’t then.

Ditto the Nazis...but equally absolutism is dodgy, because it's that that leads to these wayward societies in the first place! However this is trying to decide the issue based on one's moral feelings, or on what one things will lead to the best results...I'd prefer if one could resolve the question logically...I dunno...taste in music is one thing, it's not so important in the big scheme of things...but once you get into ethics, this debate gets very important, and even more confused...uuuuuhhhh

 

[egg_]

There has to be some universal standard when it comes to human rights: employing relativism just isnt ethical.

We can choose a universal standard of human rights, if we like, but it will have no basis in Universal Law. We can say 'this is how we want to live, and to enable us to live this way, we need to establish a code of conduct'. That's what ethics is, a code of behaviour that allows us to co-exist

I don't mean to sound flippant about these things, cos I'm not, but relativism is a fact of life. Genital mutilation, slavery, murder, these things horrify me BUT my horror is not the result of a Wrong being committed in the universal sense, rather I have learned to imagine myself in someone else's place.

 

[egg_]

Re: New Colour Soul in the top 20!!!

We should be trying to rearchitect language/concepts so the contradictions/confusions don't arise.

Ho ho
C'mon dude, language isn't 'architected', it evolved like everything else. If you want to try and create a new language that you can't use to make nonsense well good luck to you

 

[Jimmy Magee]

I don't mean to sound flippant about these things, cos I'm not, but relativism is a fact of life. Genital mutilation, slavery, murder, these things horrify me BUT my horror is not the result of a Wrong being committed in the universal sense, rather I have learned to imagine myself in someone else's place.

Maybe I'm coming at this from a different angle or summat...for me absolute v relative doesn't need to refer to some mysterious set of values that are "out there" - the difference is simply whether you think correctness applies to things or not, if it does, it makes sense to debate whether the thing is right or not, otherwise all debate ends.

 

[egg_]

However this is trying to decide the issue based on one's moral feelings, or on what one things will lead to the best results...I'd prefer if one could resolve the question logically...

Richie! What are you saying? You want to come up with an ethical system based on logic alone? That doesn't make any sense

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Re: New Colour Soul in the top 20!!!

Ho ho
C'mon dude, language isn't 'architected', it evolved like everything else. If you want to try and create a new language that you can't use to make nonsense well good luck to you

It's more the concepts than the language I'm referring to really. And how can coming up with a new way of viewing things that removes contradictions be nonsense?

And - as if language "evolved" all by itself, without human intervention!

 

[Dixer]

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
(Wittgenstein, TLP).
Jimmy, where you come across this Cantor guy? Never read any of his stuff.
(Any of you people mates of Fran O'Rourkes?).

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
(Wittgenstein, TLP).
Jimmy, where you come across this Cantor guy? Never read any of his stuff.
(Any of you people mates of Fran O'Rourkes?).

Cantor's a mathematician - he did pioneering work on infinite sets and the like.

 

[Jimmy Magee]

Richie! What are you saying? You want to come up with an ethical system based on logic alone? That doesn't make any sense

Absolutism v relativism isn't an ethical debate. It's a debate about what ethics is, rather than about substantive ethical issues like whether murder is wrong or whatnot. To reject relativism because it leads to tolerance of evil things like genital mutilation is nonsense, because your judgement of genital mutilation is already in some ethical framework like absolutism or relativism or whatever. Or, to look at it another way, it's like rejecting 2+2=4 in favour of 2+2=5 because we'll be able to feed more people with the latter (I don't think absolutisim v relativism is an a priori truth, but it's in that direction).