/lit/ - Literature

>>5797532

I would guess that's related to the analytic versus continental divide.

In analytic philosophy, logic, rigor, and justification of reasoning are seen as sacrosanct. To think is to think logically, everything else is baseless conjecture and emotion.

In continental philosophy, there's more leeway. Feelings, emotion, and experience are granted as legitimate grounds for argumentation. Logic is rejected as being inherently necessary to discuss reality, as reality may not be as inherently logical as it seems.

In this area, subjective experience is almost always seen as a given, and if it is a given, then it follows that since experience is subjective, then everyone's experience is subjective and thus can be changed, either democratically or by force, into something new.

So, through pointing out things which should be changed, or critically ("Like a critic") analyzing the current subjective state of affairs, so the argument runs, we can then target issues which exist in it and resolve them.

A quantitative approach to global warming being something we need to act against would be "Climate models predict future agricultural destruction", statistics on carbon usage, its massive uptick, and its effects, and how much an individual can actually contribute to solving the issue.

A critical approach might focus on how philosophically we are obligated to protect the environment even if current legislation is insufficient; or on the nature of changing minds, or on ethics.

>>5750462

Just the opposite. The political system is not continental, it is analytic. However beautiful and important ideas are, without specific implementations which can be summed up in the form of an exact vision, nothing can be accomplished.

Occupy interpreted platitudes as policy, and they simply can't be conflated if you want change.

This is why the LGBT movement was such a massive success protesting for their rights: They recognized that they needed a rallying cry, found one under "Marriage Equality", across the board agreed it was a worthy and easily implementable political platform, publicly politically mobilized and protested, won several small victories, and successfully snowballed from there.

They had a number of ideals and ideas, but because they became a voting bloc with specific policy goals, they were appeaseable.

Occupy cocked up because they had a platform you'd have to work hard to fuck up, reduce corruption in politics. The left could get behind it as forward thinking, the right as pro-small government. The main issue was that they divided up the issue into so many small issues that no one could reasonably keep track of the debate any more.

You can push to jail bankers who misrepresented toxic mortgages, fine. You can push to reform campaign finance, or reform corporate personhood, fine. You can demand collective bargaining and unionization for quasiprofessionals like software engineers, fine. But you can't demand them all and expect success.

>>5482468

Devil's advocate who generally liked Aquinas' work but thinks he is now wrong here.

I have the following objections to his five ways.

1-

How did God move himself if nothing can move itself? What makes God outside that model, and if he is, what justifies excluding him?

Why can't the 'sequence of motions' extend backwards ad infinitum, operating under the assumption that we accept God's existence extends backwards ad infinitum?

How do you end up with the Christian God from this rather than, say, some Zoroastrian deity?

2-

Same objections to his rejection of infinite recurse, God's exclusion from the idea of everything, and his assumption of a Christian God

3-

See two.

4-

Best is subjective. So is worst.

Also apply Platonic philosophy and relevant theodicy arguments: is God as cause of all also the cause of evil, and thus the 'best' at evil, and thus maximally imperfect at the same time as being maximally perfect? If you allow for a satanic figure, was he created by God as well or is he equally immutable, and if he is, why can't I extend that by induction to say "Beings besides God can be immutable and thus nothing theoretically prevents us from being so as well, invalidate 1-4"?

5-

Darwinian evolution invalidates this proof by allowing for the appearance of intelligence without any goal besides "Breed as much as possible"

I'm sorely disappointed. I'm sure at the time these were better proofs and he made historical waves. Not so anymore, I guess.

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