🌱 Philosophy: Basic Readings 2nd Edition
Finished: 2022-01-17
By: Nigel Warburton
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation
This desire to impress has become the bane of academic writing, and it is the supreme corrupter of style.Again the moment you’re using violence to prevent someone from speaking you are on the wrong side of the argument by definition
Descriptive studies attempt to find out how things are. Normative studies try to discover how things should be
Re: politics
To say or do nothing is, in practice, to endorse the present situation, however repellent.
‘How dare Senator Daschle criticise President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism?’ he declared. That is politics of course, but it is dangerous politics. It threatens to weaken democracy just when it needs to be strong.
Principle is indivisible, and we try to divide it at our peril. When we compromise on freedom because we think our immediate goals more important, we are likely to find that the power to exploit the compromise is not in our own hands after all, but in those of fanatical priests armed with fatwa and fanatical moralists with their own brand of hate.
Marx’s reply is that religious alienation comes into existence because conditions on earth are so bad that people seek solace in heaven. Religion will not disappear until it is no longer necessary: when it becomes possible for human beings to enjoy their species-essence on earth.
Capitalism has its laws, and you flout them at your peril. If you ignore them, then, just like those who try to ignore the law of gravity, you will come to grief. But what, as it were, is the metaphysical status of these laws, these market forces? According to Marx they are no more than the accumulated consequences of human behaviour. Human beings act in certain ways, and this has certain large-scale effects. Given these effects certain future action by people seems rationally required and this reinforces the process, which becomes endlessly reinforced by the behaviour it generates.
The human response to a fellow being in need is to do whatever is required to fulfill that need. Under capitalism another response is appropriate: to use that need as a source of power or profit. Those extremely short of money, for example, will work for very little pay. Thus we relate to each other not with mutual need in mind, but individual profit.
a just society the way to make individuals produce what is for the general good is not to exclude some people from parts of the competition in order to force them to do something else. That way other work is less well done, and individuals are made unhappy in the process. The way to proceed is to make the work to be done attractive to the people we want to do it, that way getting the work done well and increasing the satisfaction of individuals in the process.
it had been reached: we should always go on trying to get something better. We may not know when we have the best possible organization from the point of view of social justice, but as long as we are aiming to produce what is of the greatest benefit to everyone, we must be wrong in eliminating any group from the competition, since that will not only lower the well-being of the members of that group; but also lessen what is produced for the satisfaction of others.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling-block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age
fine phrases are the last resource of those who have run out of arguments
I have been assured by men whose arm or leg has been amputated that it still seemed to them that they occasionally felt pain in the limb they had lost-thus giving me grounds to think that I could not be quite certain that a pain I endured was indeed due to the limb in which I seemed to feel it.
DISEMBODIED TELEPRESENCE AND THE REMOTENESS OF THE REAL
Hubert Dreyfus
This seems to be written by someone that never experienced online gaming or VR.
I would wager that tech will have the potential to bring virtual experience equal to and likely above than a regular physical experience.
The arguments appears to be because telepresence is not equal to physical presence today therefore it can never be.
Because an acorn is not a tree doesn’t mean it can never become a tree.
All of the quotes from educators are from folks with a history of teaching in a lecture hall.
Belief is a sort of involuntary, knee-jerk response to the patterns we have experienced.
ideologies can deteriorate and become stupid religions.
The hardest task needs the lightest hand or else its completion will not lead to freedom but to a tyranny much worse than the one it replaces.
The element of performance or technique in art cannot be an object for forgery because technique is not the kind of thing that can be forged. Technique is, as it were, public. One does or does not possess it or one acquires it or learns it. One may even pretend to have it. But one cannot forge it because in order to forge it one must already possess it, in which case there is no need to forge it.