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| Theoretical Philosophy » Atheism entails naturalism? » 8/04/2015 7:56 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 9
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No, atheism does not imply naturalism. To put it simply, it's logically possible that (1) there's no deity (atheism) and (2) There's more to the world than the natural world (non-naturalism). I would say that they go hand in hand in our society, but philosophically they could be separate from one another.
| Practical Philosophy » A Counterexample to Natural Law Theory from Pruss » 8/04/2015 7:50 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 16
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As suggested, it's seems that natural law theory hold that is immoral to use a faculty contrary to the faculty's end, not that it's immoral not to use the faculty per se all the time. For example, a end of the legs is locomotion, but sitting is not morally wrong. In the same vein, the end of the reproductive organs is reproduction, but a man doesn't need to spend 24 hours per day in procreation. Turning off a sense of smell by a period seems akin to that.
| Practical Philosophy » Empathy and Morality » 8/04/2015 7:26 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 6
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I once thought of the following arguments when discussing that matter:
1. If empathy is the *normative* reason to act morally, then people who lack empathy don't need to act morally. (e. g. psychopaths)
2. But people who lack empathy need to act morally. (e. g. is not morally permissible for a psycho to torture a baby)
3. So empathy is not the *normative* reason to act morally.
A complementary argument:
1- A person who have empathy feels the pain that the other person is feeling.
2 - (Since we should strive to have the least amount of pain possible, then) Everything that maximizes the amount of pain in the world is evil / should be avoided.
3 - But having empathy maximizes the amount of pain in the world. (from (1))
4 - Therefore, empathy is evil / should be avoided.
(I don't believe that conclusion, I just wanted to piss off certain persons).
Another one to elicit some reactions:
1. Either we have a sufficient reason to act morally or we don't have a sufficient reason to act morally.
2. If we have a sufficient reason to act morally, then empathy is superfluous (a sufficient reason to act morally would be enough in itself, after all).
3. If we don't have a sufficient reason to act morally (e. g. moral nihilism), then empathy is superfluous. (if there's no sufficient reason to act morally, then having the feeling of empathy is objectively not different from having any other feeling - there are just feeling against feelings with no superior criterion to adjudicate between them).
4. So either way empathy is superfluous.
Again, I know this arguments are open to various objections, but my goal was to make some people at least argue for their 'empathy'-grounded morality... Provoking reactions is a good starting point.
| Practical Philosophy » Is it lawful to amputate a member? » 7/02/2015 7:38 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 15
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Jeremy Taylor wrote:Presumably, he means the natural law sense of an immoral and unnatural act, one against the good.
I don't think the OP's question can be answered unless we know the circumstances. Is the amputation because the limb is injured and diseased and may cause death?I was thinking more about death (either you amputate it or you die); if anyone wants to talk about an injured limb, I would like to hear about it too.
| Practical Philosophy » Is it lawful to amputate a member? » 7/02/2015 7:36 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 15
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Hi, Etzelnik. See my post above at 7:34 pm.
| Practical Philosophy » Is it lawful to amputate a member? » 7/02/2015 7:34 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 15
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Evil would be understood as a par with good. Good is the realization / actualization of a natural end, evil the opposite, that is, the privation of a natural end. Amputation, per se, it's obviously evil since it frustrates the ends of that body part.
Just to confirm, I'm not trolling or anything. This is a real doubt.
| Practical Philosophy » Is it lawful to amputate a member? » 7/02/2015 6:51 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 15
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Is it lawful to amputate a member when the overall good of the body demands it? How does that relates to the idea that is not lawful to bring about good by doing an evil action? Of course, I'm asking for a traditional natural law perspective.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Common misconceptions about Scholasticism » 7/02/2015 6:46 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 12
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What are the most common misconceptions about Scholasticism?
…
One seems to be that Scholasticism is some kind of rationalist system. See the wikipedia article on Leibniz, for example: "The work of Leibniz anticipated modern logic and analytic philosophy, but his philosophy also looks back to the scholastic tradition, in which conclusions are produced by applying reason of first principles or prior definitions rather than to empirical evidence." [1] Yet one famous scholastic maxim is that "There's nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses" [2]
Another one seems to be that Schoolmen were just dull persons blindly following whatever Aristotle told was true. For example: "while his works were taken up with great enthusiasm by thinkers like St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–74), their sceptical spirit seems to have been ignored by the mass of medieval scholars. Rather than emulating his attitude of continually questioning and testing-out his findings, they saw him as an ‘authority' whose word was law and simply accepted the conclusions he had come to, however mistaken they might be." [3] Yet, for Aquinas, the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest [4] Of course, there also instances of specific disagreement, like the point about the Universe never having a beggining.
What else? Is useful to know the standard caricatures when discussing this topics in order to be able to better verify their truthfulness.
Links:
[1]
[2] "There is nothing in the [url=
| Resources » Resources » 7/02/2015 6:32 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 16
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DanielCC wrote:Mateus wrote:DanielCC wrote:
A Brazilian Traditionalist and Scholastic philosopher I was very keen on back in the day use to wax lyrical about A. G. Sertillanges' The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions and Methods. I have as yet to check it out myself but I see copies can be bought cheaply from Amazon plus the text is relatively easy to find in PDF format online.
Are you from Brazil?
No, I’m afraid; I don’t even speak Portuguese. I first read the selection of Carvalho’s essays available in English on his website, and then later on went through all others with the help of Google Translate and a dictionary. I read a whole book of his that way even (The Garden of Affliction – analysing the legacy of Epicureanism).
EDIT: With that in mind I'm going to post Carvalho's own suggested reading list. It's in Portuguese as one might expected but it's easy to get most of the titles from the author names:Interesting. I would never expect to someone from another country to know Carvalho's work. If anyone is interested in a translation of any title of the link, please ask me.
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| Theoretical Philosophy » Actualizing intellect » 7/02/2015 5:50 pm |
- Mateus
- Replies: 6
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DanielJoachim wrote:
But can you have only a certain degree of "capacity for abstraction"? I thought it'd be more right to say that either you have the capacity or you don't? Like grasping universal forms. A binary 0 or 1.
The distinction between rational animals (1) and mere animals (0).I agree with the binary distinction if you are talking about the nature of a thing. Either it have the potential to abstract or it don't. But I don't think in concrete cases the manifestation has to be uniform. Common experience shows that even for the same person the capacity for intellectually demanding tasks can vary greatly (e. g. the same person starving and the same person well-fed).
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