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The Philosophy And Life Q&a Thread


Phatmike

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What happens if I butter both sides of a slice of toast and drop it?

If you maintain the balance point just right, you remain in a blissful state of balance for as long as is possible. Once you break the balance point, you need to work to reattaining it.

Thus, if you butter your bread just right and drop it, it will probably hover for a bit until the butter comes out of balance. What happens if you freeze the butter so it can't come out of balance? You end up with horrible cold toast you don't even want to eat.

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So, would it be right if a man/woman commited rape, for them to be punished by having their tackle removed/drained/blended/stapled/clamped or nullified by some 'humane' surgical procedure, (despite them violating somebody elses human rights.)

I believe the sort of people who actually do these things need real fear, (this may seem wrong but for most normal people it wont ever apply) Basicly, if you violate someones human rights, should you loose yours?

I dont get why imprisoning is the only acceptable form of punishment for more serious crimes, for some people, I could imagine they would feel prison is 'worth it'.

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On a basic psychological level you have a good point, however i'm gonna roll out ghandi on this one and call an eye for an eye, it depends on your view of justice as revenge, whereas now in a modern society, it's more based on rehabilitation and the fact that not every criminal is a complete dick. however you also have the paradigm of the perpetrator having human rights, you could argue that by violtaing someone elses, they waive the right to their own, but who's to say who does and doesn't deserve human rights. by giving that power you make the concept pointless, everyone has them or nobody has them.

It's an interesting point, but then what about the reformed? you have your body mutilated for a mistake you made, I know that not all offenders reform, but is it really worth ruining the extra lives for a greater sense of justice?

Do rapists got rights? answers on a postcard.

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So, would it be right if a man/woman commited rape, for them to be punished by having their tackle removed/drained/blended/stapled/clamped or nullified by some 'humane' surgical procedure, (despite them violating somebody elses human rights.)

I believe the sort of people who actually do these things need real fear, (this may seem wrong but for most normal people it wont ever apply) Basicly, if you violate someones human rights, should you loose yours?

I dont get why imprisoning is the only acceptable form of punishment for more serious crimes, for some people, I could imagine they would feel prison is 'worth it'.

The important question is how does harming criminal offenders of this kind relate to the general welfare of society? And what I mean by this, is what does it mean for people's welfare, well being or happiness in a society if we support an eye for an eye, or perhaps eye for an ear (so to speak)? The basis of wanting somebody to suffer, regardless of what they have done before, can only follow on from hate or some other similar but also negative state of being. What use is hate to our society, to each of us individually? By definition, I'm not happy when I'm hating. I suspect that a better social and individual welfare follows from love rather than hate. Love carries with it forgiveness and wouldn't condone acts that are based out of hate - violence. This is not to say that action should not be taken against somebody who has raped or killed but rehabilitation is probably a healthier option in terms of individual and social welfare. At present, punishment is chosen ahead of rehabilitation, at the expense of love (and its natural consequence, happiness) and instead we find a wealth of hate (and its natural consequence, unhappiness). I think all moral choices should consider the underlying motivation and whether it follows or at least relates to love. Love as the guiding principle, I say.

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If - ultimately - we are solitary, why do we feel the need to be... well... not? (Words escape me at the minute.)

Why do we have to feel lonely - when we only ever going to be on our own, anyway?

Don't get what you mean about always going to be on our own, you mean physically that we are jus one person? orr...

the answer to that isn't in philosophy its a mix of social influences and biology...

If God is omnipotent, being all-powerful, then he'd be able to create a sphere that is undestructible (quite easily I'd imagine) but by doing so would undermine the fact that he is omnipotent and therefore would not be able to destroy this indestructible sphere. So how can he all-powerful?

hence by that and a million other things that disprove the notion of god in that sense its probable that there is no god

Edited by ilikeriding
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The important question is how does harming criminal offenders of this kind relate to the general welfare of society?

The most important thing is prevention of this kind of wrong doing, ie. zero offences, globally. Ok mabey harming offenders in this way and releasing them as a civilian again still poses a danger to innocent people and the methods of punishment I described were to get a cheap laugh out of a quite serious topic. But yea there are nasty people around and right now they need some proper fear of even thinking about comitting a serious crime, fear of disrespecting the greater good. At best, we are in a transitional stage between the world of poverty, with all the nasties that come with it and the world of love and forgiveness that most of us would like but universally, aint gonna happen...yet. I think we need rules better suited to the real world of crime that the criminal justice system is trying to combat at present in order to get decent results so we can move foward and have a nice time. I cant see any immediate changes hapenning through loving evil, however hating evil and loving everything else untill evil disappears...who knows.

Do rapists got rights? answers on a postcard.

Fair enough I am in no position to choose these rights but the rule 'Do Unto Others as They Do Unto You' is becoming more widely accepted as 'fundamentally good' and if agreed upon, could be incorperated into our human rights. Mabey if you violate someones rights in the 1st degree you loose your rights and you loose your life. This is the fear that criminals need in order to prevent crime and would encourage respect for our fellow persons rights.

Reading back ive just realised that ive said bring back the death sentance :$ nah im gonna stick to it, our new system aint working and I think that good people should take control again. One problem, who is gonna do all this killing in the name of? not me, thats disgusting.

My dad, who I consider a wise bloke even suggested a 3 strikes rule for crimes such as robbery, vandalism ect.. with the 3rd strike resulting in a permanent GTFO!

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My dad, who I consider a wise bloke even suggested a 3 strikes rule for crimes such as robbery, vandalism ect.. with the 3rd strike resulting in a permanent GTFO!

Imo that's a f**king rediculous thing to say :huh: Robbery, Vandalism? What undermines your whole argument is where dyou ever draw the line? Are you seriously going to tell someone to gtfo because they robbed 3 hats from a shop? What about if they rob 3 music albums by downloading them online? And does some 13 year old yute who thinks he's cool writing graff cos all the older kids he looks up to on the scummy estate he's grown up on deserve this same treatment for vandalism? Trials is vandalism?

The fact that you just went from talking about rape and murder to robbery and vandalism to me shows how the death sentence in our country is just the first set to things going further and further. A government fearing state etc. If laws like this are in place for the people in power to twist then they have the ultimate power, and one pretty hard for us to undermine if we need to.

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hence by that and a million other things that disprove the notion of god in that sense its probable that there is no god

Without thinking of the Christian notions of 'god' you're probably(?) associating with there, what proof is there that there is no connection between things/'god'?

At best, we are in a transitional stage between the world of poverty, with all the nasties that come with it and the world of love and forgiveness that most of us would like but universally, aint gonna happen...yet.

That's the key here, we as a culture, society and a world have been through an era of massive growth and development, not change. Whilst all the knowledge and technology we've accumulated over the last few decades will continue to grow and develop, what is happening (largely with the internet as the new medium) is the ability for anyone to draw upon it - hence why open source research (like Von Neumann's pioneering work into the architecture of computers in the 40's and 50's, that was available and used world-wide during it's development) has and will continue to be so popular and influential.

Encyclopedia Britannica did a study not so long ago and concluded that human knowledge, collectively, could be mapped as an exponential graph over the last 6000 years or so. Before that, the 'human' (as it was then) race underwent massive physical and bodily changes that allowed us to be more successful in the animal world. This exponential growth of knowledge is now reaching such a huge peak, that I think a new graph will start to emerge. Perhaps that of collective human consciousness?

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If God is omnipotent, being all-powerful, then he'd be able to create a sphere that is undestructible (quite easily I'd imagine) but by doing so would undermine the fact that he is omnipotent and therefore would not be able to destroy this indestructible sphere. So how can he all-powerful?

There are quite a few examples of these types of paradoxes, for example "Can God create a stone that is too heavy for him to lift?" what they demonstrate is the nonsensical use of the term "all powerful". This nonsensical understanding is the idea that to be all powerful means to do anything even if it is logically contradictory. If God exists, then he/she is subject to the logical laws of reality, for example, he/she can't exist and not exist simultaneously or he/she cannot be morally perfect and be able to do evil. Nonsense remains nonsense whether it applies to God or not. When thinking about God's omnipotence, it can go so far as changing the laws of reality, (for example bringing someone who is dead back to life) but cannot change the laws of logic (he cannot make a person completely dead and also completely alive). Whether you think this is a weakened term of omnipotence is an interesting question, it seems to me that if a God exists and wanted to create reality then laws of logic would have to exist simultaneously with reality. Does that mean God "created" the laws of logic? Bit too much to ponder on a Sunday afternoon.

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Without thinking of the Christian notions of 'god' you're probably(?) associating with there, what proof is there that there is no connection between things/'god'?

yeah from what I gather the guy who I replied to was talking about theistic gods in general, there isn't but... why would it be wiser to believe in no proof at all than empirical evidence pointing to god not existing?.

without referring to a theistic god I cant reply to your question properly as I don't know what kind of god you have in mind..

My philosophical overview of life in general is that we are part of something very big and very small in a physical sense.

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why would it be wiser to believe in no proof at all than empirical evidence pointing to god not existing?.

What about proof in the other direction, then what do you believe? Whatever the facts tend towards.

Edit: Nice, boumsong :P

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Food for thought.

I really like the little pleasures thread. It's a great illustration of something we all know about, those little pleasures, of such an odd indescribable joy we get from as mentioned, a sweet gear change, nailing a catch unexpectedly, or that unexpected line you pull out when riding every now and again. It's like a little moment of perfection, or a tiny slice of enlightenment.

What if you lived your life in such a way that every action you took, every step you made, you did your up most best to achieve those moments of perfection?

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What if you lived your life in such a way that every action you took, every step you made, you did your up most best to achieve those moments of perfection?

What if everything we already do is always perfection but we just don't realise it? It seems to me we frame perfection in terms of either cultural or random aspects of our experience which define when we allow ourselves to realise an inherent perfection to all existence - a perceptual filter if you will. Sport as an obvious cultural example and for myself, the opening and closing of a zippo lighter or running my hand across my facial hair as personal examples. Even then, we are still probably missing out on this "perfection" in any kind of deep sense. We are so often trapped in amongst our fragmented thinking and imagining that we don't really pay a great deal of attention to experience aside from that. I think it's quite credible that every moment could be realised as perfect if we were able to see beyond our cultural and personal perceptual filter, supported by an ability to drop our compulsive thinking and imagining.

edit: Sorry I disappeared on you earlier, Mike. I tried saving a streamed video and it crashed firefox. When I restarted it, it wouldn't allow the facebook chat function again :(

Edited by Ben Rowlands
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Could you really see and believe this hypothetical infinite beauty (something that is a divine product of virtue), in something you know isn't perfect?

Maybe you are right in the sense that in order to see and be part of this this perfection, you must see every tiny thing that is not perfect as an opportunity for divine change.

FB Chat is a great example - that's not a thing of perfection and beauty in any sense, but maybe there is beauty in the belief that it could be?

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If you did come out the other side head first...Would you fall to the floor or head for the sky..?

You would fly real high up, and then you'd fall, but not in a straight line and you'd splat on the floor.

It's also worth noting that in actual fact, if we dig a hole directly through the earth, it will end up in the ocean.

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What about proof in the other direction, then what do you believe? Whatever the facts tend towards.

Edit: Nice, boumsong :P

didnt we talk about both directions :huh: yeah i guess, sometimes I pick 'facts' i like

What if everything we already do is always perfection but we just don't realise it? It seems to me we frame perfection in terms of either cultural or random aspects of our experience which define when we allow ourselves to realise an inherent perfection to all existence - a perceptual filter if you will. Sport as an obvious cultural example and for myself, the opening and closing of a zippo lighter or running my hand across my facial hair as personal examples. Even then, we are still probably missing out on this "perfection" in any kind of deep sense. We are so often trapped in amongst our fragmented thinking and imagining that we don't really pay a great deal of attention to experience aside from that. I think it's quite credible that every moment could be realised as perfect if we were able to see beyond our cultural and personal perceptual filter, supported by an ability to drop our compulsive thinking and imagining.

edit: Sorry I disappeared on you earlier, Mike. I tried saving a streamed video and it crashed firefox. When I restarted it, it wouldn't allow the facebook chat function again :(

Does perfection really go deeper? might want a new word for it if it does What is perfection?. when something couldnt get any better for you personally? if so its all relative to the person so you couldn't not realise that everything is perfect.

If you did drop your compulsive thinking and imagining surley then it would not be affected by emotion or 'perceptive filter' so it could be viewed as perfect, or anything else for that matter. I dont think perception is a filter, makes it sound like a layer covering the real goodness beneath or something, i dont think theres that much to people for that, it would show... why would the process of evolution turn out so you have this big unused awesome ability to do that?

Edited by ilikeriding
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