Posts by BenWilson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Yeah me too. I’ve had time for a good debate. But still, probably time to let this thread drop, so I’ll try to make this my last response...
Yup, I've pretty much said all my material, and now I just feel like we're pointing out where we think the other person didn't get some of it.
I’d see that as more a problem of first principle or maybe ‘open question’ problem. But that applies to virtually all (if not all) forms of discourse, and I don’t see that the emotivist angle adds much illumination to the issue of where facts end and opinion begins.
It is indeed a first principle problem. It's hitting ethics right before it begins and asking an extremely important question, one that will set the tone and nature of any debate had in it. That question is "are ethical statements even capable of being statements of fact?". It's not a question about supporting statements to an ethical judgment, which could be factual or not in an objective sense. It's not about reasoning within a framework, which can be cogent or uncogent (and if it's uncogent then that's a good reason to dismiss it without looking further). It's about the very founding principles of the framework - the basic observations of rightness or wrongness upon which every ethical judgment ultimately rests. If these are just "yuk" and "Hurrah" then ultimately there is no rational resolution to them, and no point discussing them any further.
I think it sheds a huge amount of light on ethics, because so many disputes in Ethics do come down to exactly those final position, after centuries of argumentation. Yuk or Hurrah. I think they usually started that way too. Most of the bit in between, with all of the arguing at cross-purposes, steadily getting more and more hostile as it becomes clear that reason is not working, was never going to work, and is actually simply being used as a Yuk or Hurrah tool.
Slavery (your only example of moral progress so far) is a great example - bugger all of the end of slavery was because of ethical discussions held in a rational way. It was decided by economics and violence. Slavery was uneconomic, and non-slave nations were stronger.
I'm inclined to think that reason should still be applied as much as possible, mostly to avoid bloodshed, to find out if in fact we would Hurrah the same things and are simply disputing real facts (which could actually come to a resolution non violently). But at the end, you need to know when you're up against a Hurrah rather than a reason. Then it's just about who's the better cheerleader, or as in so many real ethical disputes, the better fighter, or the richer and more powerful, etc.
You point out that there is a difference between rationality and rationalizing. That is certainly true when what is being disputed is something factual. But if it is not, then there is actually no difference. It might feel like there's a difference, but that feeling is no more trustworthy than any other Hurrah.
If they cannot, but stubbornly maintain “ick = it’s wrong”, then true, you can’t argue with that position any further. But they’re just being irrational – it would be like arguing with a flat earther.
Indeed you can't. OTOH, you really don't have much more basis for a position of "Ick, discrimination is wrong". Somewhere down the chain of why, you're going to have to come up with some statements of ickiness, and if they're less ick to other people than allowing gay people to do their business, then they just won't agree with you, and will think you are the flat earther.
That doesn't mean that such a tack is pointless. Often, people do find that the other ick is worse (to them) and change their position. Rationality was used, as a tool to move from one arbitrary position to another, one that is more comfortable for both parties, and a process that didn't require arbitrary use of power.
I'm pretty sure in the case of gay rights, this is exactly what has happened. It still is icky to a great many people, but they have realized that they do icky stuff too, and think they should be allowed to. So the idea of 'keeping out of other people's bedrooms' has appeal, more because we'd feel much more icky about someone sticking their head into our one than we do about thinking about what's going on in other people's bedrooms. This also explains why it is that people who don't have any action of any kind going on in their bedrooms are quite often the least tolerant - they see that they have nothing to lose.
Moral discourse can quickly slip into metaphysics. You can’t reason with someone committed to non-reason. I’d see that as more a case for choosing your battles, than for emotivism, as such.
Disputes over objects that are imaginary have a tendency towards non-reason. If there were any evidence at all that morals are statements of fact, other than that humans would like to believe it to be true, I would not have such difficulty giving up the position of emotivism. Until then, it's still a possibility, and an excellent counter to nearly any normative moral theory. Just find the right ick, and they come crashing down.
-
I'd really rather that Bill English was giving his full attention to the economy, rather fire-fighting over the relatively small sum at stake in his accommodation expenses problem.
Yup. 'Nuff sed.
-
@Simon, well I can't really comment of the quality of the music from an artistic POV. Just saying they definitely got a pretty cool mood going that can be hard to find in Auckland.
-
....click! The Beauty Myth. I distinctly remember her describing that approaching sex on one's knees was highly symbolic of the extent we made it a near religious experience. I couldn't help but think there are probably more practical reasons than that.
-
Trying to remember which feminist author it was who reckoned Justine was a prime piece of feminist literature. Naomi Wolf? She made a good case for it, iirc, but I never did get around to reading it.
-
By a country mile. Especially as opposed to Orwell-esque cop-out surveillance cameras.
Or rent-a-cops who seem more interested in causing trouble than stopping it.
-
I had some army mates and whilst it was certainly interesting that their bars appeared to be always open and incredibly cheap ($5 for a litre jug of rum and coke, and $1 beers) there was little attraction about having to drive out to an army base to enjoy them, nor was hanging out with drunk soldiers my bag. But there seemed little chance of any trouble, unless the police showed up (see my previous comment). Milling around outside, you were brought to your senses by some guy in a balaclava holding an assault rifle stepping out of the bushes and telling you that you were not allowed to walk this way.
-
I lived for 5 years in Australia and barely saw any Aborigines. I was quite surprised to learn that there were something like half a million of them. Where the hell were they all? I was in Victoria, which was supposedly one of the most densely populated parts at the arrival of Europeans, being probably the lushest state. The only place I regularly saw them was near Flinders St Station, in a group, boozing 24/7. Never in a workplace, never in a bar, never on a tram. Once I saw a girl on an intercity train. All the rest seemed to be homeless.
Victorian attitudes to them seemed mostly quite shocking. Even fairly liberal people had amazingly racist opinions. What any of it was based on, I couldn't see. They were just not there. I spent quite a lot of my time in small country towns too, and saw none there either. I saw a lot more Maori and Pacific Islanders.
It was extremely puzzling, since stats said there are about 30,000 in Victoria. That's a lot of people to just never see. It's like society was totally segregated in a way that even Apartheid never achieved.
-
Heh. Clearly you haven't spent enough time in police bars.
Heh, I recall a tournament I went to once where the police team made such arseholes of themselves during the partying that they were never invited back. I've got a vivid imprint of a friend of mine being hurled headfirst by two large coppers along a table still covered in glasses and jugs of beer.
-
I'm a little out of touch right now, having spent half this decade out of town, but over the previous ten years I was in Sydney some 36 times and Melbourne not a lot less and always came back to Ak feeling a little smug about what we had to offer which was a more than a bar or two with listenable music coupled with endless RSLs churning out that faceless oz-rawk so beloved in the Great Southern Land.
Gotta challenge that, at least for Melbourne's sake. That may be true for suburban waterholes, but the central city offered a huge range of places that were open right through the night. There was plenty of rawk, sure, but down all the little alleyways you'd find curious little places which were trying something different, bars just with live bands or DJs, people dancing, chilling, stand up comedy acts etc. The inner suburbs also made for excellent places to go out, with huge numbers of restaurants and bars intermingled, not just sports bars, but also student bars, dancing bars, live music etc. You just had to search a bit, or know people who knew where to look.
I don't think alcohol-abuse is the entire problem in Auckland because the Ozzies were big boozers, and it just didn't seem the same. Something about the atmosphere in Auckland is just different - there's simply an air of desperation and aggro hanging over it all the time. I don't feel safe in Auckland at night.
I don't know why - I'm inclined to think demographic issues play a large part.
Last ←Newer Page 1 … 846 847 848 849 850 … 1066 Older→ First