The VEF Philosophy Club

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

I totally agree that women has to be treated as equal to men.

I very much recommend that you avoid my female relatives. There is no way that they would agree to such a demotion in status.

[Arturo2nd]

My undergraduate degree is in philosophy. I became interested in ethics and how we know right from wrong. Quickly, this became a question of how we know anything. Just how do do we separate the true from the false? What are our criteria for judgment? I have been wrestling with these issues for the fifty years since then.

As you can imagine the philosophers have a lot to say about this stuff. Plato kicks it around in multiple dialogues. I was very much struck by Aristotle's assertion at the end of Posterior Analytics that all knowledge is derived from intuition. Thomas Aquinas takes refuge in revelation, which is not much help to those of who accept the dubious origins of scripture. Immanuel Kant has his three Critiques,Husserl started the phenomenology which Heidegger, Sartre and others have run with. We have the centuries of discussion by the empiricists and the rationalists. Right now all I can say is that I don't really know. I take the pragmatic approach of using the best available working hypothesis and fall back on the great British empiricist David Hume's suggestion of embracing custom. Custom is more attractive as I age. It seems to me that our ancestors had centuries of experience to build on and were at least smart enough to survive and create our modern world. In fact, I think we have mistakenly abandoned some customs.

Which brings me to why I despise Fox News. You see, knowledge and truth are hard work. Mankind has labored for centuries to get to our present state. Many profound insights and wonderful intellectual tools have only been developed in the past century. New discoveries are made every day. Yet, Fox News is committed to a political ideology and willing to play fast and loose with the facts to promote its agenda. The organization is not committed to the well being of the United States or humanity in general. It is committed to promoting the power and wealth accumulation of the wealthiest segment of our society. It appears willing to subvert our traditional freedoms and values and actively thwart improving the education of our young people. We need dialogue and respect for each other. Yet, what I see from Fox is lies, name calling, and ridicule.

It seems to me that Fox News' values are opposed to mine and what I believe are traditional American values. And because of that I despise them.

[SanteeFats]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

My undergraduate degree is in philosophy. I became interested in ethics and how we know right from wrong. Quickly, this became a question of how we know anything. Just how do do we separate the true from the false? What are our criteria for judgment? I have been wrestling with these issues for the fifty years since then.

As you can imagine the philosophers have a lot to say about this stuff. Plato kicks it around in multiple dialogues. I was very much struck by Aristotle's assertion at the end of Posterior Analytics that all knowledge is derived from intuition. Thomas Aquinas takes refuge in revelation, which is not much help to those of who accept the dubious origins of scripture. Immanuel Kant has his three Critiques,Husserl started the phenomenology which Heidegger, Sartre and others have run with. We have the centuries of discussion by the empiricists and the rationalists. Right now all I can say is that I don't really know. I take the pragmatic approach of using the best available working hypothesis and fall back on the great British empiricist David Hume's suggestion of embracing custom. Custom is more attractive as I age. It seems to me that our ancestors had centuries of experience to build on and were at least smart enough to survive and create our modern world. In fact, I think we have mistakenly abandoned some customs.

Which brings me to why I despise Fox News. You see, knowledge and truth are hard work. Mankind has labored for centuries to get to our present state. Many profound insights and wonderful intellectual tools have only been developed in the past century. New discoveries are made every day. Yet, Fox News is committed to a political ideology and willing to play fast and loose with the facts to promote its agenda. The organization is not committed to the well being of the United States or humanity in general. It is committed to promoting the power and wealth accumulation of the wealthiest segment of our society. It appears willing to subvert our traditional freedoms and values and actively thwart improving the education of our young people. We need dialogue and respect for each other. Yet, what I see from Fox is lies, name calling, and ridicule.

It seems to me that Fox News' values are opposed to mine and what I believe are traditional American values. And because of that I despise them.

. Yes there are certifiable idiots on Fox I agree but not all. But with this post does it mean you think CNN and MSN are any better??
On Sunday I listen to several different news channels and so far they all seem to be relatively factual. I do not watch any during the week though.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by SanteeFats

. Yes there are certifiable idiots on Fox I agree but not all. But with this post does it mean you think CNN and MSN are any better??
On Sunday I listen to several different news channels and so far they all seem to be relatively factual. I do not watch any during the week though.

I don't watch any of the TV news broadcasts anymore. CNN used to be much more reliable than the networks. I don't believe that I have ever watched MSN. I have had an extreme aversion to Microsoft since they deliberately sabotaged Lotus 1-2-3, Wordperfect, dBase, and Novell by writing bugs into Windows to cause problems with the application software in market segments they wished to enter. Microsoft cost American companies billions of dollars with that strategy. Not to mention making the lives of us in the accounting and finance sector far more difficult.

I would suspect that both CNN and MSN are more balanced and reliable. Folks talk about "liberal media," which is pure slander. The Associated Press and United Press International go to great lengths to ensure that their reporting is as factual and unbiased as possible.

[Arturo2nd]

Must be my lucky day. It seems that I am not the only person who finds Fox News disgusting and misleading.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8266831.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/ralph...s-trump-2018-3

[Roubignol]

Honestly speaking, it seems to me that Anarcho-Marxist and Buddhist principles must be taught to very young children.
At the age of 8 years old, they can understand the principles.

Altruism, cooperation, compassion instead of competition and nationalism.
We are all wrong in our educational systems.

That doesn't mean that we can't then share the ways to resolve a problem or improve a technology by different ways as we do in actual market. But always in the way to improve the quality standard of the community instead of a minority.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Honestly speaking, it seems to me that Anarcho-Marxist and Buddhist principles must be taught to very young children.
At the age of 8 years old, they can understand the principles.

Altruism, cooperation, compassion instead of competition and nationalism.
We are all wrong in our educational systems.

That doesn't mean that we can't then share the ways to resolve a problem or improve a technology by different ways as we do in actual market. But always in the way to improve the quality standard of the community instead of a minority.

We do teach them to young children. Then we send them to nursery or pre-school and kindergarten before they start grammar school. By then, children are clear about fairness and sharing. But soon they encounter the children of sociopaths who bully them and abuse them with impunity. Most children remain committed to justice and sharing despite repeatedly encountering the injustice and "might makes right" of the real world.

We don't need to reeducate the children. We just need to drive the selfish bastards out of town in a hail of rocks to die alone on the prairie like ancestors used to do,

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Honestly speaking, it seems to me that Anarcho-Marxist and Buddhist principles must be taught to very young children.

Let's see-- you are aware that both "anarcho-Marxists" and Buddhists are perfectly capable of carrying out the most ferocious genocides, right?

The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar (aka "Burma") today is inspired by Buddhist monks.

Ah, but you must mean some other "Buddhist principles"

Originally Posted by Buddhist monks 'storm UN shelter’ to attack Rohingya refugees

Buddhist monks stormed a shelter for Rohingya Muslims in Sri Lanka run by the United Nations, demanding that the refugees be sent back to Burma where they had fled from violence.

The followers of the philosophy, which calls for the pursuit of inner peace and love, led dozens of lay people in the protest on Mount Lavinia house on the outskirts of the capital, Colombo.

Police arrested about 30 of the Rohingya Muslims – including 16 children – for their own safety as plans were put in place to move the group to another location, officials said.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a7972236.html

And of course, no one was more "anarcho-Marxist" than Pol Pot . . . too bad that it lead to the murder or starvation of one person in six . . . they built mountains of skulls from the victims of "anarcho-Marxism".

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Let's see-- you are aware that both "anarcho-Marxists" and Buddhists are perfectly capable of carrying out the most ferocious genocides, right?

The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar (aka "Burma") today is inspired by Buddhist monks.

Ah, but you must mean some other "Buddhist principles"



And of course, no one was more "anarcho-Marxist" than Pol Pot . . . too bad that it lead to the murder or starvation of one person in six . . . they built mountains of skulls from the victims of "anarcho-Marxism".

You mix everything. They have nothing to do with these ideologies/philosophies.
I never read such horrors in the books I read (from Bakunin, Kropotkin, from Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard or Dalaï Lama)

The Dalaï Lama himself condemned these violences in Myanmar.

So following your demonstration, would you also declare that Christianism is based to nuclear bomb civilian people or presenting false proofs to bomb a sovereign state and contribute to kill half a million et push to the exodus two millions of iraqi civilian people since 2003?

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

You mix everything. They have nothing to do with these ideologies/philosophies.

I "mix" the ideas you advocate with the awkward fact that they produce really unpleasant results when implemented. I offer no apologies for inserting some reality into your fantasies.

Pol Pot was the most enthusiastic "anarcho-Marxist" ever in power.

Marxists often talk about how wonderful it would be to abolish money, for example. The Bolsheviks talked about it, Mao talked about it, both decided in the end that it wasn't practical. Pol Pot is the only political leader who actually did it.

And he got his ideas after learning, in Paris, about just how wonderful "anarcho-Marxist" ideas are. You might consider this as a hint that maybe inculcating youth with these ideas isn't such a genius move-- oh, and he happily used child soldiers in his genocides, as they ar more easily induced to do terrible things.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

The Dalaï Lama himself condemned these violences in Myanmar.

He's a Buddhist, true -- but he's got precisely zero political power anywhere. Buddhists are in power in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

What people do when they're in power often bears no resemblance to what they talk about when they haven't got any.

Tibetan Buddhism was not at all gentle when the Monks actually ruled in Tibet, by the way. Tibet prior to the Chinese occupation was essentially a feudal theocracy.

In exile, the Dalai Llama has a much more cheerful and humane message than his predecessors did when they actually had political authority.