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Devonin

<t>But I read posts properly before I reply to them. 
 
 
I said you can't have capitalism without plutocracy, to which you responded "There were taxes and tithes before captalism" 
 
Your response had nothing to do with what I said. I didn't say anything about taxes or tithes ...

Devonin

<t>I said capitalism, not taxes. What's your point? 
 
And more to the point, if you are paying tithes to your "lord" in exchange for being allowed to continue to live on the land, that's mercantile exchange, that's functionally capitalism. How is tithing the lord a percentage of your crop ...

Devonin

<t>You can't have capitalism without plutocracy. I'd go so far as to say that plutocracy is just the inevitable consequence of capitalism. 
 
As long as the capitalist system remains the dominant economic paradigm in the world, so to will plutocracy remain the dominant political/social ...

Devonin

So when asked for clarification of something you're presenting as your idea, you have no answers for me. Good to know.

Devonin

<t>So what you're saying is, when I ask you personally a question about something you posted, you can respond either with a pre-written text wall that is mostly on topic, or not at all? 
 
I'm asking -you- to clarify what -you- are presenting as -your- belief on the subject. 
 
Are ...

Devonin

<t>So I take that post to mean essentially "Yes I am claiming that the mind and body are not seperate and distinct" which I managed to puzzle out from your first post as well. 
 
You still haven't answered my more fundamental questions however, namely: 
 
Are the mind and body still ...

Devonin

<t>Well you didn't really coin it...and the issue of whether the mind exists distinct from the body or not has been around for many more years than even your august presence. 
 
That said, the issue with a non-dualistic approach is the general inability to point to an actual connection, or ...

Devonin

<t>Alright, so what you're saying is "Yes those things are killing us, but no they aren't actually fictions alien to us"? 
 
If that's so...what does that say, that things which are intrinsic to being human are somehow responsible for destroying humanity? Are we inherantly flawed, or just ...

Devonin

<t>You agree that our fictions are killing us, but you disagree with which things he calls our fictions... 
 
If consuming and competing aren't actually alien to our nature (And they are, I'd suggest, wholly intrinsic to our nature) then how can you characterize these things as ...

Devonin

<t>coberst;1160032 wrote: We are incredible good at shopping because Corporate America is incredibly good at manipulating us. 
 
 
You're confusing "corporate consumerism" with "consuming" then, because I'm pretty sure that well before Corporations -OR- America, humanity has been the ...

Devonin

You feel that consuming is alien to human nature? One wonders how it is that we're so incredibly good at it.

Devonin

<t>That also wasn't what I was saying. 
 
If anything it was more an attempt to claim that the word "value" doesn't even have any meaning outside the tenets of an exchange. If we aren't agreeing that A and B are worth roughly the same thing to each other, there's no actual application of ...

Devonin

<t>I gather the issue is not so much that we disagree, but I'm either failing to communicate my point well enough, or you're failing to get what I'm trying to say. Either way, I suppose simply moving on is the easier course if nothing else. 
 
The value gained from trying to get you to ...

Devonin

<t>That statement I fundamentally disagree with. Freedom lodges in that basic inclination to stand up and say no to those kind of judgements and a refusal to put up with them. 
 
 
Disagreeing with it doesn't actually change it, you just remove yourself from the whole process.<br ...

Devonin

<t>If I consider something like a child's picture valuable that is my subjective opinion. Still failing to see a contradiction there. Maybe you could be a little more clear in showing exactly which things I said contradicted other things? Those statements say "There's only subjective value" and "If ...

Devonin

<t>I think you mean objectively rather than subjectively Nope, I meant subjectively. If things had objective value, that value would exist independant of your opinion of it. I'd suggest that nothing has objective value, just mutually agreed upon subjective values. 
 
cos you go on to ...

Devonin

<t>The Scientific Method seeks to bracket [fence out] meaningfulness. The scientific method hates bias and bias is one form of meaning. Bias causes the individual to often distort “truth. In the lab bias is the enemy, i.e. meaning is the enemy. 
 
 
You're committing a logical fallacy ...

Devonin

<t>It really doesn't matter where you are in the machine your value is determined by you and by no one else. Your sense of worth has nothing to do with where you are in the food chain.Value exists meaningfully only when subjectively agreed upon. A drawing made by your child is invaluable to you, but ...

Devonin

In a world with limited resources, everything needs to be assigned a relative value if simply to generate a priority system. It is better to expend limited resources for the greatest gain.

Devonin

<t>Accountable;1155777 wrote: So to bring it back to Coberst's question, the empathy would have been virtually useless in the 30's, and in 1914. Rather, empathy would have been needed in 1918 to have a hope to prevent WWII. 
 
 
1918 and 1919, especially during the formulation of the ...

Devonin

<t>oscar;1155778 wrote: There is your problem..... your assumptions. You 'assumed' i was talking Highschool text which for the record incase you are unaware of the education system here, we do not have Highschools. :rolleyes: Okay, so your issue is one of semantics, I used the wrong word. Let me ...

Devonin

<t>I couldn't give a rat's butt weather you think my fathers actions are 'admirable' or not. I am quite certain that my father did not defend his country so fearlessly just to impress you or anyone else. The only reason i mentioned the fact was because you seemed to throw in so readily the ...

Devonin

<t>So due my simply saying 'I disagree' that leaves you to make a remark about highschool text being used.? 
 
 
I referred to your list of the process as the "highschool litany" of the causes of the war, because that's pretty much the exact version that is presented in highschool ...

Devonin

<t>Your post was lost on me. you seem to have started your post with an insult. . 
 
You said "I disagree" and then provided a timeline for the events leading up to the outbreak of the first world war. Since the post you were responding to said not a single solitary thing about the events ...

Devonin

<t>Accountable;1155605 wrote: :yh_glasse That's true. You can't have a II without a I. :yh_giggle Sorry, couldn't resist. 
 
 
 
So you seem to be saying (correct me if I'm wrong) that empathy coming out of WWI might indeed have prevented WWII. The punishment was so humiliating ...

Devonin

<t>I disagree with you.The Great war was split into two military alliences., The 'Entente Powers' and the 'Central Powers. 
 
War broke out due to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Bosnian-Serb. 
 
Austria-Hungary's demands led to the upstart of a series ...

Devonin

<t>The situation that led to the rise of the Nazi party in the first place almost certainly wouldn't have existed if the rest of the Western nations involved in the first world war hadn't so brutally punished Germany for its actions in that conflict. 
 
Many historians don't even view these ...

Devonin

<t> It will always be a dangerous form of power and dependent on strict maintenance to ensure we don't end up with a repeat of Chernobyl,You're making the old mistake of thinking of nuclear power as dangerous for those reasons. You're not afraid of dangers inherant in the process, you're afraid of ...

Devonin

If you don't understand the significance of my pointing out to you that once again you posted a new thread that was word-for-word identical from something else you had already posted, you might want to get your short-term memory examined.

Devonin

<t>Who is supposed to do that mandating? The individual government of every country on earth? Aside from the fact that many simply don't have the money and infrastructure to do it, several countries that do woudln't bother. 
 
Consider the sheer number of homes in a China or an India, trying ...

Devonin

<t>It sounds like you're suggesting that among the beings to be considered when weighing the consequences of an action, we need to include people who do not yet exist, and somehow factor their existance (which they don't have yet) into our moral calculations. 
 
The problem with doing that ...

Devonin

coberst;1084315 wrote: Seemed like the polite thing to do.

It's polite to quote my post when posting something that has absolutely nothing to do with the you quoted? How is that polite? Just seems daft to me.

Or did you just not notice that I posted a link?

Devonin

Thanks for uh...not at all addressing my question.

Devonin

Why did you quote my post in that response?

Devonin

And I assume you think the above linked story is something horrible and bad that never should have been allowed to happen yes?

Devonin

http://www.forumgarden.com/forums/philo ... post233300

Devonin

<t>I don't know which amuses me more. The complete and utter lack of a direct answer from Coberst to Accountable's question, or the irony of a pair of septegenarians trying to argue that health care as extension of life for the eldery is a bad call. 
 
Consider Lon's account of the treatment ...

Devonin

<t>Wow I haven't read such hostility, sarcasm, and cynicism in a single post for a very long time! 
 
 
Ad Hominem attacks are a logical fallacy. In a philosophy forum, you should really try to avoid them. 
 
 
 
Fact is, there are plenty of statistics to support that ...

Devonin

<t>You can only ever discuss the 'correctness or incorrectness' of any ethical stance or choice if you are also prepared to posit the existance of an objective universal morality. 
 
There are two ways for people to come to an agreement about the moral correctness of an action: 
<br ...

Devonin

<t>Who said anything about google? I was talking about the in-forum search function. When you have multiple threads with the same phrases and terms in them, it becomes more difficult to use those terms to search for the actual thread you're looking for. 
 
When there are threads whose ...

Devonin

<t>I know that you have all these essays already written and prepared for ease of posting, but it would really be helpful, if just to keep the forum's search functions from becoming bogged down, for you to check and see if you've already posted a given essay on the forum, and if you want to try and ...

Devonin

<t>I'll note that he didn't even include what time it was, even if just to be amusing. 
 
Also his first response is a copy/paste from his earlier thread "CT: The art and science of good judgment" 
 
There's my question for Coberst: Do you just have this massive database of pre ...

Devonin

And who determines which books are written by great minds?

Devonin

<t>What you need to know is that the thread title only has anything to do with the actual post insofar as "pissed" and "let off steam" are both metaphors with meaning only to those who already have a basis to decode the metaphor. 
 
His actual post has nothing whatsoever to do with getting ...

Devonin

<t>Our schools prepare us to be good workers and strong consumers, anything beyond that we must capture on our own. 
 
 
My school also taught me to think critically, to analyze, to expand my horizons, and to always be looking for new information that challenges the way I think. I guess ...

Devonin

<t>If you feel the need to understand something specific, is it really disinterested knowledge? Just because you don't want to know it for a practical application doesn't automatically put it into that category. 
 
The people who make a habit of disinterested knowledge would gladly learn ...

Devonin

<t>But the market demands don't just generate spontaneously. 
 
The market drives society, but society drives the market first. 
 
Society's needs determine how the market develops, but those needs are in turn effected by the development of the market. It's cyclical, and you seem ...

Devonin

a market economy can exist only in a market society.

Tautological conclusion is tautological.

Devonin

<t>I suspect that you might broaden your ability to envision the matter if you were to read the book. One must have a comprehension of American history to recognize the movement of American attitudes from 1957 to 2008. 
 
 
I suspect that your ad hominem attack has its basis in an ...

Devonin

<t>Yes, and for all you know, the others may already have color vision and you have just now joined the club. 
 
 
Except that Coberst asserted in the formation of his question "every one of you had been born colorblind" 
 
The only way to have been the last to join this club ...

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