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  • A rebuttal of Nozick's Entitlement Theory - fruits of labour

    I find the issue becomes more or less about what an individual can do and what others believe they should doI like sushi

    Two men are friends over a long period of time. #one has a regular job that provides a decent retirement plan. #two is artistic but has little interest in planning financially for the future. At retirement age #one retires on his pension. #two then asks #one to share his pension with him. #one refuses.

    Did #one make the right moral choice? (this actually happened)
  • Pragmatism Without Goodness



    Although I don’t in principle have any disagreement with the Analogia Entis, it then seems you’ll nevertheless likewise find disagreement with these passages as well, for they parallel my own statements (boldface, underlines, and brackets are mine):

    Hearkening back, whether consciously or not, to the doctrine of Speusippus (Plato’s successor in the Academy) that the One is utterly transcendent and “beyond being,” and that the Dyad is the true first principle (Dillon 1977, p. 12), Plotinus declares that the One is “alone with itself” and ineffable (cf. Enneads VI.9.6 and V.2.1). The One does not act to produce a cosmos or a spiritual order, but simply generates from itself, effortlessly, a power (dunamis) which is at once the Intellect (nous) and the object of contemplation (theôria) of this Intellect. While Plotinus suggests that the One subsists by thinking itself as itself, the Intellect subsists through thinking itself as other, and therefore becomes divided within itself: this act of division within the Intellect is the production of Being, which is the very principle of expression or discursivity (Ennead V.1.7).https://iep.utm.edu/neoplato/#SH2a

    As regards the very first principle of reality [i.e., the One], conceived of as an entity that is beyond Being, transcending all physical reality, very little can actually be said, except that it is absolute Unity [rather than either Being with a capital “B”, which it is beyond, or else nihility/nothingness].https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoplatonism/#One

    I do acknowledge that Plotinus makes ample use of metaphor in his writing, as well as using terms in a context that is often foreign to us moderners (with his use of "Being", again with a capital "B", as one possible example of such)—which can lead to numerous interpretations of what was in fact meant by him. Still, in assuming this is a forum of philosophy rather than a forum of Christian faith and various apologetics for it:

    In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I’ll conclude that to you “intentional activity (or else acts) that is fully devoid of any intent” makes sense—here even tentatively indulging the belief that this is what Plotinus in fact intended to entail in the notion of the One. To me, on the other hand, this proposition as of yet doesn’t make any sense whatsoever—but is instead logically contradictory in a priori fashion (this as might be “a married bachelor”). And since you’ve made no effort to provide a rationally consistent explanation of how this stipulation of “intent-less intentions” could make sense—but have so far affirmed that this is what so and so in fact affirmed—I find no reason to continue in my attempts to ask you how this might rationally be. Faith that contradicts logical possibility (or experience, for that matter) is not my strong-suit—and this includes faith in notions of "the One" being that which intentions in manners devoid of any and all intents.

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