Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones as well Lucy! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Earth What is wrong with this picture? And here is what the UN Human Rights Council is supposed to be about: I don't think I need to highlight the blessed irony of that list, do I? That is what is wrong with the UN. That list is why the UN is an absolute failure.
so then you agree with my post (re: "religious" thinking). it is for precisely this reason that i cannot even bring myself to post a considered response (by which i mean one for which i spent more than twenty seconds composing) in the religion subforum. this is the subforum in which (purported) atheists consistently post idiocy and curiously metaphysical claims (etc.); while--for reasons entirely unknown to me--other atheists, who seem more capable of thought, simply ignore such. can anyone explain to me why such is the case?
ok, now i'm a little obsessed with this matter: the dude has certainly written extensively on such--innumerable articles and here's a couple'a books: Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece and Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy (kevin robb--ahhhh, he was quite fond of my hero, heraclitus!), but deciphering linear a or linear b? to my knowledge, linear a has not been successfully "deciphered" as of today; so i want to know what this guy really did. anyhow, not really relevant... edit: hmmm, apparently this "decipherment" is a contoversial matter.
I’ll shut up, one last thought, I guess some folks believe a negative “human rights do not exist” has been proven here in this thread. To me that is fallacy.
heh. oh, and please see my last response in the "introspection is bad" thread--i eagerly await your thoughts on the matter.
I far as I understand, it isn't possible to prove a negative, not exactly symantics. I've said enough, I know its time to quit.
though i think this is really the root of the problem here. in another thread, i asked (Q) this simple question (and of course, along with many others, it was not answered): is the sky blue? to me there are a number of people here who seem to be suggesting that "rights" are somehow real--in what respect are they "real"? are "they" an entity? do they exist outside of space and time (and matter and energy)? you write: yet it is clear to me that this contingency is not regarded as significant by many here--as you've seen by now. i think we have a bunch of closet idealists here.
Using the criteria accepted by the science-advocating community here on sciforums I MUST consider myself agnostic on the issue of the existence of rights.
I think you're right. One wonders then, if these idealists even realize that that is what they are. Their skepticism always falls one step short....
now you are sounding as bitter and disgruntled as i am. funny how it all seems to come back to ocham.
anyhows, on ocham (occam, ockham) and whatnots: i think decons offered an explanation far better than most in another thread: this parallels a conversation i had with a friend who is a biologist--and far more inclined towards proper diligence than i--just the other day. [he also runs a label and is an obsessive music collector: he presently has a running blog in which he critiques every single sun ra album--including known bootlegs--in chronological order. the number is easily in the hundreds. still, he appreciates and respects my minimalist approach towards everything.] why do people feel this compulsion to complicate matters? and of course, some do far more than others. but what lay at the heart of this? why not simply recognize rights for what they are, why must they be something oh-so-much more? is this simply a pathology for which the most straightforward explanation is not viscerally satisfactory? or is it a means by which to account for behaviors and "gut inclinations" for which the explanations we have do not suffice? IOW fear of and disdain for ambiguity, uncertainty, etc.
Oh it's not bitterness. I've just never quite understood the Idealist position; it's an approach that lack consistency, the hallmark of any rational position.
i largely agree--but see the quote i cited from decons above. of course, it does not directly relate to this, but you can probably see how one might extrapolate from such and make it pertinent to this matter. i think that efforts to strive for consistency are often thrown to the wind when confronted with a very strong visceral reaction against the direction one seems to be going. and i think that nagging uncertainty propels people to abandon "rationality" (proper, but not necessarily their reason; of course, it's all in how one defines reason, yet again) in order to quell the uncertainty. IOW the thinking goes very much like this: wouldn't it be nice if we could just this once make an appeal to authority (i.e. the universal)? things would go so much more smoothly, and we wouldn't have to contend with "apparent" deviations from a principle. in this thread--and in most threads--people are inclined to espouse what they "really" believe, and what i really mean by this: what they believe not when really pressed by the matter, but when given the time to abstract and consider what they ought to believe according to the principles and methodologies which the "officially" endorse. yet i am quite surprised to be seeing so many responses which clearly conflict with such, IOW what i am seeing are responses of what people really believe (no scare quotes) inasmuch as it is informed by how they act and what they "feel" in their "hearts." i really needn't even be so overt with the metaphors here, but i felt the need to make it obvious. the fact of the matter is that one would be hard-pressed to honestly articulate the beliefs and concepts without recourse to metaphors and abstractions of abstractions. alternately: i am playing with fire--when the cats are away, the mice shall play--but i think that everyone has gone out to lunch. either that, or they simply can't see the fire through the dense fog. nevertheless, i feel confident that by the end of the day i shall be dragging my harmonium up to the rooftop (my violin skills are negligible) and pounding out some drones, while watching the city burn to the ground all about me. i'd prefer some massive tidal waves, but i'll be happy with the fire. ^^^ that was a bit much, but it's really how i see it.
