Posts by Generic Man

30

Rented any good movies lately?

by Billygoat in

since neil and i are a little on the tight side financially lately, we've taken to renting movies more often to entertain ourselves.

the other night we watched "riding giants" a documentary on surfing.

if you haven't watched it, it's a must see...even if you don't appreciate the sport you will after watching it.

Generic Man

I saw Traffic on NBC if that counts. I'm waiting for Batman Begins to arrive.

9

WT lies on their own web site

by DevonMcBride in

i saw this on the jw convention thread.

http://www.jw-media.org/newsroom/index.htm?content=/region/americas/usa/english/releases/events/usa_e050527.htm.

the last sentence of the third paragraphs saysthere are now over 1,000,000 witnesses in the united states..

Generic Man

If that number is right, its a relatively small one. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the population of the USA is approximately 200 million, so one million is small stuff.

8

WHAT DOES_MORALITY_ACCOMPLISH?

by Terry in

notice that my carefully worded header places morality into a framework of practicality first of all.. i could have asked the question many ways; but, in order to make a certain point i chose this way.. let us retrace (as briefly as possible) the discussion of the good by aristotle.. aristotle asks: "what is the good?".

he gives examples or analogies of a good physician, a good general and a good carpenter.. what does each do that makes them good?

each accomplishes the goal of his profession.. respectively:.

Generic Man

You write:

"Have you described anything but doubt on your part?"

"You doubt. That isn't an argument for or against. It is more of a description of your ability to tackle the problem."

My point is that the problems regarding morality run deep and there has been no consensus among ethicists who have spent so much time trying to solve the problems. It's kind of silly to claim to have solved all of our ethical ills with a slogan like "morality is a practical matter." My doubts were never meant to be an argument. If I were to do that, I would have presented them in a formal manner to preserve the validity of the argument. Such an argument would have a truth-preserving structure with sound premises. All I'm saying is that if you were to provide a conclusive answer to the important questions about morality, it would be the result of years of study and a good understanding, because good philosophy takes time and patience. I've even chatted with professional philosophers at my college and they admit that the problems are still unsolved. So pardon me if I'm doubtful.

When I say that your answer is unenlightening, I mean you haven't said anything interesting. All you've said is that morality is about good results and that somehow you've managed to prove that morality is not supernatural. In other words, I don't see any arguments in your post either. I'm not attacking you personally, but your post has no arguments to back up your conclusions and it's not even good rhetoric.

8

WHAT DOES_MORALITY_ACCOMPLISH?

by Terry in

notice that my carefully worded header places morality into a framework of practicality first of all.. i could have asked the question many ways; but, in order to make a certain point i chose this way.. let us retrace (as briefly as possible) the discussion of the good by aristotle.. aristotle asks: "what is the good?".

he gives examples or analogies of a good physician, a good general and a good carpenter.. what does each do that makes them good?

each accomplishes the goal of his profession.. respectively:.

Generic Man

"Similarly, the 20 th century philosopher G.E. Moore agreed with Hume that moral properties are not reducible to natural properties, as indicated by his ‘open-ended argument.’ However , Moore did agree with Hume’s conclusion that morality is irrational. Instead, (By the way, ’s position is known has ethical non-naturalism)."

Damn, for some reason, parts of my message did not make it. A large part of the paragraph that was supposed to come after " Instead," and before "(By the way, ’s position is known has ethical non-naturalism)." And unfortunately, I do not have a copy of my original message. Anyway, if you want to know more about Moore, I'm sure you can find some article on him from a credible source. Or better yet, you read what Moore himself has to say in his Principia Ethica. It quite a good read. Sorry about the mistake.

8

WHAT DOES_MORALITY_ACCOMPLISH?

by Terry in

notice that my carefully worded header places morality into a framework of practicality first of all.. i could have asked the question many ways; but, in order to make a certain point i chose this way.. let us retrace (as briefly as possible) the discussion of the good by aristotle.. aristotle asks: "what is the good?".

he gives examples or analogies of a good physician, a good general and a good carpenter.. what does each do that makes them good?

each accomplishes the goal of his profession.. respectively:.

Generic Man

Hi Terry,

Thanks for starting this interesting post, but unfortunately, your treatment of the issue is too simplistic. First of all, your criticism of Aristotle is, I think, unclear. Aristotle’s ethical theory is known as Virtue Ethics. For Aristotle, a person is good because behaves virtuously and has good intentions. Aristotle’s ethics can be described as teleological or purpose oriented. According to Aristotle, everything has a purpose, both animate and inanimate. An apple tree grows apples and in order to be virtuous, it must grow good fruit to fulfill its purpose. Likewise people have purposes too and must strive to fulfill that purpose.

Unlike other theories, which characterize a person as good in terms of what actions he performs, Aristotle’s virtue ethics defines a good person in terms of how he strives to be good. For instance, Utilitarians like John Stewart Mill would define a good person as one who performs actions that cause the right consequences. Usually they tend to define right actions as pleasurable actions (hedonism). Not surprisingly Utilitarians are called consequentialists (but not all consequentialists are Utilitarians). Deontologists like Immanuel Kant on the other hand, claim that actions are right or wrong regardless of their consequences. According to Kant, a good person performs the right actions regardless of what the circumstances in which it is performed. Virtue ethics is unlike either of these alternatives in that they emphasize on good character instead of good actions.

David Hume introduced the problem of how can be conclude with a statement about what we ought to do from premises which describe how the world is. Hume concluded that we cannot do this; we cannot reduce moral properties like good, bad, right or wrong to natural properties. Hume criticizes Aristotle for identifying virtuousness (a moral property) with skillfulness (a description of a person’s behavior). Hume would likewise have criticized hedonists for identifying the good with pleasurable sensations. Hume’s concluded that since we cannot solve the “is/ought problem,” then moral distinctions are not discovered by reason but created by sentiment. In other words, morality is not rational (or at least, not completely motivated by reason).

Similarly, the 20 th century philosopher G.E. Moore agreed with Hume that moral properties are not reducible to natural properties, as indicated by his ‘open-ended argument.’ However , Moore did agree with Hume’s conclusion that morality is irrational. Instead, (By the way, ’s position is known has ethical non-naturalism).

Now, that I’ve finished with explaining some of the most important ideas in ethics, which one of these positions are correct? I’m in no position to answer this with a conclusive position and I seriously doubt that you are either. Frankly, I find your own attempt to be unenlightening and naive. Don’t take this personally, but I don’t think you’ve taken the time to think about this ancient problem. I’m not sure what you mean when you say that “morality is a practical matter.” I don’t that any theist or any of the philosophers I’ve mentioned would insist that being moral is impractical. So I don’t see how your idea of “morality as a practical matter” is an alternative to theistic ideas of morality (including for instance, the Divine Command Theory which is not accepted by all theists). As for your concluding statement:

THERE IS NO NEED OF A SUPERNATURAL RULE MAKER because doing GOOD follows naturally from identifying good results and reverse-engineering the operations that produce the best results as a practical matter.

I have no reason to believe that you have proven your case. However, you do seem to agree with consequentialism since you emphasize on GOOD RESULTS, but you’re going to have to do a better job of giving arguments. What do you define as a good result and what kinds of actions produce good results?Once again, don’t take this as a personal assault, but as a fair criticism of your post.

Sincerely,

GenericMan

257

Prove to me that God exists

by CinemaBlend in

i need debate practice on the subject for the next time i'm cornered.

Generic Man

Hi everybody,

I would like to take a moment to comment on some statements made in this thread. I haven't taken the time to read all of the posts here, so forgive me if I end up repeating what somebody else said or haven't addressed a good point that somebody else has said. Well, here it goes:

Stephen John Gault said this:

"If you can't prove god exists, you have to allow for the possibility/probability."

tetrapod.sapien said that:

"because pure proof is not forthcoming in deciding the HIGHEST LIKELIHOOD of truth."

I'd like to comment on these statements since they seem to imply that a proposition's being highly likely is a sufficient condition for being justified in believing that a proposition is true. Here I will argue that this assumption is demonstrated to be false by what is known as the Lottery Paradox. Lets assume the following:

p1= a proposition stating "ticket #1 will lose"

n= the number of tickets being between say, 100 and several million.

So the probability of p1 being false is 1/n and the probability of p1 being true is 1-1/n. With this knowledge, I will propose the following argument:

(a1) The probability for p1 being true is 1-1/n.

(a2) If the probability for p1 being true is 1-1/n, then I am justified in believing that p1 is true.

Therefore,

(a4) I am justified in believing that p1 is true.

The conclusion is problematic, since all other propositions claiming a ticket will lose (p2,p3,...pn) have the same probability of being true (1-1/n). For instance, my ticket #1 has the same probability of losing as Grumby's ticket #3 and Blondie's ticket #n. So everybody can be justified for believing that their ticket will lose. Now things get worse when we conjoin all of our propositions:

(p1&p2&p3&...&pn)

Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with formal logic, conjunction is a truth function between propositions (statements that are either true or false). Observe the following argument structure:

1. P
2. Q

Therefore,

3. P&Q

That's what I'm doing when I'm conjoining propositions. All I'm stating is that if I assume P is true and if I assume Q is true, then P&Q is true. Each proposition which is about a ticket (i.e. p1,p2,etc.) and I am now conjoining each of these propositions into one large proposition, (p1&p2&p3&...&pn). But this large proposition has it's own probability just as each of it's conjuncts do.

Lets suppose that P has a probability of .99 (very high) and suppose that Q also has this probability. If we conjoin these propositions and get P&Q, then we multiply their probabilities to get the probability of the conjunction.

P&Q= 0.99 x 0.99 = 0.9801

As you can see, the probability of this conjunction being true is less than it's conjuncts! It does not matter how highly probable its conjuncts are as long as they're below 1.00. As we can recall, our lottery propositions are extremely low to begin with, being 1-1/n. So if I have a lottery with 100 tickets then the probability each individual ticket has of winning is 1/100. If we subtract this fraction from 1, then we get a very large number, which is the probability it has of losing. So this large proposition, (p1&p2&p3&...&pn), has a high probability of losing.

But if we are justified in believing that this large proposition is true, then we're justified in believing that no ticket will win. But we know that some ticket will win. We cannot be justified in believing that both a ticket will win and no ticket will win. So it seems that premise a2 of my argument is false and being highly probable is not a sufficient condition for me to believe that a proposition is true.

What does this mean? It means that arguments that conclude the likelihood or unlikelihood of a hypothesis being true are irrelevent (assuming that there is nothing else wrong with the argument) since we cannot be justified in believing or disbelieving based on that likelihood. Does any of what I say make sense? Sorry if my response is too long.

33

5/23/05 KM Article "Jehovah's Day is Near"

by TheListener in

to be covered during service meetings week of 5/23/05.. q&a.

1. christians ardently desire the coming of jehovah's day, through which he will destroy the present system of things and usher in a new world of righteousness.

(2 peter 3:12,13, ftn.

Generic Man

Now, this nonsense about the UN being the "8th world power" is nothing more than a conspiracy theory and not even a conspiracy theory that is unique to the WTBS. In fact there are many fundamentalists who have made similiar claims about the UN being in league with the devil or having to do with Biblical prophecy. I don't see any reason for believing any of those claims. I don't believe these claims because [1] I am skeptical of the Bible and belief in God and [2] because if I did believe in either of these, I still wouldn't believe any of these allegations. Here's what Article 1 of the United Nations Charter has to say:

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and

4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

[This is from: http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/]

Now where in any of these clauses do you see any ambition to become a monistic world power? All I see the rescipe for an international organization committed to improving relations among nations. It is a commitee, not a government. And like I said before, the UN does not have any power. It does not have a standing army and neither are there any "international laws" because there is no way to enforce them.

In conclusion, all this speculation about the UN is unfounded. It is the unverified speculation of fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists. It is an international organization committed to diplomacy, not a evil cabal of devil worshipers. I wish you well Flash, but I hope you reconsider your beliefs.

33

5/23/05 KM Article "Jehovah's Day is Near"

by TheListener in

to be covered during service meetings week of 5/23/05.. q&a.

1. christians ardently desire the coming of jehovah's day, through which he will destroy the present system of things and usher in a new world of righteousness.

(2 peter 3:12,13, ftn.

Generic Man

Hi Flash,

I've read both your comment here, as well as your profile and I'm puzzled. In your profile you say this:

"I believe the Witnesses are God's people but like the Israelites of Jesus day, the Witnesses, especialy their leaders (the GB and their supporters) have left the love Christ laid out and are 'lording it over His congregation'... I still worship Jehovah but as an INDIVDUAL. I live be HIS standards and not by the standards of elitist men." [italics are mine]

Here you say that the Governing Body and their supporters "have left the love of Christ." This statement implies that there was some time in the past where they were on the right and then strayed from what has been taught in the Bible. My question is since when were they ever on the right course? Was it during C.T. Russell's reign with his many false predictions and flights of fancy? Or was it during the reign of Rutherford, Knorr, Franz, or the beginning of the Governing Body in the 70's? When was the organization ever not a dictatorship that surpressed disent of any kind? Russell was not as bad as the latter leaders of the WTBS, but that's not saying much. Russell decieved himself and others with his own grandiose falsehoods. Based on what I've read in the older publications and how they relate to what is currently taught, there is no reason to believe that the Jehovah's Witness belief system is true.

33

What's currently on your DVD / Video shelf?

by Preston in

.

here's a few of mine:.

donnie darko, madonna's drowned world tour, o, lucky man!, mulholland drive, hedwig and the angry inch, andrei rublev, blue velvet, once upon a time in the west, the brak show!, the ali g how, the godfather, nostalghia, flowers of shanghai, kwaidan.... what's on yours.... - preston

Generic Man

Dr.Strangelove by Kubrick

Paths of Glory also by Kubrick

Brazil by Terry Gilliam

Psycho by Hitchcock

Blade Runner by Ridley Scott

Or almost anything by the directors mentioned.

8

perpetual terminal disease

by stevenyc in

ok, i've been living with hiv for the past four years.

it's been very tough.

i've seen the signs in a foot infection, lumps on my tongue, having to get moles removed because they were spreading and getting larger, two years ago i caught the cold twice in the same year, feeling my lymphatic system working overload, to name but a few.

Generic Man

I hope that you can overcome hypochondria. Keep in mind though, that hypochondria could be like OCD and somewhat hereditary. Then again, I'm not a medical doctor. I still hope things get better though.