the weird assumption that porn is somehow representative of common sexual acts. — Benkei

Maybe this is because I'm reading your comment out of context, but I don't know what the heck you could be doing when it comes to sex that's not represented in porn. I've definitely never done anything sexually that's not well-represented in porn. It's difficult to imagine anything that could be done that's not well-represented in porn, really.

I'd definitely say that it's possible that there are things (and/or that things have a nature) that we can't really understand.

I don't see how we could ever plausibly posit such things, though, or claim to know such things.

It's also possible that there is nothing that we can't really understand.

Here you go [pdf] — StreetlightX

Which begins, "The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that phenomenology is exclusively about meaningand its source. The essay presents Heidegger’s interpretation of the being(Sein) of things as their meaningful presence(Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningful presence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (dasereignete/geworfene Da-sein)."

Which means that right off the bat, I think, "Yikes--so the whole 'project' seems to be based on a complete misunderstanding of what meaning is."

There is no law of nature which requires all of reality to make sense. It's entirely possible that we are only able to see the components of reality which make sense to US, a tiny half insane semi-suicidal creature on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies etc. — Jake

What could be our grounds for positing that there are things, or that there could be a "nature" to some things, that don't make sense to us, though? How could we know this?

Maybe we should have made this thread: "Do we need metaphysics? (Be sure to tell us just what you believe metaphysics to be when you give your answer)"

The very idea of metaphysics is that, as a domain of enquiry, it is not within the domain of physical, i.e. emprical, enquiry. — Janus

What a baffling thing to claim.

No, I'm saying that they can't be answered - well, they can't be answered unequivocally. They're in some sense beyond adjudication, you can't appeal an ultimate authority to judge the different responses. — Wayfarer

What questions would you say that doesn't describe?

The question we are considering is whether or not neurobiology can adequately explain the source of morality without supplemental explanations from nonscientific disciplines. — Merkwurdichliebe

I was certainly never talking about anything like that, a fortiori because I refuse to do "explanation" discussions (a la "is this explained?") without first exploring someone's general criteria for explanations, and no one ever even starts trying to do their general criteria for explanations . . . because no one actually has any such criteria. They simply use "explanation" comments ("that's not (sufficiently) explained" etc.) as a bludgeon for views they don't care for.

If you think Heidegger was a hack ,then I wouldn't bother to read any more Derrida. Or Rorty. Or Dreyfus. Or Gendlin. Or Gallagher. Or Merleau-Ponty. Or Deleuze. Or Lyotard. Or Levinas.Or Gadamer. Or Nietzsche. Or Zahavi(one of the most respected current interpreters of Husserl). You may as well cross off your list the most interesting work being done on theories of emotion(Ratcliffe, Slaby) as well. — Joshs

Sounds like one of the more sensible suggestions I've seen you make. ;-)

Maybe the relevant difference is not in the suffering, not the type of suffering, but in how one parses and deals with suffering. If that's the case, what should be pursued is a model, or perhaps a set of interpretive dispositions, techniques, etc.that can enable people to look at suffering differently.

Of course, this isn't a novel suggestion, and maybe there are ways to deal with this already, such as the zen approach to Buddhism.

It's possible for "causeless effects" to occur? Sure. Because what makes something impossible is that it would amount to a contradiction obtaining. It would probably be better to not use the word "effect" for them, but it doesn't really matter what we'd call the phenomenon.

Per the usual Humean approach, do we really observe causality in any case of phenomena that we observe? It's not clear that we do and that we're not always talking about conceptual abstractions that we make.

So it's not clear is we ever observe "causeless effects" or "caused effects," and it's not clear how we'd ever empirically establish the difference with any epistemic certainty.

When I asked you what a "unified concept" was supposed to amount to (I'd never use the phrase "unified concept" myself--it seems like a category error to me, hence why I need to ask), you said that it's a concept for which there's a consensus. Given what concepts are, that could only refer to people saying similar things when you ask them what their concept or definition of x is.

Given this definition of "unified concept," it doesn't make any sense to say that we could intentionally create one. It would simply be a contingent matter of whether people are thinking about something (a la a concept they've created) similarly, as reflected by the words they're uttering.

Well, you can tell well enough if there's a consensus by looking at the language (from an objective perspective --utterances, text, etc.) folks are associating with their concepts.

I think that both metaphysics and epistemology are impossible to avoid if one is doing philosophy. All that's required for each is to at all wonder about and address, in some manner, (1) what sort of stuff there is/what it's like/what its relation is to other stuff, and (2) what we can know/how we can know it . . . not necessarily in that order.

And out of a pool of opinions, they would synthesize a unified concept by accepting some, and rejecting others. — Merkwurdichliebe

Well, you can't literally have a collective concept. Concepts are inherently individual, personal.

You'll have to do some research into how neurobiologists (or any scientific community) come to form consensus in order to form unified concepts, which they can then proceed to scientifically test. — Merkwurdichliebe

We'd simply do a survey of each individual's concept.

If time is infinite, the universe should go through all possible states eventually. A similar idea to this is Poincaré recurrence theorem: — Devans99

It could vacillate between just two states forever, or any other arbitrary number of states.

it is a fact of his understanding of women, that he holds they are just objects — TheWillowOfDarkness

Wait, but everyone is just an object.

the man wouldn't be in his rightful postion as sole actor/pleasure giver. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I didn't at all agree with what he said, but did he actually say anything like "man in his rightful position . . . "?

What I was disagreeing with was the claim that "we too should be open to the possibility of being influenced since doing otherwise would negate our intend to influence others in the first place."

I was disagreeing with that solely on logical grounds. Because it's possible to intend to influence others while not being open to the possibility of being influenced.

Whether I'd prefer people to be open to the possibility of being influenced is a different issue.

It's (logically) possible--and it often happens--that people intend to influence others while not being open to the possibility of being influenced. So it's not true that you can't intend to influence others if you're not open to the possibility of being influenced.

Well, "consensus" refers to agreeing with each other. The claim is about relative agreement on what one concept refers to versus what another concept refers to, right?

Maybe the phrase "not everyone" is confusing?

"Not everyone" negates "all."

Or, in other words, rather than it being true that "F is the case for all x," it's saying that For some x, F, but for some x, not-F.

So, for example:

Some people stick to what they believe no matter what.
Some people do not stick to what they believe no matter what.
Some people stick to what they believe in some situations, but not in other situations.
Some people, in some situations, aren't sure what they believe.

And so on. People are different than each other in all sorts of ways.

The point? That it's not necessary to be open to revision that P oneself in order to intend to persuade someone that P, where either we expect the person to be open to revision re their belief that not-P, or their lack of belief either way.

The fact that the first person isn't open to revision in their belief that P doesn't mean that the other person won't be open to revision in their belief that not-P. It just depends on the particular people involved. Their dispositions, etc.

I would say that, unless our free will is absolute, it factors into causal determinism. — BrianW

Okay, but that's different than how I defined it, no?

It's the other way around. Causality negates free will as I defined it because we're talking about causal determinism, not the opposite of causal determinism.

You don't believe in causality at all?

You'd have to be more specific re what you're not understanding, what you're reading to be inconsistent.

Well, some people claim that you never have free will with respect to how I characterized it. And I'd say that definitely you don't have free will when it comes to some things--it is possible to be forced to do some things.

The evidence, here, is a bunch of shit done by neuro-biologists. — Merkwurdichliebe

I asked you what made something a "unified concept." You said that a consensus about it made it "unified." So I'm asking for the empirical evidence of the claimed consensus (re the concept of free will) versus the claimed relative lack of consensus (re the concept of morality). What would that have to do with a "bunch of shit done by neurobiologists"?

I was asking for the empirical support of a particular claim.

Firstly, what do you mean by "will" and consequently "free will"? — BrianW

Not to speak for him bit I'd say "will" refers to the intent/directedness/conscious motivation driving actions, and "free" refers to the opposite of causal determinism.

Then how can we influence if everyone sticks to what he believes to be true because he/she is different? — akourios

One way that people are different from each other is that not everyone sticks to what they believe no matter what. Also, people who do stick to what they believe no matter what do not all do that on every topic. And there are plenty of topics where various people are not sure what they believe, whether they're talking to someone with an effectively immutable belief on that topic or not.

Just learned that this is an actual quote from Roger Scruton in his 1986 book, Sexual Desire

Consider the woman who plays with her clitoris during the act of coition. Such a person affronts her lover with the obscene display of her body, and, in perceiving her thus, the lover perceives his own irrelevance. She becomes disgusting to him, and his desire may be extinguished. The woman’s desire is satisfied at the expense of her lover’s, and no real union can be achieved between them

damn this guy's a loser — Maw

The problem with that sort of nonsense--and there are tons of examples of this sort of thing, including things that are very noncontroversial that many people readily agree with, is that the person is assuming that their interpretation, their biases, their hang-ups, are in any sense universal.

This tells us a lot about Scruton's beliefs, and his personal hang-ups, including his self-centeredness and/or arrogance in assuming that his pitiful dispositions suggest any broader truth.

I think they have free will. That doesn't mean that every option available is equally easy to follow through.

To live creatively is to break the "rules" — matt

Are there really rules that aren't laws, though? And even if there are, what if someone doesn't want to break (some of) them? Do they have to live inauthentically to live creatively? That would seem odd.

At any rate, so let's supposed that there are rules that aren't laws. Why wouldn't it be possible at present to break them? (In the vein of the claim that it's not possible at present to live creatively.)

How do we expect other people to be open to the possibility that there is something which they don't know/understand if we ourselves aren't? — akourios

We realize that not everyone is the same (especially not in every situation)?

Not a rational transaction though obviously. — Devans99

It doesn't have anything to do with rationality, really. It's simply a matter of what individuals relatively value, what their preferences are. That doesn't imply that someone might not make a different decision under different circumstances or at a different time, but it doesn't really hinge on rationality.

Then, let's agree. We can make no empirical claims — Merkwurdichliebe

But I'm not saying anything akin to "We can make no empirical claims."

If this is the goal of the conversation then we too should be open to the possibility of being influenced since doing otherwise would negate our intend to influence others in the first place. — akourios

So I like to go into referee mode as soon as I see a foul, and this seems to be one. How are you figuring the above?

An obvious problem with this one is that plenty of people would buy it for one cent.

One would have to be unfamiliar with "sell your soul to the devil" literature, and the desire of many people to actually do so if only it were possible, to think otherwise.

All motion can be traced back to the Big Bang. — Devans99

We actually have no idea if that's the case, either.