JLNobody, I trust you're not including me with rufio in the materialist camp. I haven't expressed any opinion on the "tree falling in the forest" issue, largely because it is entirely irrelevant to the topic of altruism, so I'm not sure how you could infer what is essentially an ontological position on the basis of an ethical argument. On the other hand, if you think that I espouse some form of "ethical materialism," I'd be interested in learning more about the grounds for such an inference.
truth
Sorry, Joe. My mistake based on careless scanning. I am glad you cleared that up.
Do you really think cross-cultural communication is impossible, JL?
truth
It is very difficult and full of pitfalls for miscommunication, Rufio. But it is not impossible; if it were, ethnographic anthropology would be impossible.
Right. Since we don't even have that problem now, I don't think it would be too much to ask to try and have a decent conversation here.
The difficulty is we don't disagree on issue X because we have different views, we disagree because X doesn't mean the same thing to each party.
We are talking past each other.
truth
Yes, much of our miscommuications are rooted in psychological rather than cultural differences. I do believe that our philosophical paradigms (i.e., most general and deep-seated assumptions) reflect personality characteristics as much as they do "objective" conceptual conclusions
Twyvel, I've asked you many times to explain your position in greater detail. Your problem is that you simply refuse to aknowledge that my position even exists.
truth
That's just the point, Rufio: it doesn't.
Good one JL,
Dare I ask, what is your position rufio?
Clearly, you are both too blind to recognize the existence of other points of veiw. The problem with this forum is that it is monotonous. You are all birds of a feather - you play at arguments, but you are really all just talking to hear yourselves talk. You all have the same opinions to the point of being one person on two different accounts, and you spend all your time reinforcing each other's beliefs to the point where you will believe anything, even if it is completely illogical. Contrarily, I don't think you need to deny my point of veiw, I think you are all in desperate need of some intellectual diversity.
"just talking to hear yourselves talk"....
...now thats a good one coming from you rufio whose made it from "newbie" to "enthusiast" in record time with posts of questionable quality and relevance !
I agree there is arrogance on all sides of the table.
But if I understand your position correctly rufio it is by far the dominant world view, and it is probably by far the dominant view on this forum.
What was questionable, fresco? The only questionable posts were the ones I received in response.
It's not arrogance I'm talking about twyvel, it's closed-mindedness. You've obviously had your head in the ground for so long that you can't even interpret my posts as disagreeing with yours, though you can pretend not to see them.
rufio,
The problem is that you are unaware of the level of discourse operating on most of the threads. Here for example you persist with the "straight" scientific concept of light propogation (familiar to us all as high school kids) as though "wavelengths" were "facts". But here it is the very status of "facts" that is under scrutiny ! Epistemology and ethics simply cannot be tackled with elementary physics. Now if you brought in a bit of Heisenberg...well that might be a different matter!
There's a porblem right there, Your post above doesn't make any sense. I've responded to most of your posts directed to me and disagreed with most of them, and posted my disagreement.
I think the lack of understanding is on your side rufio. JLNobody, fresco, other like-minded folks and I have had to work through your position to get to ours, but somehow you fail to see that.
Simply stating that nothing exists is not what I call "deep" fresco. This is rather typical. The self-proclaimed intellectual simply dismisses all other arguments by claiming they don't live up to the level of his educated conversation.
So, twyvel, where do things come from, if they don't exist before they are seen?
