BLOWIN MY MIND UP

Jan 27, 2005 16:06

The two men who have most influenced modern thought are Hume and Kant ( Read more... )

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mad love for the sceptics hunter_sweeney January 29 2005, 05:34:49 UTC
...even though hume gets a bit funny when he starts talking about his "shared moral sense" and shit like that. I wish he woulda thought that one out a bit more, but we love him 'cause his philosophical heart is in the right place, so to speak. I apprciate his intuitive passion, and his connection to reality ( unlike his contemporaries ).

Ol' Manny the destroyer's absolutist tempered philosophy kinda pissed me off when I first encountered him. I also find the categorical imperrative to be a crock a shit. However, i recognize the man to be absolutely brilliant, even though nothing is more obvious to me than the importance of our a priori knowledge to our understanding of reality, he really breaks it down.

I've just began reading William James, who I think you'd appreciate if you're not already aquainted. The father of american pragmatism and psychology. His pragmatism : anti-absolutism, pluralistic and thereby recognizes the life of ideas as fluid, and reality as a growing, changing, living thing.His philosophy is tethered to his radical empiricism.Accordingly meaning only has validity according to its utility. Truth is then relative.

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Re: mad love for the sceptics pinball_wiz January 29 2005, 09:09:23 UTC
Yes yes, you too are very intelligent. Your elocution and vocabulary, not to mention your 30 ft deep well of knowledge, is very impressive.

I hope both of you die in each others retarded arms.

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Word up gunsmokesamurai January 29 2005, 10:49:42 UTC
Holy shit, you're back.

I've always wanted to give James a look, but never gotten the chance. I will take your recommendation and give him a look.

As for the categorical imperative, I'm not sure exactly what disagrees with you about it. Kant suggests that ethics should be based on how it is rationally acceptable for everyone to act. I agree with him when he says that morality can't on the grounds of a condition or purpose. The action can't be encumbered by the notion that "if I do this, that will happen". It seems like it should be done because it's what supposed to be done. True, it might make some of these "moral" actions seem impersonal, and it might detract from those actions that create good results that are driven by the hypothetical imperative, but it follows for me that only actions not driven by personal gain could be truly moral.

Manny the destroyer?

And Curt, maybe we WILL.

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