(Part 3) Reddit mentions: The best politics & social sciences books

> How do you have a purpose in life if you don't believe in God?

Why do I need God to have a purpose? Why do I need a purpose?

I find that in life, you must find your own purpose. And that can differ from person to person. I find purpose in three things: Family, Fun, and Impact.

• Family: Spending time with family and friends brings me great joy, and I would do anything for them.
  
  
• Fun: It is a short life, so I do what I can to minimize my own suffering, and do the things I enjoy.
  
  
• Impact: Whether it's through work or charity, I seek to leave an impact on the world and make it a better place.
  
  > What's the point of you being here then?
  
  I could ask a Christian the same thing, and I don't think I would get a clear answer backed up by passages in the Bible. Nobody knows why we're here. You're literally asking for the meaning of life. To which I must reply "42."
  
  > How can you believe in other things or anything, but view God as an abstract or not real?
  
  I only believe in things that I can test. I know you don't want me to say Science, but that's literally the reason. Science involves the practice of being able to repeat something and figuring out what rules it follows. The only things in which I believe are things that I have found from testable evidence. (regardless of if my interpretation is correct)
  
  > She does not want you to answer "science" because she says science cannot explain everything.
  
  But science CAN explain everything. It just hasn't yet.
  
  > She wants an answer that doesn't involve science I guess.
  
  Without science, it is not an answer .
  
  > so her questions might sound a little sheltered to you.
  
  They do. But I was there too. Heck, I was baptized 7 years ago. It was my increased interest in affirming my beliefs that led me to lose them. I ventured out to different church services every week. I visited Catholic churches, Baptist, Methodist, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, etc. and began reading about these belief systems. Then I started challenging my beliefs by talking with athesists, and reading books like "The God Delusion," "God Is Not Great," "The Portable Atheist," "Breaking the Spell," and many more.
  
  It was my increased exposure to other religions and the book "A History of God" that led me to my current conclusions. "A History of God" discusses who wrote the books in the bible, why they were written, the political motivation behind them, who compiled the bible, etc. It was then that I realized there is no reason I should believe that these texts are divinely inspired. Especially if the only reason I believe the Bible is Divine and the Quran isn't is because that's how I was raised.
  
  Christians are atheists in terms of thousands of gods. I only go one god further.
  
  How do you compare?
  
  And this may sound rude (I really don't mean it that way) but I would encourage your roommate to take a few important classes. 1. A class on world religions, 2. A class on ethics, and 3. A class on the Scientific Process (Chemistry and Physics would also be a big plus)
  
  > she said a lot of your responses regarding a purpose sounds like, "Moralism".
  
  Forgive me, but this seems like an oversimplification of a grander issue. I would highly encourage you both to do some more study on ethics and moral theory. I suggest starting with something like "The Elements of Moral Philosophy" which goes over most of the primary methods of deducing morality. "Moralism" is kind of a weird umbrella term that doesn't really mean anything. I think you'll find that atheists incorporate a wide variety of these theories to deduce morality on a day-to-day basis. And while most Christians would subscribe to "Divine Command Theory" I think you'll find yourself supplementing using other theories as well. For instance, nothing in the Bible tells you who to choose if you are going to accidentally kill either 2 people or 10 people. You would have to resort to utilitarianism to deduce that you should pick the 2 (or look deeper into the surrounding circumstances and incorporate another theory).
  
  Anywho, I think it's great that your friend is branching out and seeking to understand. It's sometimes hard to respect Christians who stay in their own little bubble their whole life and believe what they were told to believe. So, good on ya mate! And I hope I didn't come across as rude or pretentious in any of this, I was trying my best to describe the things that I didn't understand when I was a believer.

Conservative Republican Ideology:

• Faith in supposedly God-ordained tribal customs, rituals and the ability of prejudicial common sense to emotionally recognize truth without the need of critical thought.
  
  • Fundamental to conservatives is NOT philosophy and science, but dogmatics - a system of principles laid down by tradition and religion as incontrovertibly true.
    
  • Natural intuitions and "common sense" prejudice - combined with strong will power and charisma - are what is essential to perform one's duties in life.
    
• Conviction in a transcendent order based on natural law, tradition, and religion: That society requires hierarchy - the naturally inherited orders and classes of authority, obedience and wealth.
  
  • The proliferation of liberal, democratic values necessarily undermines competition and the “cultural” distinction of the worlds superior elites.
    
• Commitment to keeping innovation constrained by these convictions in the familiar, with skepticism of the puzzlingly rational, mathematically calculating theorizers.
  
• Belief that conservatives are victims of a modernity in need of a literal “revolution” - a return to an ideal, natural way.
  
  • Lead by the media and universities, the modern condemnation of certain ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’ - viz. racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. - is an onslaught against the “traditional categories and natural way of describing things…” and a witch-hunt against the conservatives who defend as much (Scruton, 128-129).
    
• A disposition to fight for their communities faith.
  
  • A “gut-response” mentality of bivalent absolutes (e.g. good/evil, yes/no, true/false, us/them etc.) with a large set of non-negotiable traditional faiths and a skepticism of rationality leaves the conservative with little but aggression and hostility when challenged.
    
    Conservatism seeks a neo-feudal society with a "natural" hierarchy of authority determined by the inheritance of wealth amongst those "proven" to be strong (not theoretical ideals guaranteeing everyone equal rights), along with a small government with a fierce military power to maintain the order and protect the property of the wealthy, superior class. It is the epitome of a pessimistic mentality formed by peoples faithful, anti-rational commitment to traditional institutions and their hierarchy of authority and obedience.
    
    Conservatism emphasizes authority over individual liberty or equality, and duty over rights. It is pessimistic in its philosophy of human nature, believing it is unalterably ignorant, weak, corruptible and selfish. Hence, acting according to this assumption is not a vice but the virtue of being a “realist”; contrarily, vice is held to exist in those “idealist” who hold an optimistic philosophy and believe the world can be improved and that such human qualities can be checked. Correspondingly, a nearly universal quality of conservatives is an instinctive fear of change and a disposition for habitual (not creative or thoughtful) action. And from this conjunction follows a harsh skepticism of abstract, intellectual reasoning.
    
    Truth is believed to exist solely within the revelations they inherit from their traditions. Beyond that, the world is understood to be mysteriously complex and beyond any individuals further understanding. Thus, says conservatism, it is not possible that anyone could rationally produce any principles that would improve upon tradition and the operation of societies “natural” order. Any attempt to do so by the radical intellectual is rebuked as arrogant and regarded as offensively corrosive to our very existence.
    
    ​
    
    Once one understands this, the actions of Trump and the Republican party make much more sense. And so does the need to openly combat their political blitzkrieg on Western liberal democracy.
    
    ​
    
    Sources:
    
    
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/
  
• Scruton, Roger "Conservatism: An Introduction to the Great Tradition"
  
• Heywood, Andrew "Political Ideologies: An Introduction"

Conservative Republican Ideology:

• Faith in supposedly God-ordained tribal customs, rituals and the ability of prejudicial common sense to emotionally recognize truth without the need of critical thought.
  
  
  • Fundamental to conservatives is NOT philosophy and science, but dogmatics - a system of principles laid down by tradition and religion as incontrovertibly true.
    
    
  • Natural intuitions and "common sense" prejudice - combined with strong will power and charisma - are what is essential to perform one's duties in life.
    
    
• Conviction in a transcendent order based on natural law, tradition, and religion: That society requires hierarchy - the naturally inherited orders and classes of authority, obedience and wealth.
  
  
  • The proliferation of liberal, democratic values necessarily undermines competition and the “cultural” distinction of the worlds superior elites.
    
    
• Commitment to keeping innovation constrained by these convictions in the familiar, with skepticism of the puzzlingly rational, mathematically calculating theorizers.
  
  
• Belief that conservatives are victims of a modernity in need of a literal “revolution” - a return to an ideal, natural way.
  
  
  • Lead by the media and universities, the modern condemnation of certain ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’ - viz. racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. - is an onslaught against the “traditional categories and natural way of describing things…” and a witch-hunt against the conservatives who defend as much (Scruton, 128-129).
    
    
• A disposition to fight for their communities faith.
  
  
  • A “gut-response” mentality of bivalent absolutes (e.g. good/evil, yes/no, true/false, us/them etc.) with a large set of non-negotiable traditional faiths and a skepticism of rationality leaves the conservative with little but aggression and hostility when challenged.
    
    Conservatism seeks a neo-feudal society with a "natural" hierarchy of authority determined by the inheritance of wealth amongst those "proven" to be strong (not theoretical ideals guaranteeing everyone equal rights), along with a small government with a fierce military power to maintain the order and protect the property of the wealthy, superior class. It is the epitome of a pessimistic mentality formed by peoples faithful, anti-rational commitment to traditional institutions and their hierarchy of authority and obedience.
    
    Conservatism emphasizes authority over individual liberty or equality, and duty over rights. It is pessimistic in its philosophy of human nature, believing it is unalterably ignorant, weak, corruptible and selfish. Hence, acting according to this assumption is not a vice but the virtue of being a “realist”; contrarily, vice is held to exist in those “idealist” who hold an optimistic philosophy and believe the world can be improved and that such human qualities can be checked. Correspondingly, a nearly universal quality of conservatives is an instinctive fear of change and a disposition for habitual (not creative or thoughtful) action. And from this conjunction follows a harsh skepticism of abstract, intellectual reasoning.
    
    Truth is believed to exist solely within the revelations they inherit from their traditions. Beyond that, the world is understood to be mysteriously complex and beyond any individuals further understanding. Thus, says conservatism, it is not possible that anyone could rationally produce any principles that would improve upon tradition and the operation of societies “natural” order. Any attempt to do so by the radical intellectual is rebuked as arrogant and regarded as offensively corrosive to our very existence.
    
    ​
    
    Once one understands this, the actions of Trump and the Republican party make much more sense. And so does the need to openly combat their political blitzkrieg on Western liberal democracy.
    
    ​
    
    Sources:
    
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/
    
    Scruton, Roger "Conservatism: An Introduction to the Great Tradition"
    
    Heywood, Andrew "Political Ideologies: An Introduction"
    
    Conservatism by nature is an obsolete ideology.

Hi, rogerd,
Thanks for understanding Castle so well. I might have to break this into separate replies:

1. I don't think the trend has died down, if anything it's worse. I can certainly write a book a year, but at that time I had a lot of other things to deal with -- repairing my house, neighbours bullying, noise pollution, chronic pain, lack of money -- so I suffered a great deal of stress. I moved house and I'm in a better position now. Small presses are probably the answer for me. I'm 107K words into the next novel, and I'll finish it next year.
   
   
2. Exactly! And it mirrors some things I've seen in the real world -- I'm fascinated by different character types and what people will do for fame. And what fame actually entails. I've studied the careers of, say, Lance Armstrong, Jim Slater, and I'm looking at Donald Trump. These people have done extraordinarily nasty things in order to gain success (fame & fortune) and -- what's amazing is -- society lets them. Not only lets them, but upholds them. There is a myth that if they're successful, they must have done something right. Things which people will excuse, because they're famous, or because they have built a personal myth in which people want to believe. So [Ata](/s "gets away with killing Shearwater Mist"), because the unspoken rules of our society are reflected in theirs.
   
   Another aspect is what sort of people gain success? We have a belief that, if you are naturally blessed with talent, or if you work hard you'll be successful. That's a myth too -- the book Outliers shows the processes that are really going on. Also a Vice article. Another book.
   
   Jant is more laid-back than the others (horizontal, in fact), because he can fly, he can take a bunch of drugs and still maintain immortality. The immortals are on a spectrum -- at one end are the biological freaks like Jant (and Simoon), and at the other end are people who practise all the time, like Hurricane. Lightning is somewhere in the middle.
   
   And I'm showing the other ways people rise to success, or 'get in to the Circle'. I was very naive at the beginning. I thought success in our world was due to personal effort. But you can see how Mist and Ata were both born to seafaring lives -- Shearwater Mist was a coastal trader (so was his father). Ata was from Grass Isle. In Fair Rebel and the next book it's deeper so for example [Gayle](/s "the Lawyer has been "hothoused" into it by her parents -- also lawyers -- who started her in law at an early age"). I'm interested in the effect that has on her, and also to compare her with [Simoon](/s "the Treasurer, who finds his mathematics effortless and enjoyable").

I was 34. Yeah, pretty late by /r/atheism standards. ex-hindu.

Had my doubts about certain parts of Hinduism and I was vocal about it too, confronting friends about it. But, I carried out lot of rituals none the less and did believe for the most part. I was god believing Hindu.

When I was 34, I distinctly remember the day I came to the final conclusion that there was no God, not just Hindu but the claims of any of the big religions, Christianity, Islam etc. of existence of God were false. I celebrated that day by eating a Wendy's burger. As a Hindu, I would not have eaten beef. Told wife on the same day. She remains Hindu but respects my decision.

Shaking off some of the remaining superstitions took some time e.g. the rings, chains that I took to be good luck charms. But in about 4-5 months I was free off it all. I use to park in a certain direction. Not any more. Lot more of parking space has opened up for me now. :-) Lot more of life has opened up as well. I couldn't be happier.

I rationalize my actions and try to hold myself to a higher moral standard. Any graduate level ethics course can teach you much more about morality than any of the religions. Thinking that there has been no progress on this front or that religion has monopoly on morality is just not correct any more. This is a pretty good book on the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Being-Good-Short-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0192853775/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_4

> I never said anything about chromosome being the basis, in any of my comments. And reproductive organs have bearing in a lot more parts of life than what people want to identify as.

That's a mighty tall claim. Feel like backing that up? Because for my money, your gonads are relevant A) if you're trying to reproduce, and don't have banked reproductive material, and... ... ...well, with the advent of exogenous sex hormones, nope, that's pretty much it.

> Yes, but that's not the only definition in the dictionary. The fact that there's another definition for each of those words provides an escape from circularity. The same cannot be said for the "a man is anyone who identifies as a man" definition.

We've been through this. I'm more than willing to go through it with you again, if you'd like. I'd be happy to demonstrate for you all of the ways in which the dictionaries' definitions are problematic - you pick a dictionary, and we can have at it. But at the end of the day, it won't matter, because "The dictionary says so!" is still nothing more than an appeal to tradition, and meaningless.

> Try backing up when you disagree instead of just saying that you disagree.

Nope. I'm not getting mired in seven layers of BS going back and forth about aspersions you've cast that aren't really relevant to the conversation, but I'm not going to let them stand unanswered, either.

> Ok, let's start with this one. First of all, a "man" is a person and not a role. I'm going to go ahead and guess you meant a man is a (person who conforms to a ) gender roll.

Why thank you for being so generous, O Pedantic One. Notwithstanding that I've never seen a gender roll (is that like a sesame roll?), no, I was talking about the concept that the word "man" points to.

> For one, you don't actually describe what this role is. You're just kicking the can down the street to this undescribed male gender role. Is the role about wearing pants? Is it about having a job and being the primary income-earner for one's family? It's hard to securely describe a role without resulting to stereotypes.

I did describe what it is. All of the things you list are furniture, ornamentation that different cultures hang on the role. "Man", or "men", refers to a role that exists in every human culture, associated with but not exclusive to people with penises. That is literally what the word means. When you discuss men in Western culture, men in traditional Chinese culture, men in !Kung culture, and men in Lakota culture, that is what you are referring to. "Man", as a concept, is a variable. I'm surprised that you don't seem to understand this, because it's honestly pretty simple.

> Although intersex people exist, saying there s a continuum implies that people generally fall all over the spectrum, which isn't true. The vast majority of people fall neatly into "only male" or "only female" with respect to reproductive organs.

What you just said is "Your definition is wrong in terms of my definition". Try again.

> That really depends on how one defines sex.

You don't say.

It's almost as though you defied me to present definitions to you, and then I did that.

> My definition (which is the one you're supposed to be arguing against)

In point of fact, it's not. I was arguing in favor of the definition I was presenting, since you cried so much about the unreasonable standard I held yours to (which seems to be code for "I ran out of arguments and couldn't back it up"). Would you like to discuss your shitty definition, instead?

> Secondary sex characteristics are not nearly as important as the author of that seems to think. Actually, none of these things (primary sex characteristics, secondary sex characteristics, or gender identity) are especially important for most things (or at least they shouldn't be). But there are a few areas in which sex is still relevant (locker rooms, possible romantic partners, etc.). I can't think of any situation where what somebody identifies as would really be important.

Yes, you can. Because you don't actually gender people on the basis of their reproductive organs. You don't interact with people on the basis of their reproductive organs. The definition you claim to use, you do not actually use, in real life.

> It's important to make a distinction, however, between those traits that merely correlate with men or women, and those traits that define who is a man and who is a woman.

Sure. Easily done. All of the traits listed are correlated with men and women. Gender identity defines who is a man and who is a woman.

> why shouldn't we apply the same standard to humans that we do to other animals?

Because humans base our societies on gender roles, and not on reproductive organs. If you would like evidence of this, look at the entirety of human history. If you would like evidence of this that is not snarky and sarcastic, go read Leslie Feinberg's book Transgender Warriors, which discusses the history of transgender people and of gender in general throughout human history and across a diverse array of cultures.

> but your definition really begs the question of what would fall under the "gender role" associated with men or women

It honestly doesn't.

> Just in plain, Midwestern, Euro-American culture, what's an example of one thing that would fall under the "male" social role and one thing that would fall under the "female" social role?

That's irrelevant to the discussion. Like, I mean it: completely irrelevant. What specifics a culture hangs on the gender role has nothing to do with the existence of the role, nor its stability throughout humankind. The point is that "men" and "women", as concepts relating to classes of people, are fundamental to human nature, and universal to humans broadly.

> For gender and sex to "match," they would have to be the same category of thing, which they are not. The fact that we use the same words to describe them does not mean that they "match."

I think you're smart enough to make the leap on this one by yourself. I'll give you a hint, though: what you want to think about are the correlations expressed above.

Thanks so much!

As for what to read, it really depends on what you're interested in but I always recommend the classics when it comes to anything to do with the left first.

However, if you'd like something more modern and lighter here are some of my recent favorites:

• Why Marx Was Right - Terry Eagleton is a fantastic author and this book has sold more than one friend of mine on the concept of Marxism. A great resource to learn more about the socialist left and hear the other side of the story if you've been sold the mainstream narrative on Marx.
  
  
• A Cure for Capitalism - An elegant roadmap for ethically dismantling capitalism by the most prominant Marxist economist alive today, Richard D. Wolff. Very utility-based and pretty ideologically pure to Marx while still taking into account modern economic circumstances.
  
  
• No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy - this one is a great take-down of how modern NGO organizations (especially the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) are the premium outlet for soft imperialism for the US.
  
  
• Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair - added this because it was a very impactful, recent read for me. A lot of left-of-republican people support some kind of prison reform but we usually view it through the lens of helping "non-violent offenders". This book digs into that distinction and how we, as a society, can't seriously try to broach meaningful prison reform before we confront the notion of helping those who have done violent things in their past.
  
  
• [Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women] (https://www.amazon.com/Backlash-Undeclared-Against-American-Women/dp/0307345424/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1550926471&sr=1-4&keywords=backlash) - probably my favorite book on modern feminism and why it is, in fact, not obsolete and how saying/believing as much is key to the ideology behind the attacks from the patriarchal ruling class. Can't recommend it enough if you're on the fence about feminism.
  
  
• How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic - Written in the 70's by a couple of Marxists during the communist purge in Chile, this book does a fantastic job of unwrapping how ideology baked into pop culture can very effectively influence the masses. Though I can only recommend this one if you're already hard sold on Socialism because you might not even agree with some of the core premises if you're on the fence and will likely get little out of it.
  
  
• Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? - Mark Fisher's seminal work deconstructing how capitalism infects everything in modern life. He killed himself a few years after publishing it. My most recommended book, probably.

I read all of Harris' books - up to a point. I haven't read Waking Up and probably won't.

TEOF was his big smash hit, and has my recommendation.

As a Utilitarian, I initially enjoyed The Moral Landscape, but I (and many more knowledgeable people) don't believe it lives up to its (implied?) claim of showing how morality can be considered like a scientific discipline. TML essentially proposes a kind of Utilitarianism but doesn't make a compelling case for why this (and not, say, deontology or virtue ethics) should be how morality is measured. Let me put it this way: I think Harris is much better at arguing against religion than he is at explaining moral philosophy.

A book that was recommended to me and that I've found much more helpful in understanding ethics is Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics. I'd recommend it over Harris, or as a supplement.

Waking Up? Personally, I resent Harris for distracting and confusing me with his occasional jaunts into the fuzzy, ill-defined, mysterious world of woo that he calls "spirituality." While on one hand fighting against the "magical thinking" that leads people to believe the ridiculous tenets of religion, here he is opening the back door for (what I think is) just another brand of magical thinking. But please note that this is just my personal opinion, and I haven't even read his book!

The last book of his I've read is Free Will, and I think it does an admirable job of explaining the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of this concept.

Finally, just to be an ass, I'd like to recommend the book I consider the most valuable for any (recent?) atheist looking to get his bearings in the world. Richard Carrier's book Sense and Goodness Without God explains, at a college-educated layperson level, why naturalism is perhaps the most sensible way to look at the world, why it offers a compelling alternative to the magical thinking of religions, and how morality and a good life are built up on having a reality-based world view.

At least for Anarchists or other left-libertarians it should also be important to actually read up on some basic or even fundamental ethical texts given most political views and arguments are fundamentally rooted in morality (unless you're a orthodox Marxist or Monarchist). I'm sadly not familiar enough with applied ethics to link collections of arguments for specific ethical problems, but it's very important to know what broad system you're using to evaluate what's right or wrong to not contradict yourself.

At least a few very old texts will also be available for free somewhere on the internet like The Anarchist Library.

Some good intro books:

• The Fundamentals of Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau
  
• The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James and Stuart Rachels
  
• Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Simon Blackburn
  
  Some foundational texts and contemporary authors of every main view within normative ethics:
  
  
• Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotles for Classic Virtue-Ethics. Martha Nussbaum would be a contemporary left-wing Virtue-Ethicist who has used Marx account of alienation to argue for Global Justice.
  
• Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel (or Emmanuel) Kant for Classic Deontology. Kantianism is a popular system to argue for anti-statism I believe even though Kant himself was a classical liberal. Christine Korsgaard would be an example of a contemporary Kantian.
  
• The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick for Classic Utilitarianism. People usually recommend Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, but most contemporary Ethicists believe his arguments for Utilitarianism suck. 2 other important writers have been R. M. Hare and G. E. Moore with very unique deviations from classic Utilitarianism. A contemporary writer would be Peter Singer. Utilitarianism is sometimes seemingly leading people away from Socialism, but this isn't necessarily the case.
  
• Between Facts and Norms and other works by the contemporary Critical Theorist Jürgen Habermas may be particularly interesting to Neo-Marxists.
  
• A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. I know Rawls is a famous liberal, but his work can still be interpreted to support further left Ideologies. In his later works like Justice as Fairness: A Restatement you can see him tending closer to Democratic Socialism.
  
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche for... Nietzsche's very odd type of Egoism. His ethical work was especially influential to Anarchists such as Max Stirner, Emma Goldman or Murray Bookchin and also Accelerationists like Jean Baudrillard.
  
• In case you think moralism and ethics is just bourgeois propaganda maybe read something on subjectivism like Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong by J. L. Mackie
  
• Or if you want to hear a strong defense of objective morality read Moral Realism: A Defense by Russ Shafer-Landau orc

Sorry, I forgot about this post. A question isn't offensive and your post was not offensive in the slightest.

Perhaps that was confusing. I began to read about Philosophy of Mind during my undergraduate years, and have always had a singe of neoplatanism in my blood since I read about Plato's theory of forms. Today, I'm a hylemorphic dualist. I could go in depth, but I actually have to go to sleep as I've got an appt tomorrow morning (EST). On top of that, I'm actually getting off Reddit today and am staying off indefinitely except for /r/medicalschool (med school life, ha). Regardless, I'm glad I caught this when I did (coincidence or divine providence?^^^joking )

As to why I'm Catholic, put simply: I find nothing wrong in Catholicism, and "everything checks out," so to speak (I find the common criticisms vapid). Becoming Catholic was a tedious process that involved many steps, but there are quite a few that have ended up where I am through a similar path.

Anyway, I could go more in-depth here, but I'd recommend just reading what I read. The basis of my adopting a deist perspective is very similar to the reasons why Antony Flew, one of the 20th century's most famous atheist philosophers, adopted a deist persepective--if you want to check that out.

Regarding phil of mind/dualism, I suggest:
The SEP article on dualism:
Note in the intro paragraph:
>Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.

Mind/Brain Identity SEP article


If interested, read likewise for "consciousness" and for the other point of view, "physicalism." I currently reject a completely physicalist perspective.

I recommend reading contemporary philosopher Ed Feser's blog (vibrant combox if that's your thing). Here is a post on the above subject.

Lastly, these two books are excellent, I'd start with the first:

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Mind-A-Beginners-Guide/dp/1851684786

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Mind-Jaegwon-Kim/dp/0813344581

And lastly, the commonly misunderstood Cosmological Argument.

Let me know if you find anything interesting to challenge my beliefs (perhaps I'll respond some months from now, ha), always a truth seeker. Best of luck in your search for Truth.

> I think capitalism is deeply flawed but it's the best option we have available.

Unfortunately, so much of this sentiment stems from our inability to choose something else. Capitalism's supporters love to sing the praises of "consumer choice," but we're never given the choice to accept or decline capitalism itself. It's a contradiction; if it's true that more choices improve the product or the quality of our lives, shouldn't we also be given the choice to opt out of capitalism?

It's said that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And I believe that. You can't just switch away from capitalism the same way you'd switch from iPhone to Android.

I recommend the book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher. It's a great in-depth examination of how all-encompassing the idea of capitalism has become and what we might be able to do about it. It gave me a lot to think about. (And if you can't buy it, get it from your local library!)

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-Realism-There-Alternative-Books/dp/1846943175/

>I am the first to say that libertarian authors have frequently relied upon controversial philosophical assumptions in deriving their political conclusions. Ayn Rand, for example, thought that capitalism could only be successfully defended by appeal to ethical egoism, the theory according to which the right action for anyone in any circumstance is always the most selfish action. Robert Nozick is widely read as basing his libertarianism on an absolutist conception of individual rights, according to which an individual's property rights and rights to be free from coercion can never be outweighed by any social consequences. Jan Narveson relies on a metaethical theory according to which the correct moral principles are determined by a hypothetical social contract. Because of the controversial nature of these ethical or metaethical theories, most readers find the libertarian arguments based on them easy to reject.

>It is important to observe, then, that I have appealed to nothing so controversial in my own reasoning. In fact, I reject all three of the foundations for libertarianism mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I reject egoism, since I believe that individuals have substantial obligations to take into account the interests of others. I reject ethical absolutism, since I believe an individual's rights may be overridden by sufficiently important needs of others. And I reject all forms of social contract theory, since I believe the social contract is a myth with no moral relevance for us...

~ Huemer from Problem of Political Authority. (The book argues in favor of anarcho-capitalism, but will also give you a strong foundation for minarchism)

His moral philosophy is intuitionism. I also highly suggest his other book Ethical Intuitionism - it's a great intro to metaethics and spurred my interest in philosophy to begin with.

If you can't afford either, he has some chapters over at his faculty page.

It asserts a moral realist position (objective moral facts) on the basis of our intuitions - essentially common sense morality (see: GE Moore, and WD Ross). It is a respectable academic philosophy (as opposed to Objectivism) and has recently seen a resurgence.

Here is a good summary of what Huemer's approach lends itself to

At the outset, please note that this topic is exceedingly slippery. I am convinced that the most efficient way to understand these issues is through the study of philosophy of ethics.

> Where do atheists get their [sense of] morality?

Nature, nurture, and the phenomenological self-model.

> What defines the "good" and "bad" that has
permeated much of human society?

Easy: notice that personal definitions of morality between individuals immersed in the same culture tend to strongly overlap (e.g., most moderns consider rape to be "bad").

From this considerable volume of data, it is fairly simple to construct principles that adequately generalize these working definitions, such as "promote happiness", and "mitigate pain".

> [If you're not caught, why not murder? Why donate to charity? Does might make right?]

These questions appear to have both practical and intuitive solutions.

What are you trying to understand?

> How do atheists tend to reconcile moral relativism?

What do you mean?

> Barring the above deconstructions, how do atheists account for morality?

Moral theories largely attempt to bridge the gap between descriptive facts and normative commands:

• Kant argued that norms are not discovered via our senses, but are simply axiomatic principles.
  
• Rawls argued that norms are the product of a hypothetical agreement in which all ideally rational humans would affirm certain values (Social Contract) if they didn't know their fate in advance (Veil Of Ignorance).
  
• Mill argued that norms are best expressed through the need to increase pleasure and decrease pain.
  
• Parfit argued that these three approaches don't really contradict one another.
  
• Nietzsche argued that norms and artistic tastes are the same.
  
• Mackie argued that norms are human inventions that include social welfare considerations.
  
  

"One cannot simply choose whatever one's starting positions are arbitrarily. After all, I cannot simply say "I believe I'm the most important thing in the world, so I can justifiably steal from you or harm you for whatever purpose."

>Well why not?

If your moral theory compels you to accept an ethical proposition such as "I value myself and not others in such a way that I can (for example) permissibly torture you to death for the pleasure I derive from it" then that counts against the plausibility of your ethical theory. It's a huge bullet to bite. I'm not saying you're being inconsistent by adopting such a starting position and following through with it. But consistency isn't the only metric by which we can evaluate moral theories.



>I've not ever seen a good argument that objective, universal values exist. Or that values exist outside of our own choices at all.

I can recommend some well regarded stuff. Enoch's [Taking Morality Seriously](https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Morality-Seriously-Defense-Realism/dp/0199683174) Shafer-Landau's [Moral Realism: a Defense] (https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Realism-Defence-Russ-Shafer-Landau/dp/0199280207/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CNVDTNHGJW3FHXNR8821), Oddie's [Value, Reality and Desire] (https://www.amazon.com/Value-Reality-Desire-Graham-Oddie/dp/0199562385/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496676933&sr=1-1&keywords=Value+reality+and+desire), Huemer's [Ethical Intuitionism] (https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0230573746&pd_rd_r=0X50H65ZP0KD630TPQGQ&pd_rd_w=imPRX&pd_rd_wg=uCVqd&psc=1&refRID=0X50H65ZP0KD630TPQGQ), Parfit's [On What Matters] (https://www.amazon.com/What-Matters-Three-Derek-Parfit/dp/0198778600/ref=pd_sim_14_19?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0198778600&pd_rd_r=S7VW3J457CTBW6RT503R&pd_rd_w=Gz5f7&pd_rd_wg=Vrfn0&psc=1&refRID=S7VW3J457CTBW6RT503R)
Wedgwood's [The Nature of Normativity] (https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Normativity-Ralph-Wedgwood/dp/0199568197), Cuneo's [The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism] (https://www.amazon.com/Normative-Web-Argument-Moral-Realism/dp/019958138X/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496678105&sr=1-6&keywords=terence+cuneo).


And here's some free papers you can read (too lazy to name them all, sorry):

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Boyd5/publication/240034001_How_to_Be_a_Moral_Realist/links/556f6f4308aec226830aab09/How-to-Be-a-Moral-Realist.pdf

http://www.academia.edu/4116101/Why_Im_an_Objectivist_about_Ethics_And_Why_You_Are_Too_

https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=433000088031098030104101075089022124028072042008084011092124087113084016108098084005098003032035018116033080110110127020085084106080012039033080068103113067015099089032030091083096096084064089109093065079071016028099008078093021125125068072101086002&EXT=pdf

https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=207103102008006126082026003080087077015002001000090086121025066112086090029103080091030096049125038001052020081100031102121000046002046043009065006112075102115099049080048111067091106094117103109111097113120126103124079110093018090122114122112110007&EXT=pdf

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~umer/teaching/intro181/readings/shafer-Landau2005EthicsAsPhilosophyADefenseOfEthicalNonnaturalism.pdf

http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1007/s11245-016-9443-7?author_access_token=R2EN7zieClp6VWWEo8DyZPe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6_LyD8T3yNLLNQUBcKQRpfV5lbirZE36eSIc6PLipzIUjIvQrTe9aO4meFw0oJ_Dp784B0R9TnA9qTFaNLe9oWPQUaroxf3o-BsITKWjp_6Q%3D%3D

http://www.owl232.net/5.htm

















>Maybe. But if so then what are these properties?

Moral realists are traditionally divided into two camps on this. Moral Naturalists take moral properties to be natural properties, and Moral Non-Naturalists take moral properties to be sui generis, irreducible, that they cannot be wholly understood in natural terms, that moral properties supervene on the natural. (This is a woefully rough outline: here's a good place to read about the difference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/. And here's an attempt to describe what non-natural moral properties are: http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/INP.pdf


>And what is "good" and "bad". I've not seen a definition that doesn't just feel arbitrary.

It has been argued that it is precisely that these things cannot be defined that makes them what they are. See the non-naturalism SEP entry above in the section on Moore's Open Question Argument and this for more responses: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/#OpeQueArg

>And even if it's possible to believe in objective values one way or the other - the fact is that no-one's come up with an ethical system that's so convincing everyone agrees.

True, but disagreement about x doesn't necessarily mean right answers are impossible to derive.

>And the objective fact is that at present different people have different values (and good luck trying to get them to change!)

True again, but we can test the reasons why they hold these values.


"But even slaughtering a final generation is better than breeding and slaughtering generations in perpetuity."

>I think that if we're making that decision on animals behalf, without asking them - then that's still domination.

Slaughtering them? Sure is. I'm not saying that's the best solution. Just better than what we're doing now. That's how bad it is now.


>That's the thing I can't see any relation with animals at present that isn't some kind of domination.

That's why some vegans basically want to leave them be. Other vegans will argue having pets is ok, so long as the pet is amenable to being domesticated, like dogs seem to be, and provided we can provide them with a good life. In fact, helping animals like these could be argued as being a good thing.

Other vegans will maintain that some animal use is justified, like medical experimentation. (Not all, but some.) Others will argue that even killing animals for food is justifiable, provided a person does this to survive and be healthy -- or if affordable, healthful alternatives are not readily available to them.

>We all die someday. If had to choose between getting killed at 30 or not existing at all, I'd rather die at 30.

Again, this rather misses the point. The question is, is someone justified to kill you at 30 for whatever purpose, provided they were instrumental in bringing you into existence? It doesn't seem so.

>Equally there's plenty of people who know that they're about to give birth to a child with a life threatening disability, who still choose to make that life anyway. If we don't give farm animals that same choice then we ARE treating animals differently to humans.

In this case, the parents aren't really giving that child a choice. They are making the choice to bring a child into existence. Furthermore, it doesn't seem we have an ethical obligation to bring children into existence. Perhaps it's a permissible option, but it doesn't seem to be a duty. After all, I could have a child and probably provide her a good life. But if I get a vasectomy, that doesn't make me akin to a murderer. Non-existing beings cannot make choices, and they cannot be harmed.




>I don't personally think it's a bad thing to do that. But I do think that it's not possible to come up with a plan for agriculture that doesn't involve humans making decisions on animals behalf - either slaughtering them or placing further restrictions on their freedom than they have already.

Which supports the idea that we shouldn't bring them into existence in the first place.


Edit: fixed a link. And fixed "non-natural terms" to read "natural terms".

A Little History of Science, by William Bynum. (Link) It's a little newer than Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, but on par with it in most respects. Covers the histories of medicine, astronomy, chemistry, the discovery of plate tectonics... pretty much all areas of science. Highly entertaining (particularly the section on anatomy and how early artists were painters by day and grave-robbers by night).

I also liked The Blogger Abides, by Chris Higgins (Link), which is an extremely practical guide to managing a freelance career. It's written for writers but is applicable to most freelance professions (photographers, consultants, etc.), and includes sections that most "be a writer" books wouldn't, like how to manage self-employment taxes and give pesky publicity people the brush without looking like an asshole.

For more traditional nonfic, I liked Deep State (link) about the government's secrecy industry; Agent Garbo (link), about a farmer who just decides to be a spy and ends up helping the Allies bring down the Nazis (it's insane); and literally anything written by Mary Roach -- even her tweets are great.

http://vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mining-NSA-scandal

>Now, anyone who discusses this process without also mentioning minimization procedures is also either very uninformed or intentionally hyping the story. Minimization is a term of art in the world of NSA intercepts which essentially means “stay out of American citizen’s business.” If information about specific Americans (or even foreigners inside the United States) is captured, those details must be removed from all records and cannot be shared with any other entity in the government unless it is necessary to understand and interpret related foreign intelligence or to protect lives from criminal threats. But passing intelligence information to criminal investigators requires several layers of review and is not easily approved; minimization procedures are meant to insure that information collected by the NSA isn’t used in routine criminal investigations.

https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/347888405981569025

>Sigh. These last 2 stories have been little more than boilerplate recitation of Sec 702. I doubt ill persuade u, but so be it... are anonymized, meaning the info has been run through an algorithm that spits out an anonymous designator, such as XDSVC...

Marc Anbinder

Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1118146689/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_us?ie=UTF8

https://twitter.com/marcambinder/status/348144189378281472

>as I said, I think the programs are good. Transparency by/ trust in USG lacking



Joshua Foust

http://prospect.org/article/three-guiding-principles-nsa-reform
>Yet, to even begin the discussion of reform, we have to grapple with why things got to where they are. One document published in the Guardian shows a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court order for Verizon, the telecommunications giant, to hand over phone metadata (telephone numbers, call length, and location). The Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that the Fourth Amendment does not protect such metadata. Similarly, the PRISM data-mining program, which automates access to Internet company databases, was, misreporting aside, publicly discussed as a software platform used by the military and intelligence community for many years

http://joshuafoust.com/can-the-nsa-search-for-americans-who-knows

>The Committee report says the IC and DOJ requested additional queries authorities, which the Committee considered then rejected while studies of existing capabilities were finished. While Marcy is correct that this passage shows the Intelligence Community requested the ability to search on this data, the text of the report also shows that the Committee rejected that request and made the Intelligence Community and Department of Justice reaffirm that any queries adhere to the letter of the law and not circumvent “the general requirement to obtain a court order.

Bob Cesca

http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2013/06/greenwalds-latest-snowden-leak.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=greenwalds-latest-snowden-leak

>But here’s the most revealing part of Greenwald’s article: the program was stopped by the Obama administration in 2011. As Charles Johnson tweeted yesterday, the article’s headline could actually be “Obama discontinued NSA email program started under Bush.”

>Furthermore, Greenwald wrote: “It did not include the content of emails.” The NSA only collected metadata, authorized by bulk FISA court warrants. The program, like everything else, sought overseas communications, and those communications might have inadvertently included some data from US persons connected with the overseas emails. And, again, reminder: any data from US persons that’s inadvertently collected is anonymized, encrypted and destroyed. It’s only decrypted with an individual warrant.



And from the comments sections of the last:

>Just before that article went up, Glenn and Ackermann had another one go up, "How the NSA is still harvesting your online data". Now when you read that you instantly think any email we send here in the U.S. is going to the NSA. Well there's nothing but speculation in that article about that, but the kicker they are focusing on is that the NSA bragged about processing their "trillionth" piece of metadata in 2012. In 2009 it was estimated the 294 billion emails were sent globally every single day, so that trillion is hardly anything, when you consider that 294 billion per day translates to about 90 trillion PER YEAR.


Another Edit:

Just found a great AMA!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1h6r3v/iama_former_nsa_agent_turned_educatorauthor_amaa/

Also FYI I have posted this comment multiple times because I think there is a lot of misinformation out there.

Disclosure I also work on the helpdesk for a gov agency that is no way affiliated with anything military etc....

> Where can i learn about ethics?

Reading about different ethical philosophies online. Reading books on ethics. Even getting involved in discussions here, /r/askphilosophy, /r/philosophy, /r/smartgiving, etc.

Practical Ethics is the book that has had the biggest impact on the way I reason about ethics. Before that, whereas I saw that reason could help us identify contradictions in our ethical views, I didn't see how any particular ethical philosophy had a solid ground to build its conclusions from beyond coming "from the heart" as you said. This book was the one that gave me hope that we can do better than mostly guessing when picking our starting point.

However, I'm still an ethics noob and there's a lot more for me to read before I can have a very substantiated opinion on what is best.

> How do you KNOW what is right or wrong?

I doubt we can know with 100% certainty. We can't empirically test our meta-ethical beliefs, but we can still apply reason to it, like we do with many other aspects of our life to try to work out the truth.

> Does it really just come "from your heart"?

I assume by this you mean from our intuitions or subconscious? I think that's where most ethical decisions are made from, but it probably shouldn't be entirely from there. The more we learn in general, the more we realize that our intuitions provide rules-of-thumb at best, but can often be wrong. For instance, it seems unintuitive to me that planes can fly, or massive ships can float. So if I really want to know the truth about the world, I don't think I should rely only on my intuitions. Plus, thought experiments like the trolley dilemma show that our ethical intuitions can be contradictory.

> Do you carry the same beliefs that your parents have implanted?

No, but I would expect this to be a major factor, just as it is for people's beliefs about anything.

> Have you learned from an institution of higher education?

No.

Also, utilitarianism, ethics of care, and prima facie duties work fine in a materialistic system, and there are even modern versions of virtue ethics and Kantianism that eschew their teleological and numinal parts and can be materialistic. If materialists have a hard time explaining morality that's not an issue particular to materialism, but just a sign that ethics is difficult in it's own right.

Divine command theory and natural law theory also have their difficulties, in addition to the difficulties brought about by the theistic basis. For example, divine command theory has enough of an issue describing how we can know god's commands are moral, and that's not even getting into the general theistic issue of knowing that's we've even received such commands in the first place.

Your teacher sounds like he's making good, difficult to challenge points because he's educated in the subject matter in a way that you, the student, are not. I assure you that there are atheistic philosophers on the other sides of these issues with similarly logical rebuttals. It's just that you're not getting told what these rebuttals are, or who those philosophers are.

Once you know what arguments are being presented I recommend looking them up on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which has pretty solid overviews of things beyond the bias of one particular instructor in one particular school.

Atheist philosopher of religion J. L. Makie has a good book on ethics, and I bring him up because the theistic philosophers I know still consider his arguments an issue that needs to be dealt with. Those specifically are the Argument from Relativity, and the Argument from Queerness.

In any case, just expect that really getting into this stuff is going to involve a lot of studying on one's own, and good luck.

Daniel Golden won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his reporting on admissions preferences at elite American universities given to the children of wealthy donors and influential alumni.

He turned his reportage into an excellent book, released in 2007, titled "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates".

The context of his book is, of course, only partly related to the topic of this post, but it does add an important piece to the picture of how the wealthy and powerful receive advantages at every stage in the game. And how they are able to transmit said advantages to their children, to help them get a leg up in their rise to the top.

I come in from David Friedman's angle: Here's his Amazon review of Huemer's book Ethical Intuitionism:

> Like another reviewer, I started out agreeing with Huemer's basic claim, having concluded some forty-five years ago that the intuitionist position provided the most satisfactory explanation of normative beliefs. I read the book in part in the hope that he could provide better arguments than I had come up with, in particular a better rebuttal of what I view as the most serious challenge to our position. Unfortunately, he doesn't.

> He does do a very good good job of demonstrating that ethical intuitionism is a defensible position and offering arguments to show that most of the alternatives, including ones that are much more widely accepted, are not. But he does not provide an adequate response to the one challenge I am concerned with, the view that combines ethical nihilism with evolutionary psychology.

> The claim of that view is that there are no normative facts, that nothing is good or bad and there is no moral reason to do or not do anything. It explains our moral beliefs, the intuitions that Huemer views (and I view) as imperfect perceptions of normative facts, as explainable by evolution--they were beliefs that increased the reproductive success of those who held them in the environment in which we evolved, and so got hard wired into their descendants.

> That approach challenges intuitionism in two ways. First, it explains the evidence, my ethical intuitions, on the basis of facts of reality I already believe to be true. Once we have one explanation there is no need for another. Second, it raises the question of how, if there are moral facts, we could have acquired the ability to know them, since at least some of them would presumably have led us to modify our behavior in ways that reduced our reproductive success--make us less willing, for instance, to slaughter the men of a neighboring tribe and take their women.

> Despite these problems, I have not yet abandoned my current moral position, in part because the alternative position fails to answer the questions I want answered, indeed implies that they are unanswerable, that there are no actual oughts. In part also, I fail to adopt the nihilist position because I am unable to believe it. That inability is psychological, not logical. I cannot actually believe that there is nothing wrong with torturing small children for the fun of it or murdering large numbers of innocent people, both conclusions that follow from the view that nothing at all is wrong or right.

I differ from Friedman in that I'm not unable to believe that there is nothing wrong with torturing small children for fun--I'm fine with taking the moral nihilist position.

When I use moral language I am talking about my values/preferences.

Still, I think Huemer's moral intuitionism comes very close to what I value and I still think it's useful to have such a system of ethics.

I had a comment in here giving a reason for he post, though that's not an explanation.

> Note: may not be the best place to post, but I needed to post somewhere in order to link it in Dr. Feser's open thread today, which he only does a couple of times each year. I've been working through his books since early this year, and developing this concept map as I progress.

By way of explanation, this is a work in progress to visualize the relationships between the concepts brought to bear in the philosophical advances of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Beginning for the fundamental argument for the necessary reality of the distinction between actuality and potentiality, the concept map walks through the conceptual divisions of act and potency. Notably, the divisions of act arrive at a core conception of God as Pure Actuality, Being Itself, utterly devoid of any potentiality or passivity. This is not a proof of God, but rather simply serves to define God's role as the First and Unmoved Mover and Sustainer of all things.

The divisions of act and potency expand to the right of the map, where you see how actuality and potentiality come together as Form and Matter to produce concrete, material things.

Branching off of from the soul (here defined as the substantial form of a living substance), there is a section which details the powers or capacities of the different levels of living substances, which are hierarchically related, with respect to the corporeal order.

For now, the section on the Four Causes is placed on its own, as I still haven't decided where best to tie it in, since many topics make use of this principle. Particularly, Final Causation (defined as the end, goal, purpose, directedness or teleology of a thing) is essential to understanding the concept of objective goodness, which carries into the section on ethics (which, in this view, amounts to an understanding of the directedness of the will).

Also included, but not yet connected as well as it could be, is a section on the divine attributes, along with a brief explanation of how we can know them.

There is much more that can be included. As mentioned elsewhere, this was posted here so that I could link to the WIP. I had hoped that I could catch Edward Feser's attention in the comments of his open thread, which he posted on his blog site yesterday, and which he does only a couple times per year. This concept map is the result of my learning from his books:

• Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science
  
  
• Aquinas (A Beginner's Guide)
  
  
• Philosophy of Mind (A Beginner's Guide)
  
  
• Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Scholastic Editions – Editiones Scholasticae)
  
  I am still working my way through this last one, and when done I intend also to read:
  
  
• Five Proofs of the Existence of God

Well, if you want a concentrated course of study you might consider looking for secondary sources that focus on particular areas of research in philosophy rather than trying to read very few (5-10) authors in real depth. I see Kant has been suggested, for example, and while I would never doubt his importance as a philosopher, if you set out with the intention of reading the bulk of his works as you say you might you would have to tackle a great deal of dry, technical material which I think would prove to be a lot more work than you could expect. Same could be said for Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Descartes, nearly anyone you really might care to list. I don't know if you've read much philosophy, but you might instead look at something like an introduction to philosophy, an intro to ethics, or an intro to the philosophy of mind. These are only some examples, there are books like this for pretty much any area of study that attracts your interest. I'm sure others could provide suggestions as well.

> In other words, you're contributing to a Christian sub when you are closed-minded to all Christian ideas. Why? To educate all of us dumb Christians?

I don't think you're dumb. I mean some of you definitely are, but that applies equally much to the atheists here as well (although I haven't yet been blitzed with homophobic PMs by one of them).

As to why.

> A great place to start, then, would be to explain why it's objectively wrong to be a "Bigot!" It's something you feel strongly about--and by the way, I happen to agree that real bigotry is wrong--so I'm sure you can explain in a way that won't appeal to the supernatural (since you're an atheist) or the subjective.

If you want me to prove moral realism and an egalitarian ethical theory, you're going to need to give me some time. If you want to skip my sad undergraduate reformularizations of them, see (1) and (2)^(1).

____

^(1. Expecting a single ethical theory to cover all moral situations is to my mind pretty foolish [you need multiple ones for different problems the same way chemistry, physics, and biology all study the natural world but are suited to different environments] but I think this gives the broadest coverage. Which theories are suited to what environments and questions is an important thing to discuss in itself.)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) gets taught very rarely in this department. The department recognizes the need to have a course on Kant's CPR (or, alternatively, on Kant's shorter version of the CPR, his "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics"), but the Maryland philosophy department (a) doesn't have many faculty who work on the history of philosophy, and (b) those faculty who do work in the history of philosophy either do work on ancient philosophy (Rachel Singpurwalla, Quinn Harr, Kelsey Gipe) or on Spinoza and other historical Jewish philosophers (Charles Manekin).

Sam Kerstein of course does work on historical Kant, but Sam's focus and interests in Kant is fairly exclusively directed towards Kant's moral philosophy. This is why Sam teaches a 400-level class on Kant's Groundwork every other year or so.

The upshot is that I am the first person to teach a course on Kant's CPR at this department in many years (6+). I'll probably teach the course again either next school year or, if not next year, then the following year. Unfortunately, that sounds like it might be too late for you (from what you've said, it sounds like you graduate this year).

Fortunately, I would argue that it is better for you to have taken a class on Kant's Groundwork before you graduate than Kant's CPR. Kant's ethics is more important to contemporary philosophy than his epistemology and metaphysics. That being said, I do hope you decide to give the CPR a read on your own time someday or at least read a secondary source on Kant that covers the important content from the CPR in detail.

If you decide to read Kant's CPR on your own, let me recommend some resources. First, I'd suggest you watch the following two videos about Hume and the following three videos on Kant as background (although, unfortunately there isn't a video connecting Kant to Hume through how Kant's CPR is in large part a response to Hume's skepticism):

• Hume's Skepticism 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QpUrSn3cWU
  
• Hume's Skepticism 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPlNsyXl-0c
  
• Kant's CPR 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZtQXteAE-w
  
• Kant's CPR 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQnG0fyEr_w
  
• Kant's CPR 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQnG0fyEr_w
  
  You might want to also read one general secondary source on Kant's whole philosophical system before the CPR. Here are a few suggestions to pick one from - all accessible to a upper-level undergraduate student or graduate student. I am not sure which one would be best to recommend:
  
  
• Paul Guyer's Kant https://www.amazon.com/Kant-Routledge-Philosophers-Paul-Guyer/dp/0415843456/ref=sr_1_22?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504276067&sr=1-22&keywords=kant
  
• Roger Scruton's Kant: A Very Short Introduction https://www.amazon.com/Kant-Short-Introduction-Roger-Scruton/dp/0192801996/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504276050&sr=1-4&keywords=kant
  
• Allen Wood's Kant https://www.amazon.com/Kant-Allen-W-Wood/dp/0631232826/ref=sr_1_27?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504276277&sr=1-27&keywords=kant
  
  There are also several specific secondary sources aimed at upper-level undergraduates and graduate students that specifically cover Kant's CPR. One of these might be useful to have besides you as you read the CPR for those times you get lost:
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Philosophy-GuideBook-Critique-GuideBooks/dp/041511909X/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504276632&sr=1-12&keywords=kant+critique+of+pure+reason
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Kants-Critique-Pure-Reason-Introductions/dp/0521618258/ref=pd_sim_14_34?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=DTHDDSHZVAW06VE9RC48
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Accessing-Kant-Relaxed-Introduction-Critique/dp/0199275823/ref=pd_sim_14_11?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=AZ7XQ4TK2FHQPD91321D

To be fair, he's hardly the only one.

In 1969 someone wrote a book called The Emerging Republican Majority that correctly predicted coming Republican dominance due to demographic changes. And the book was quite right when you look at presidential contests. From 1968 to 1988 Republicans won 5 out of 6 presidential elections. And the 1 they lost (Carter, 1976) they only narrowly lost.

In 2004 someone wrote a book called The Emerging Democratic Majority, making much the same prediction based on demographic changes. Sure Bush later won reelection that year, but the exit poll numbers only reinforced the author's point about how the GOP was losing in growing demographic groups, and hence likely to struggle more at winning elections.

These kinds of demographic changes DO NOT mean it's impossible for one party to win the white house however. Only that until demographics or voting behavior starts changing significantly that one party will struggle more at winning national elections.

To say that demographics mean Democrats will control the government for the next 4 or however many decades goes too far.

This is, of course, brilliant and practical. But, I will point out that it isn't new. This, after all, the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the approach to progress espoused by old school liberalism, from J.S. Mills to Jonathan Rauch.

The idea that calmly listening and addressing issues as a better approach than forming groups that fight each other is also consistent with ingroup/outgroup psychology, particularly modeled by Realistic (Group) Conflict Theory. Once you take away the idea that people belong to an identity group, and are just individuals, and that you aren't a member of a different group (tribe) in combat with their group (tribe), people can talk and resolve differences.

But yes, it takes patience and integrity. And you have those like few I've ever seen. That is awesome and inspiring!

So, there are several things you could mean by "an objective moral standard exists." I'll assume that you're talking about moral cognitivism, which is the view that ethical propositions, like "Rape is bad," are capable of being either true or false.

How this "works" is a difficult and subtle question. It's not immediately obvious how there could be truth in a realm like ethics. Perhaps this is because most people (and most philosophers) are walking around with an implicit Correspondence theory of truth in the back of their minds. The correspondence theory claims that a proposition is true just in case it corresponds to the world - and this requires some feature of the world to which "rape is bad" can correspond. But that seems incompatible with the picture of the world that we get from the natural sciences. They tell us about muons and bosons - but there's no talk of "morons" (or moral particles). The world doesn't seem to have "to-be-doneness" built into it (as Mackie says).

So, then, why not just throw in the towel and say that, since there's no reality to which our ethical propositions can correspond, there's no ethical truth? Well, there are a couple reasons.

First and foremost, you might be a hell of a lot more confident in the truth of the proposition "Rape is bad" and the falsity of the proposition "genocide is noble" than you are in the correspondence theory of truth. If so, better to reconsider what exactly truth consists in than to lose the ability to say that the person who claims "genocide is noble" has spoken falsely.

Secondly, naive correspondence truth and a naturalistic world-view is going to destroy far more than ethical truth and falsity once you get it going. It's going to run roughshod over mathematical truth and falsity (surely there aren't mathematical entities out in the world according to our best scientific theories) - it's going to leave you without any way to say that "If I drop out of school, my job prospects will be dim" is true, while "If I drop out of school, the sky will rain money" is false (because I don't actually drop out of school, so there's no part of the actual world to which the "if"-clause can correspond). Also, you won't be able to say that it's true that "I could have been an economics major" (because there's no feature of the world which is my possibly being an economics major). You also won't be able to say that it's false that "I could have been a phrenology major."

So, there's good reason to think that the intuitive reason for thinking that there isn't ethical truth (or, the one that I've always found intuitive) has got to have gone wrong somewhere along the line.

If you're asking me how to fix things, that's the subject of a dissertation or a book. One new and exciting proposal is constructivism about reasons, which has been spear-headed by Sharon Street, and which you can read about here and here.

> [The universe is doomed to heat death.]

That doesn't mean our decisions don't matter in the here and now. Yes, all life will one day be gone. But does that mean it isn't really wrong in the here and now to exterminate Jews, torture innocent people for fun, and rape children? Obviously not. The journey matters, even if the destination cannot be changed. Some journeys can be better than others.

> [Evolution can explain our moral inclinations.]

It can explain our eyesight, our hearing, our ability to apprehend logical truths, etc. too. But we don't reject those as being irrational or unjustified. There is a moral theory which holds that our ethical intuitions are a function of reason, and that we can apprehend some moral truths like we apprehend some mathematical truths and logical truths. This seems compatible with the theory of evolution. We don't doubt the appearance our senses or cognitive faculties give us just because they are produced by evolution. Why treat moral appearances differently?

Relevant philosophy article: Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism, and Moral Knowledge, by Russ Shafer-Landau.

> [However, one must take into account that the definition of morality changes from a society to another...]

I don't think it is the definition of morality that is changing so much is people's evaluative beliefs about what is or isn't moral is changing. But our non-evaluative beliefs change throughout cultures and across time too. Non-evaluative disagreements don't suggest that there is no objective answer to be had, or that the subject of disagreement shouldn't be believed in. Why think evaluative disagreements are any different?

Furthermore, there are positive reasons to believe in moral realism. I would suggest Michael Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism. The gist is that we are justified in believing things are the way they appear (unless and until countervailing reasons are presented to think otherwise), and that moral realism appears to be true, justifying our beliefs in it until good reasons are offered to think otherwise. Here is something I posted in another thread on the matter:

> Phenomenal Conservatism is an epistemological view which says we are prima facie justified in believing things are the way they appear, unless we have stronger reasons to doubt that appearance. For example, it seems like there is a computer in front of me, so I'm justified in believing it is in front of me. For another, it seems like the arch at my apartment complex is taller than it is wide, so I'm justified in believing that is the case. However, I take out a measuring tape and measure the arch -- it turns to be wider than it was tall. Now I'm justified in rejecting my previous belief, and adopting the newer, presumably stronger, one. A third and final example: it seems like we can make inferences from two propositions to a conclusion. We see this not with our eyes, like the previous examples, but with our intellect, or reason.

> We have a range of moral appearances available to us. Some moral claims appear to be true, intuitively, in a similar manner as the appearance that we can make inferences from propositions. For example, "Torturing innocent people purely for fun is wrong" appears to be true. I think we see this with our intellect, our reason. I also think, in accordance with Phenomenal Conservatism, I have a prima facie justification for thinking this moral appearance is true. Therefore, the burden is now on the moral anti-realist to cast doubt on these moral appearances by offering a rebutting or undercutting defeaters for moral realism or my accounts of it. I haven't heard good anti-realist arguments yet, so I'm still a moral realist.

He explains these ideas with much more nuance in his book, and he handles lots of objections as well. (There are PDFs floating around online if you don't want to buy the book on the word of a stranger on the internet...)

They had the story from an NSA informant (actually a FISA court lawyer). They were told by the Bush administration that "the terrorists would win" if they published it, so they buried it.

http://www.npr.org/2014/06/05/319233332/new-york-times-editor-losing-snowden-scoop-really-painful

If you want a better idea of the timeline on it, Frontline covered it pretty well.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/

If you want a better idea why the New York Times would cow-tow to the White House like that, Manufacturing Consent does a pretty good job of explaining the forces at play here (access, flack, anti-terror hysteria).

The speech codes enacted at certain colleges in the "PC nineties" have been revoked, largely for the best reason pointed out in Rauch's Kindly Inquisitors: nobody has a monopoly on knowing what's offensive, so the goal of "no hurt feelings" is unattainable. College campuses weren't looking to shut out odious speech, but to protect the feelings of certain people (and in doing so happened to shut out odious speech).

As far as workplace speech goes, I'm inclined to believe that speech that advances business is always preferred over all other kinds. I fail to see how incendiary commentary in the workplace would benefit anyone's business, and more importantly it's censure is not the same thing as being told "you can't express that opinion." It's more like "you can't express that opinion, in this building, 9-5, and keep this job for which we pay you our money." Which is really applied everywhere; you can exercise your free speech rights in a buddy's house, and find yourself thrown out for being a dick. It's not an overarching, rigidly enforced political correctness that encourages this kind of behavior, but simply getting along with one another and, in the case of business, trying to turn a dollar into two dollars. Even the most racially prejudiced car salesman turns it off when someone of the lesser race(s) comes to buy a car.

As a staunch defender of total free speech (including the neo-nazis, WBC, the Klan, etc) I frankly find the current trends encouraging, not discouraging. Unless I'm missing the point here.

Plato didn't want freedom. He envisaged a world ruled by philosopher kings who, by their dint of their intellectual superiority, could determine what was right for everyone.

The most famous argument against Plato was put forth by Karl Popper, although I know it from reading Jon Rauch's book on free-speech, 'Kindly Inquisitors'.

To summarize the anti-Platonist response of Popper and Rauch- Nobody, absolutely nobody, should be given final say in an argument, because no individual is capable of infallibility. Our best hope for progress is to maximize freedom of speech, even though this will inevitably result in much bad speech. (From this perspective, it's a healthy sign that we have such lurid tabloid papers. It means that freedom of speech is still alive.)

(I recently read 'Plato at the Googleplex' by the philosopher and writer Rebecca Goldstein who thinks that Plato was maligned by Popper. If you're interested, that's also a book which is worth reading.)

That's a big myth, but it's only "capitalism all the way" if it benefits corporations -- things tend to get very pampered, protective and socialist if a regulation helps corporations. Great books on the subject: The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, and Republic, Lost.

>[Age restriction for drugs] Is this desirable and if so how would it be enforced in a ancap society?

All value is subjective. So I guess the question is, how much do you desire this?

As for enforcement, it would be inherently inhomogeneous like the rest of AnCap 'society'.

>consumers choosing to patronise, or not, business's that restrict the selling of drugs to those above a certain age?

This is one possible solution amongst many. Another popular idea (amongst AnCaps) are for communities of legal agreement (CoLAs) which would function more like an anthrostate.

> 'I would prefer if you made a note of when you are going to say a particular thing'

This is the absolute wrong onus. From the point of view of the person making the request, it seems on the surface to be reasonable. However, from the point of view of the person making the speech/content/art the logical conclusion is seven billion different "reasonable" points of view about notices for specific content. The correct onus is for the reader/lister/viewer to be mindful of offensive content, and act appropriately for themselves when that content presents itself. Anything else is absolutely bonkers.

>This world of 'ideal' free speech you are discussing does not exist.

Agreed. It is the ideal goal, however. A goal which permits the silencing of unpopular opinions is oppressive in nature, and contrary to liberty.

>Ironically, the judgment that "all speech should be permitted regardless of content" is also a false moral absolute - it reflects a particular cultural interpretation of 'freedom' that is not necessarily universal to every place and time.

It may not describe the realities of a given location or time, but it is the best ideal. Liberty is superior to oppression.

>Put yourself in the shoes of someone who is actually oppressed - do you really have 'free speech' when your voice is drowned out

History has demonstrated that your claim is false, by virtue the fact that popular opinion is where it is, and is moving ever more towards greater acceptance. What else has gotten us here except free speech by minority activists?

>'shit, dude, this is offensive, please stop doing that'.

This is absolutely not what they are doing. They are demanding self-censorship over a perceived slight where none exists. They are absolutely the ones who are shutting down speech.

>There is a very valid and nuanced discussion to be had about free speech and its limitations, and I feel that your perspective is too heavily founded on absolutes to adequately reflect that nuance.


At least you have avoided the "fire in a crowded theater" fallacy. Make sure you don't fall into that fallacy's trap by conflating the necessity of absolute freedom of speech with actions and their consequences.

Making a comment on twitter is speech. Publishing a game is an action (and also speech). Losing sales because of offensive content is a consequence. Furthermore, it's the most appropriate consequence to objectionable speech. Demanding self-censorship, especially to sooth a fragile ego, is fucking abhorrent.


e:

> Common ethical standards (by 'common', I mean generally shared by people in that particular cultural space and time) and common decency exist. I am not presuming a universal morality, but rather a time/culture-specific ethics

How do you presume those mores changed over time? They did not change because the cultural majority enjoyed a monopoly on what was decent and what was not. See Rauch: “A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.”

There's a lot of reasons, for one I would recommend you read Chomsky's Requiem for the American Dream, which is summarised quite well here: https://billmoyers.com/story/noam-chomskys-requiem-american-dream/

There's a lot there, but the essential takeaway is that power tends to concentrate itself via both hard and soft influences. Democratic states, by their nature, are open to these influences, and eventually money and power become concentrated to the point that those democratic institutions will become infiltrated and coopted by capitalism. In fact he makes the point that usually the adoption of regulation is either initiated or supported by big industry, because they know they can use regulation to stifle competition. Once you know that, then the case for regulated capital becomes weaker.

Capitalism by its nature tends to infiltrate every avenue for influence and money making eventually. Look at social media for example, with people's opinions, personal photos, lifestyle choices, all being infiltrated by capitalism and given a price. What's the cost to us? Well, it can be impossible to know when someone makes a post whether it's a genuine personal expression or whether they've been paid for it. You see this in the huge number of comments calling "fake" on just about everything. There are a lot of false positives, but on some level they know they're being lied to constantly.

So I don't condone a regulated capitalist market, and I don't condone unrestrained capitalism. What do? Well, Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist. I personally don't know enough to say where I stand on this stuff, but all the proposed solutions fall broadly under the term "leftism". It's worth mentioning that liberal democratic capitalism is pretty much in the centre in this way of viewing politics, so most corporate democrats would be considered centre or even centre-right from this perspective.

Also if you look at Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky, it makes a very good case for why all your ideas on socialism are going to be heavily influenced by capitalist propaganda. An example of capitalist propaganda in action is to look at the way mainstream media are covering Bernie Sanders - they are clamouring to cast him as a non-serious candidate, even if they're not aware of it. There's an interview of Chomsky where he makes this point about the media operating through a filter, and the interviewer asks if he's suggesting that they are self-censoring right now. Chomsky's response is, "No, I'm suggesting that if you didn't hold views favourable to the establishment, then you wouldn't be sitting here interviewing me," or words to that effect.

If you want to know more, I'd recommend this video on Why Criticise Capitalism? Also these playlists on Why Capitalism Sucks and How Anarchism Works. But it's important not to get all your education from youtube, so a book I'm currently reading that comes well-recommended is Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher. I'll warn you though - most leftist reading is dense and heavy and kind of difficult. That's why I think /r/BreadTube is a good intro to the whole anti-capitalist perspective.

> I would really like to start reading some real philosophy, but find a lot of philosophical jargon to be very confusing (For example, I still don't exactly understand what a priori is supposed to mean)

You might benefit from spending some time with a philosophical dictionary. These are books that list a bunch of philosophical terms, with each of them given a definition and a few paragraphs or pages of explanation by a philosopher who specializes in that field. So, for example, the entry on "a priori" would be written by an epistemologist who has published on a priori knowledge.

> I was wondering if there was like an "Ethics for Dummies" out there.

Yes, there are a bunch of books like that.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=introduction+to+ethics

Here's one that has a good reputation:

https://www.amazon.com/Being-Good-Short-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0192853775/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1493839865&sr=8-7&keywords=introduction+to+ethics

Personally I skipped around quite a bit, because some books cover certain topics better than others. However this particular book is pretty short and sweet, but gives you a great solid intro tot he topic (which I find absolutely fascinating).

Edit: I really think you should read the intro, which is available to view. It's very engaging.

All benefits go really rich people and corporations.

Why? Because really rich people and corporations are getting better and better at buying off our political system. (Link.)

I looked into his background and I swear to god this is true, I can't post where his dad works etc, but it is true. This kid has legacy status and his dad is a c-suite level executive. They are affluent from the Beverly Hills area.

The real question gamergate and sjws need to ask themselves is......

Should these affluent people be given affirmative action, when they come from wealthy backgrounds?

I hope that gamergate and the sjws can come together to oppose legacy status in society.

Why are the Zoe Quinn's (VV Family), Lifschitz's, Romero's, Graner's being given preferential treatment in the video game industry, when they come from affluent backgrounds? Why can't they help poor inner city people, Appalachian people, etc. Theres plenty of homeless in San Francisco that need help too. It's always these damn legacies that get help.

How legacy status works

http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges/dp/1400097975

This is subjective, but in the moral philosophy course I'm taking right now we are currently covering what is called ethical intuitionism, and W.D. Ross and Michael Huemer (perhaps even Huemer more so than Shafer-Landau and Audi) can be considered some of the best here due to their innovative expositions. Ross is usually taught in intro classes, and Huemer even wrote a book called Ethical Intuitionism.

Edit: this should be in the SF thread. Whoops!

I'm trying to stretch some political-setting muscles in a setting I have stewing on this topic. It's tiring to have the same old political systems - a huge and awesome part of the Radch series, for exampe, was the unique take on fascist imperialism. I'm fascinated by polystate political systems, and hope to create an imperial metastate with a subordinate representative democracy of client substates as a sort of constrained version of Weinersmith's model. Vast diversity, under a technically united political system that does what it can to keep all of humanity under a united front.

Humanity can be united front but still exceptionally diverse. I hope to have genetic subspecies (adaptation to new environments like superearths, acoustic planets, or low-gravity asteroids) and political diversity with monarchies, communes, corporate syndicates, and theostates all tied loosely together under Imperial control.

>For some reason they went absolutely insane when he won.

I can't speak to why the base lost their minds in such a drastic fashion (outside of just regurgitating the hysteria they get from the media), but the party leadership is losing it because Trump winning put a pretty big dent in the whole Demographic Destiny idea that they've been building up for the last 15 years. They honestly thought by now they'd be ruling a 1 party state in all but name, at least at the federal level.

You can track the Democrat strategy of silent approval of increasing illegal immigration and doing everything they can to appeal to ethnic minorities to riiiight around the time this trash was published.

I just finished reading this book.

And I'm 100 pages into this book.

The first says:

> Morality is the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason - to do what there are the best reasons for doing - while giving equal weight to the interests of each individual affected by one’s decision. Moral Philosophy is the study of what morality is and what it requires of us. There is no simple definition of morality. But there is a “minimum conception” of morality - a core that any moral theory should accept. What do we know about the nature of Morality?

>1. Moral Judgments must be backed by good reasons.

>2. Morality requires the impartial consideration of each individual's interests.

The second book compares morality to art. While all art is subjective, people still practice and study art and become knowledgeable. It would be foolish to think we couldn't learn something from those who devote much time and energy to the subject. In the same way, we can learn about morality.

> Not beyond philosophy of science and picking up the occasional book (Singer, Nieztche, some Eastern oriented stuff) and a decent amount of political philosophy.

Ah, OK. You should maybe consider reading Think, an introduction to philosophy by Simon Blackburn. It's a good read, but more importantly, it's short and accessible.
If you want something more focused on ethics, I suggest Blackburn again with Being Good. Also short and accessible.

> The claim that 2 + 2 = 4 seems much more concrete than the claim that 'killing is bad.'

I would agree ("2 + 2 = 4" is a priori, the other is most likely a posteriori), but I am not arguing that killing is bad, I was just demonstrating that something relatively uncontroversial, like "killing is wrong", cannot be applied in a world where ethics is just subjective.

> Can one choose to just not care about right/wrong?

Sure - what one does is separate from the discussion of theory. One could believe 2 + 2 = 60 even! :D

> instead choosing to focus on the result of such behavior and how it ultimately harms oneself.

Sounds a lot like utilitarianism :-) You should read up on ethical theory - I think you would enjoy it.

Kant is rather difficult, and some background knowledge of him is going to be required. Scruton's book is probably going to be the easiest secondary source, and will likely point you to other helpful sources as well. I took a course that focused on the Critique of Pure Reason and we used this to help us with both establishing the context and for breaking apart the text. As for primary sources, the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals is fairly accessible by Kant's standards, and pretty short, so it's maybe not a bad place to start. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics is also apparently a must-read for a full understanding of the critiques.

Al that said, Kant is pretty difficult. I'm not sure what your native language is, but I've heard German students read him in English because those translations can be clearer than the originals, but he's incredibly dense however you read him. The SEP will be great too not just as a source, but for pointing you to other writings on Kant.

Good post, only have time to read the 13 points and opening paragraph right now but will finish later. Reminds me of when I read Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, it's good to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

Came here to second Sir Roger Scruton.

Watch Why Beauty Matters (BBC special, on YouTube I believe) to get an idea of Scruton's general flavour.

Conservatism: An Invitation to The Great Tradition

Culture Counts (rereleased Sept 2018)

Both the above books are very worthwhile reads.

> So most an-caps would agree that the societies would be run with natural rights as the rule of the land, how though does one prove that humans even have rights?

Not all an-caps derive their beliefs from natural rights, and there are different understandings of the term 'natural rights.' In any case, here are what I think are some good resources:

• [Ethical Intuitionism][1]
  
• [The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey][2]
  
• A Positive Account of Property Rights
  
  [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746
  [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examination-Coerce/dp/1137281650
  

> Not many people on here seem to agree with me though.

What you're describing is what certain varieties of libertarians, specifically certain anarcho-capitalists, refer to as "communities of legal agreement". You might be interested particularly in /r/polycentric_law and some of the discussions that take place in /r/anarcho_capitalism. You might also be interested in the works of David Friedman. If you like SMBC, the creator, Zach Weinersmith, actually wrote a book exploring similar ideas.

This is a really good book by a conservative about their ideology on their own terms. I suggest you read it to get a better understanding of their thought process.

Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

Another good read is The Reactionary Mind

For works reflecting traditionalist conservative attitudes, I'd recommend "Ideas Have Consequences" by Richard Weaver and "The Abolition of Man" by C.S. Lewis. Also, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a pretty good critique of utopian ideology and in my opinion it's far more applicable to current society than Orwell's 1984 in its criticism of mindless consumerism and social conditioning.

For far-right perspectives I'd recommend anything by Julius Evola, especially Revolt Against the Modern World. A lot of the modern right's rhetoric about the decline of western society and to some extent its nihilism can be traced back to Evola's work, so he is essential reading if you really want to know more about the modern far right or alt right. As a warning, though, his extreme traditionalism will probably be off-putting.

As for U.K. relevant...hmm...I can at least recommend a great British conservative in Sir Roger Scruton. His "How to Be a Conservative" offers an outline of true conservative ideology and its applications as well as criticism of materialism, which is in my opinion essential to conservatism.

I havent read it, but this is supposed to be pretty good. Might be a good place to start:

The Price of Admission

Ah good. But you've got an MA, no? Whereas both mine are undergrad and in subjects I don't care about (study science, they said. Commit crimes against the lower mammals. Study law, they said. Hang out with lawyers. Become a lawyer, do paperwork. What a dumbass.)

Yeah, I've got R&P. I just ordered The Groundwork earlier tonight. I ordered Practical Ethics yesterday, actually as well, I thought that was supposed to be the Singer? I'll get the other two when I get paid.

Also have you read Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism? Someone told me it was the best defence of moral realism of recent times.

Might as well weigh in on what you should focus on specifically, as one of those philosophically-inclined theists. As for why you should-- given that atheism and theism are both within the field of philosophy, it'd be good to at least have a clear view of the evidence for both sides. I'll be giving books that support theism, since I don't know many that do so for atheism-- something by JL Mackie might help?

Before even engaging in the philosophy backing theism, it'd be good to get some background knowledge.

Intro to Logic

Metaphysics

Given that, you can familiarize yourself with some books on classical theism, attacks on naturalism/physicalism/materialism, and specifically attacks on materialism of the mind.

The Last Superstition

Aquinas

Philosophy of the Mind

All three of those are by the Catholic philosopher, Edward Feser. I usually argue for theism, or against materialism, based on his books.

Have you read any of Peter Singer's books? He's a utilitarian philosopher who doesn't just stick to atheism, but covers all sorts of very challenging ground including abortion, euthanasia, animal rights and so on. I don't agree with every position he takes, but he's the best introduction to those squirming issues that I've ever found.

If you're interested, start with Practical Ethics. It's the one university Ethics papers use as an introductory text.

My suggestion would be to find introductory books to the three main 'branches' of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Here's one: http://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0199657122

The others are probably searchable as well. My reasoning is that it would be difficult to find one book that 'dips' into each branch of philosophy for the same reasons it would be difficult to find one book that 'dips' into each branch of language. There are books out there, but it's hard to recommend them because they require a strong commitment to the work.

Instead, my suggestion is this: read a short book (under 200 pages?) of each branch of philosophy that interests you, and then let your mind be the 'book' that makes a 'dip' into each branch that you read about.

It's not as hard as one might think. Certainly it's a delicate skill that requires patience and practice, but I think it's well within grips of most people.

If you're interested, I'd recommend the Visual Guide to Lockpicing. If you want to go legit, stop by the ALOA and find out about additional training and certification. You can even get certified online, now.

Part of how I paid for college was by helping people when they lock their keys in their cars.

Stellar Wind called for the very Utah data center the NSA is in the process of finishing. Not closing. Not turning into a warehouse for outdated office equipment. Nor is the government re-purposing all the storage and computing power for some serious online gaming.

The Program is now called Ragtime or Ragtime-P. Status is operational. As is X-Keyscore. This may have been a redesign of Stellar Wind to meet metadata provisions put forth by Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

== Source ==

Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry Details Ragtime-A US-based interception of all foreign-to-foreign, Ragtime-B intercepts from foreign governments that transits through the US, Ragtime-C counterproliferation actvities and Ragtime-P which is all domestic.

Elliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes, General Petraeus or just mundane chit-chat that has not been flagged. Not PRISM alone, it's Ragtime.

>Faulk described the personal nature of many of the calls, and how he and his colleagues would encourage each other to listen into a call where “there’s good phone sex” or “some colonel making pillow talk.”

I started to make one a while back but didn't get too far. There are just too many great books to choose from.

Classics 1950-1970

What is Conservatism?

The Conservative Mind

The Road to Serfdom

The Constitution of Liberty

Ideas Have Consequences

The Quest for Community

Economics in One Lesson

Capitalism and Freedom

In Defense of Freedom


Age of Reagan 1970-1990

The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945

Modern Times

Knowledge and Decisions

A Conflict of Visions

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Roots Of American Order


Modern Must Reads 1990-Today

The Clash of Civilizations

A History of the American People

The Vision of the Annointed

Intellectuals and Society

Illiberal Reformers

Restoring the Lost Constitution

How To Be A Conservative

>Did I just read a fascist manifesto?

There is nothing in there that is not in or implied in Friedrich Hayek and Roger Scruton. If your head is so anarchistic you think a burkean Liberal and a liberal Burkean are fascist I won't be able to persuade you otherwise.

That said I think every thinking person can get something out of Scrution's How to be a Conservative. Even if the chapter 'the truth in nationalism' from which the above was partly drawn is not your cup of tea, it is still good to hear it, and chapters like 'the truth in capitalism', 'truth in socialism', 'the truth in environmentalism' or the 'truth in multiculturalism' might suit you better.

Sounds like a decent start. If you haven't already read Peter Singer's Practical Ethics, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy. Based on the road you've set for yourself, I think you would really, really like to hear the philosophy of a guy who's spent his entire life thinking about this.

NukeThePope often suggests this book:

https://nukeexcathedra.jottit.com/2011-03-09%3A_book_review%3A_sense_%26_goodness_without_god

Not exactly 'how to be successful' but it is about morality

some other suggestions:

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211?tag=dudugo-20

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521707684/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1315260344&sr=8-2


http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

(not about morality, but it will help you to avoid being gullible, which would help with the success thing)

https://www.amazon.com/Conservatism-Invitation-Tradition-Roger-Scruton/dp/1250170567

This came out pretty recently. It's an overview of the history. It's not nearly as comprehensive as a class would be but it's pretty interesting.

It sounds to me like somebody's been attemptin' some philosophy on the side. 😜

But seriously, I'd recommend reading some good philosophy to help wrap your mind around these questions - what it is to be has been around since Descartes, if not earlier. I'm reading Feser's Philosophy of Mind and it deals directly with that question.

As to other advice, pray even louder when all you can pray is, "WHY?" And perhaps think about how no matter what, you must exist, or you couldn't be doubting that you exist, because who'd be doing the doubting?

There's lots of them, so I think one should start in the area they're most interested in and then branch from there.

Here' a general survey of the areas of philosophy.

The areas usually have their own articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy with extensive bibliographies (e.g. Modal Logic). Same goes for particular problems from these areas, like Truth, and some of the philosophers themselves (e.g. Bertrand Russell). There's also the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

For less technical and more structured introductions, there are plenty of textbooks, like Logic, This is Philosophy of Mind or The Fundamentals of Ethics. Books from the Very Short Introductions series are sometimes decent (e.g. Metaphysics), and they really are short.

The textbooks usually have further reading recommendations, some of which are compiled readers like The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness or The Ethical Life: Fundamental Readings in Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems. I think these are good starting points as well.

Most of the books are going to be available on libgen of course.

And then there's of course podcasts. Some of the good ones I like:

• Philosophy Bites – very concise episodes with experts speaking on singular subjects
  
• Elucidations – basically the above, but with longer episodes
  
• Very Bad Wizards – a philosopher an a psychologist meme a lot and then discuss some ethics
  
• The Panpsycast – meant as beginner introductions to various subjects; kinda hit-and-miss for me I guess, but the eps where they invite experts to speak are good
  
• History of Philosophy without any gaps – they mean the title
  
  Lastly, Gregory B. Sadler is a big guy.

A book wholly worth checking out is The Price of Admission, which uses Jared Kushner as a case study of how the wealthy can subvert all types of academic rigor in order to get the correct looking resume.

I just hope that this whole process with Trump and Kavanaugh can snap people out of the whole meritocracy ideal once and for all, because god knows it's gotten us into a lot of trouble.

Good, I think it's a good thing to do. People have been writing about suppression of free speech on American campuses for a while now.

Some young liberals might consider it great that conservative or otherwise controversial opinions are being silenced, but those of us who have been around for a while know that you yourself will eventually fall prey to the censorship you promote.

You'll have better luck with quality books than youtube videos for the most part. Although iTunes University has free Oxford course lectures. One is "Philosophy for Beginners" and includes a lecture on Metaphysics and Epistemology. That might be a good place to start.

Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction isn't bad, but definitely not detailed enough.

The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics is probably what you're looking for. A good library near you should have it.

These two books cover essentially the same material (The Last Superstition is a little broader in scope, but this ground is also covered by Feser in Philosophy of Mind); large passages are word-for-word the same. The main difference is that The Last Superstition links together these long, dry passages with gratuitous insults for marketing purposes. There is really not that much polemic relative to the substantial passages, but what there is will be insufferable to some readers. While I share Anthony Kenny's judgement that The Last Superstition "would have been a better book if it had never mentioned Dawkins and co at all", they are both very good books.

This one is a good bathroom read. It's very basic and easy to understand. Not super thorough but great for understanding concepts.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is always a good source/jumping off point. A more recent book is Scruton's How To Be a Conservative. There's also Oakeshott's On Being Conservative and Rationalism in Politics essays. Modern american conservatism imports some libertarianism, for that I would read some Hayek, econlib has a number of his essays and there's this essay that goes over his thoughts, and relates it to traditionalism. Hope that helps.

Here’s some books:

• 9 books

-most of these can be found in video form on YouTube

• understanding power

• manufacturing consent kindle (couldn’t find it as a pdf)

Chomsky is a great read, he also has some great lectures on YouTube. The reason that only a tiny minority knows him is because of his lack of appearance in mainstream media (in my opinion). He summarizes it greatly in this video:

Noam Chomsky- concision

I think S. Blackburn's Think is an excellent introduction to some of the major areas in philosophy. You might also what to look at some of the philosophical books in the "Very Short Introduction" series, for example the Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Philosophy of Science and Free Will ones, which as you can guess are good places to start.

A book I quite enjoyed as an introduction to the great philosophers was The Philosophy Book, which not only gave clear descriptions of each of the philosophers' views, but also often gave a clear flowchart summary of their arguments.

Yes, a smart Democratic party would exploit it. But its one of the things they can't actually push because it might work.

Democrats are operating of this book and have for some time. Hence, they dream of flipping Texas using the Hispanic vote and locking in a permanent majority.

https://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis/dp/0743254783

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/the-coming-democratic-majority-might-be-coming-a-lot-slower-than-you-think.html

OP, buy the following book, and get wise on the specifics of the arguments presented. We all have a good idea why SJW Fundamentalism is bad, but knowing how to present those arguments in a clear, cogent way should go a long way to persuading your peers.

http://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thought/dp/0226705765

Good luck, and godspeed.

Two terrific books on the subject:

• With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (Glenn Greenwald)
  http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Justice-Some-Equality-Powerful-ebook/dp/B00603PI3U/
  
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It (Lawrence Lessig)
  http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress--/dp/0446576441/
  
  Obligatory link to Wolf PAC: http://www.wolf-pac.com

I'd recommend the following:

• For a good survey, see the history of utilitarianism by Julia Driver at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  
• Utilitarianism is a specific type of Consequentialism, so I'd check out an article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.
  
• For the historical roots in Bentham and Mill (who laid the foundation), Troyer's The Classical Utilitarians is a good anthology.
  
• For something a bit more readable and contemporary, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics is a classic.

I like this order too. In addition, he recently put out a short book that is meant to be an invitation to conservatism in general. Here are links for convenience.

• How To Be A Conservative
  
• The Meaning Of Conservatism
  
• Conservatism: An Invitation To The Great Tradition

Philosophically Catholics (should) hold that AI is not possible; that intelligence is an aspect of a rational soul, and so the only way to have a true "thinking machine" is either to somehow have a human or angel soul therein (think cyborg or demon-possessed object).

Feser's Philosophy of Mind goes much deeper into it.

Now, of course, none of this prevents sci-fi stories about AI (some of RA Lafferty's are great), but it does mean that true AI is not possible without an immortal soul (because of the universals, basically).

>There is also the issue of whether we can trust the Mayday PAC to stay as focused as they claim

Given the primary name behind it, I'm standing behind them (I donated some btc to the cause). Given Lawrence Lessig's history, he can stay pretty darn focused.

Take some time to read up on him, and the uphill (some would say Sisyphean) battles he's fought over the past couple of decades.

> whether their criteria for determining who the Mayday PAC will support ends up correlating to other political issues

That's kind of the point - it doesn't really need to correlate to other political issues. The only issue they're focused on is campaign finance reform. All other points, to them, are moot - because when the reform is in, a real discussion on those points can finally happen. They might support a pro-life pro-death penalty anti-immigration candidate in an election against another pro-life pro-death penalty anti-immigration candidate ... as long as the former candidate is for finance reform, and the latter is not.

Because until the (aboveboard, but no less) corruption is debrided, a real discussion on those topics, free from corrupting influences, cannot happen.

> an issue that everyone has strong opinions about despite the fact that most people only have an extremely limited understanding of the details.

That's right. A lot of what they're going up against is public ignorance - I have a feeling they will be spending just as much, if not more, on public education of the issue in battleground districts/states than on direct candidate endorsement.

> That's great, but let me know when you have drafted the motherhood and apple pie bill so I can actually understand what this means.

But the bill cannot be drafted until the candidates are in. You're putting the cart before the horse, here, to torture another analogy.

Some resources:

https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWfCqsFP05A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aavBn_1llpc

http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress--/dp/0446576441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-1&keywords=lawrence+lessig

http://www.amazon.com/Lesterland-Corruption-Congress-Books-Book-ebook/dp/B00C3LLYM2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-3&keywords=lawrence+lessig

And something not really about politics and campaign finance, but his (enlightened) views on intellectual property (also covers the SCOTUS case he lost - and why he thinks he lost - in re perpetual copyrights):

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Culture-Nature-Future-Creativity-ebook/dp/B000OCXHM2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-4&keywords=lawrence+lessig

Sorry for the late reply, I only now stumbled upon your question.

Here are some more books that I haven't seen mentioned. All of them are non-fiction, all of the authors have published more on the topic.

• "Testo Junkie" by Beatriz Preciado A first-hand account of Preciado's experimentation with testosterone, what she refers to as "gender hacking".
  
• "In A Queer Time and Place" by Judith/Jack Halberstam Just one example of probably one of the foremost academics concerning trans* issues.
  
• "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serano Serano's description of her understanding of her own trans-identity. Beautifully meshed into the current theoretical discourse.
  
• "Transgender Warriors" by Leslie Feinberg Several accounts of people apparently violating established gender norms and the attempt to fit them into a narrative of gender rebellion.
  
  Hope some of that sparks your interest.

I struggle on and off as well... don't get discouraged!

BosnianBill recommended this the other day and I bought it on Amazon and love it so far! Maybe it's time to "go back to school"!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0970978863/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Two books that you should read:

The Super-rich Shall Inherit the Earth

and

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

After eading both books, there is very little chance you will still hold those opinions if you are a logical person. You will enjoy them both anyway, very good books.

this helped me out when I was in a similar position regarding Kant's work. You can find these nifty little introductory books at Barnes and Noble; the topics vary, but they are all good reads when you've got an hour or so to sit down with one.

For IMO the best explanation of the problem and its possible solutions read Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig. Please also join us at the related /r/rootstrikers

If you're interested in Harris's take on it in particular, I suggest looking at this blog post, and also follow the links to some philosophers' reviews of his book, The Moral Landscape. I'm glad Harris responded to his critics, though I don't think he rebutted the most important criticisms.

If you're interested in the underlying question about how ethics might be rationally derived, you could work your way through the SEP page on Kant's Moral Philosophy and investigate others from there. It's pretty dense though! Sidgwick's book that I mentioned above is good and very relevant if you want to trace through the history of these ideas.

If you want to skip to more recent discussion, Simon Blackburn has two books on the topic: Being Good is very accessible and meant to introduce the topics to non-philosophers; Ruling Passions is more technical but IIRC, Chapters 5 and 6 are very relevant to this exact debate and reasonably approachable.

I would like to find some more justification for it as well. I'll be looking and I'll post here if I find anything good.

I'm just about to dig into reading Polystate. I really think this is where the future is heading.

Absolutely. Even as a non-believer I acknowledge the Euthyphro as the starting point of an interesting conversation regarding DCT, not where the conversation ends.

Most intro to ethics books don't say the above. For example, the best selling intro to ethics book of all time has a chapter on morality and religion and it treats the dilemma as decisive. Whether that's an okay thing to teach intro to ethics students or not may in part be based on what we think we ought to be teaching them in the first place. Most philosophers aren't egoists, so the textbooks teach the main objections to egoism and move on. Most philosophers aren't relativists either, so we teach the main objections and move on.

Sure, we could say "but, things get a little trickier, because there are certainly some interesting and sophisticated defenses of these views that avoid these objections" but I'm not sure what value that would be to intro to ethics students who aren't really interested in a philosophical career. So I guess it depends on whether you think we should be giving a general overview of the field and the main objections to the views or whether we should give them more details and exceptions than they actually really need to know.

This book is an excellent introduction to contemporary metaphysics. It gives you enough coverage of the history (i.e. the Greeks) and where metaphysics stands in contemporary literature. Highly recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0199657122/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452885902&sr=1-8&keywords=introduction+to+metaphysics

> My ire stems chiefly from the way that this then paints us into a corner where we act like there's no better system and we've reached the end of human progress.

Have you read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher? I imagine it'd be right up your alley.

I highly recommend this book. This is also a very useful one, because it goes through a lot of other ways to bypass locks besides picking or bumping. As far as tools, you need a few picks and a few rakes (snake rake is a must) and 3 or 4 tension wrenches. I think it's better to have a few different tension wrenches then a large number of picks and only one tension wrench. Keep this in mind when selecting a kit.

There are tons of helpful videos on youtube also.

Not a well known book outside of the UK I think but brilliantly simple and impactful. Has been a cornerstone in my view of media along with Manufacturing Consent and Propaganda. Once you've gone through those you'll probably be more inclined to focus on your own life.

> What does it mean for a truth to be relative to something else?

Well, my entire post was an attempt to answer this question of meaning (see the second sentence, starting with the phrase 'meaning that...'), and it directly addresses the example of your second paragraph, but maybe what I said was unclear.

The relativist thinks that to say "X is wrong" full stop is either incoherent or short-hand for something of the form "X is wrong according to framework F", where the relevant framework is implicitly determined, maybe by criteria of salience.

Again, the analogy to speed is instructive. Suppose a baseball is traveling at 90mph relative to frame F but at 5mph relative to frame G. The question, "but what is its real speed?" is incoherent. If someone at rest in frame F says "the ball is traveling at 90mph", we take him implicitly to be saying that the ball is traveling at 90mph relative to frame F.

Now, suppose someone at rest in G is evaluating the statement of the person at rest in F. Is it true or false? It's true that the ball is moving at 90mph in frame F, but false that it's moving at 90mph in frame G. What should this person at rest in G say?

Answer: he should say that it is traveling at 90 in frame F, traveling at 5 in frame G.

The question of moral truth is analogous, according to relativists.

Other views may use the label 'relativist', but the one I describe is a standard view in philosophy, as defended by Gilbert Harman (in the link I gave above) and criticized by Judith Thomson (same link) as well as by James Rachels in the popular introductory reader, Elements of Moral Philosophy.

There are a lot of really, really ignorant posts ITT. This is why you should actually read the various Austrian economists instead of listening to "internet Austrians."

For one thing, the Austrian approach doesn't reject empirical evidence. Look at all the actual Austrian economists and then see what their opinions were. Hayek is best interpreted as a member of the classical British empiricist school of thought, in the vein of Adam Smith, Hume, etc. Even for Mises, who followed Kant, the entire point of theoretical economics was to use it to interpret empirical reality.

For another thing, empirical knowledge simply isn't the only type of knowledge. This isn't even controversial in philosophy. Mises was the most explicit in attempting to ground the fundamental propositions of economics-- the so called "pure logic of choice"-- in neo-Kantian synthetic a priori statements. Kant is one of the most highly respected philosophers in history, so it would be absurd to condemn Mises simply because he took a Kantian approach to the fundamentals of economics.

And for what it's worth, a lot of Mises' views are defensible anyway. He starts with the action axiom, i.e. we engage in purposive behavior. You can agree with this proposition or disagree with it. If you agree with it, that's fine, Mises has his starting point. If you disagree with it, that disagreement itself would have to be categorized as an instance of purposive behavior-- i.e. you're disagreeing with the axiom to prove some purpose, for instance-- and so you've refuted yourself. So the notion that people engage in purposive behavior cannot be coherently denied (not that sincere seekers of truth would deny it in any event).

Mises argues several important implications follow from the action axiom, especially w.r.t. basic propositions of economics, e.g. choice, opportunity cost, uncertainty, and psychological profit / loss. But we can ignore that and focus on another purely philosophical implication to see his methodology. Hopefully this will draw light to the validity of Mises' general method without unduly focusing on purely economic propositions.

Take causality, for instance. Some philosophers-- to be sure, a minority-- would argue causality is an illusion and is merely a function of how we interpret the world. Given the action axiom, though, this cannot possibly be true: as was argued, it's incoherent to deny the fact that people act. But the ability of people to act in some sense presupposes they have some ability to interfere with, or change, the real world. Yet this logically implies they have some causal connection to it, so the a priori of action implies causality. That's a very philosophically significant argument if it works.

Lest anyone thinks this is a mere verbal trick-- or even worse, that Mises was ignorant w.r.t. philosophy-- it's worth pointing out some very respected philosophers today make similar arguments. Take Stephen Mumford, for instance. He's highly regarded as a philosopher of metaphysics and ontology, i.e. the study of being as such, to such a degree that Oxford commissioned him to write their introduction to metaphysics.

Yet, as respected as he is, Mumford gives an a priori argument for causation here that is very similar to the argument implicit in Mises' conception of human action. I think this serves to show Mises was no hack, and he was deeply on to something when he conceived of the a priori of human action as an important starting point.

I deliberately choose causation because I feel it's not as controversial on this subreddit as some of the propositions of mainstream economics. Yet it's clearly a solid philosophical argument of the same type Mises uses to justify certain economic propositions, and so it's absurd to say Mises is wrong without actually engaging his arguments. To say Mises' methodology is different from other people and is therefore wrongly simply begs the question, which is a straight up logical fallacy. If you'd like to read more and attempt to understand the Misesean view, see this paper.

In no specific order: The Dictator's Handbook: presents a realist perspective on international and intra-national politics, specifically it presents a real-world analysis of politics through the lens of Selectorate Theory.

Something from Chomsky, I'd say Manufacturing Consent or Understanding Power or both. Chomsky has written about 40 books so it's impossible to keep up with him and you may end up disagreeing on substantial points, but I think he's probably the most important to read because he situates his political analysis outside the invisible constraints of American political culture, and American political culture tends to be naive about the goals and methods of government and other institutions.

Watch this CGP Grey video and consider how it applies to political parties, political discourse, and political activism. Afterwards you should either read the meme wikipedia page or Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene.

Looking back I notice all my recommendations circle around studying politics itself as a phenomena, I don't know if that's what you meant but you might enjoy it. If you're more wondering which political stances you should take, decide that by which policies have empirical evidence of working and base your decisions on how robust you think the evidence is.

Books:

#ACCELERATE

Inventing the Future (Left Accelerationism)

Libidinal Economy (Lyotard)

Anti-Oedipuis: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Deleuze and Guattari)

Capitalist Realism (Fisher)

K-Punk(Fisher, a newly released anthology)

Articles:

This is the best introduction I've come across

The MAP (Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics)

This article from The Guardian

His book is pretty good too, also on Audible.

If you want a history that focuses on the U.S., Susan Stryker's book Transgender History is good.

If you want a world history, there isn't really one single book that covers specifically transgender history in the whole world. The best one is Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors, though it has some problems.

"Justice: What's the right thing to do?" by Michael Sandel is a good book for an overview of different approaches to ethics.

"Practical Ethics" by Peter Singer is the one that really first made me think there's good reason to pick a side.

Another amateur locksmith here. I got the HPC PIP-13 pick set from Rift Recon, and I started with the excellent Visual Guide to Lock Picking by Mark McCloud.

The pick set has all the basic types of picks, and the book is well written and provides plenty of imagery. Learning was a blast.

There was a very long debate about psychological egoism, a debate ended by an American philosopher James Rachels in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Moral-Philosophy-James-Rachels/dp/0078038243

Philosophy doesn't lend itself very well to bumper sticker wisdom.

1. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
   
   
2. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
   
   
3. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky
   
   
4. Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber

If you have the time and inclination I highly recommend Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics for a very sensible and convincing contra-religious standpoint on abortion and other moral issues.

You’re welcome. I also want to share this book with you: Kindly Inquisitors.

The linked tweet was tweeted by @ggreenwald on Mar 20, 2018 11:26:53 UTC

-------------------------------------------------

Many Democrats have been led to believe this term was invented and popularized last year by Sean Hannity to help Trump. It's actually been something that serious foreign policy and government secrecy experts have discussed and analyzed for many years https://www.amazon.com/Deep-State-Government-Secrecy-Industry/dp/1118146689 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/976045546946232320

-------------------------------------------------

^• Beep boop I'm a bot • Find out more about me at /r/tweettranscriberbot/ •

I encourage everyone to read this book. Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky he explains detail about how the media is changing everything.

> "Deep State" is Russian talk. Kremlin talk. It didn't exist before it besides on Infowars

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-State-Government-Secrecy-Industry/dp/1118146689

https://web.archive.org/web/20140102073615/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/opinion/sunday/a-wordnado-of-words-in-2013.html

Actually it came from discussions of Egyptian politics and was used by people on the left for years. I must be a Russian shill collecting paycheques from Putin by pointing this out though. Or is the shill joke only funny when liberals are making fun of paranoid morons and not leftists?

For ancient stuff, Leslie Feinberg's book Transgender Warriors is a place to start. It's not really academically rigorous, but a good introduction to gender-variant people and stories from ancient history to today.

Awesome article.

For more, here's a decent documentary based on Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent:

>It's basically an institutional analysis of the major media, what we call a propaganda model[...] they do this in all sorts of ways: by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict -- in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.

That’s not surprising. Propaganda works. There’s a book you might want to check out called Manufacturing Consent that explains why the media pushes certain ideas even if those ideas are lies. The book was written in the 80s but it’s just as true today as it was then.

https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media-ebook/dp/B0055PJ4R0

It's funny that this is a Harvard study because their (and other Ivy League schools) less than fair admissions practices heavily contribute to aristocracies, which contribute to the rise of oligarchies.

Check out this book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1400097975?pc_redir=1410065014&robot_redir=1

This is a good chance for you to get into ethics/morality. Try 'Practical Ethics' by Peter Singer. It will make you think more deeply and understandingly about morality, including this issue. http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521707684

Reading Kant on your own would be difficult, especially without a concrete understanding of the philosophers who preceded him. My advice would be to start with shorter texts of his - such as his essays "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" and "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" - in order to get a feel for his style, and also to read and listen to introductions from experts:

• Geoffrey Warnock on Kant [1][2][3][4][5]
  
  
• Kant: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton
  
  
• Hegel on Kant
  
  
• Michael Sandel of Harvard: Introductory lecture on Kantian Ethics
  
  
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Kant
  
  With that being said, I would start with "Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals" if you're interested in Ethics and "Prolegomena" if you're interested in Epistemology.

Not all of these are ML and not all of them are that recent, but here's some good Marxist books written by women & trans comrades:

• Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis
  
• Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici
  
• Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory by Lise Vogel
  
• Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg

One of the first things I've used my bitcoin for! So cool to pay with my phone and see it instantly verified on the site. Anyways, if you haven't had the chance to read Lessig's book, Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress, I highly recommend getting a copy. I'd consider it one of the most important political books I've ever read. Quick read too!

That fear may be overblown but this is a thing that some people are doing-- making certain strong women from history who were uncomfortable with gender roles or wore men's clothing into trans men.

Here's a New Yorker piece suggesting Carson McCullers was really a trans man for no good reason: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/white-writer/amp

Here's a book about "transgender warriors" that includes Joan of Arc: https://www.amazon.ca/Transgender-Warriors-Making-History-Dennis/dp/0807079413

https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-History-Studies-Susan-Stryker/dp/158005224X
Transgender History (Seal Studies) (9781580052245): Susan ...

Used as the definitive Text at College and Universities.

https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-Studies-Reader-1/dp/041594709X
The Transgender Studies Reader (Volume 1 ... - Amazon.com
Also used in college Gender Studies courses.

https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-Warriors-Making-History-Dennis/dp/0807079413
Transgender Warriors : Making History from Joan ... - Amazon.com

I don't know how they labeled themselves, but it was definitely under the Tran Umbrella.

The Dems did abandon the white working class, or at the very least were in the process of doing so. I will give no specific policy evidence for this but will give an underlying truth. We had the emerging Democratic majority. We had "the jobs arent coming back mantra", we had the deplorables, we had record immigration(both legal and illegal), we had proposed amnesties for illegals, we had identity politics coming out of our ears, we had race and ethnic baiting. All this with an eye on the electoral advantage to the Democrats. All this to ensure the soon to be Dem Majority. Even if you disagree with the above I think you have to admit the emerging Democratic Majority had some influence on how Dems had been playing politics recently.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis/dp/0743254783

> This is rationalism?

Reading people who have object- and meta-level views you may disagree with? Yes. I wouldn't hesitate to read The Emerging Democratic Majority if I were interested in their methodology as opposed to just a couple of soundbites that I heard repeated elsewhere in the blogosphere when the book first came out.

This is a total mischaracterization of socialism. There are anti-authoritarian forms of socialism, which are what the vast majority of socialists advocate for. Sorry but I'm not going to debunk every point in this novel on the INFJ subreddit of all places.

EDIT: The position you're arguing from is called "Capitalist Realism," the notion that Capitalism is a natural outgrowth of human nature and the only truly viable economic model. This view is deeply ahistorical.

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-Realism-There-No-Alternative/dp/1846943175/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=capitalist+realism&qid=1570814527&sr=8-1

AFAIK most of the philosophers are moral realists whether they're atheist or theist. Also Michael Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism may be change your view on morality.

If you do want to know about Kant, first try: 'Kant: A Very Short Introduction' - Scruton -- 150 pages, $10, good summary.

Thanks! It’s “Visual Guide to Lockpicking” (link ).

An administration employee of Kushner's prep school was shocked when he got into Harvard.

​



My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

​

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard

the visual guide cannot be beaten in clear directions for beginners.

>The general idea seems to be that reason is incompatible with a purely physical explanation of the mind, but there is absolutely no support given for this, just a bunch of bizarre analogies and handwaving.

Any materialist philosopher would agree with him that this is one of the thorniest, if not insurmountable, problems with materialism. It might be better to read a book on philosophy of mind. I'm reading this now.

Consciousness is related to intentionality because intentionality means "aboutness."

You could also watch this short video from David Chalmers, and otherwise naturalistic atheist philosopher who has gone dualist because of the problems with materialism.

This is good theological justification of the type of ideas that Peter Singer has written about. I'm about half-way through right now, and I gotta say... I'm almost a vegitarian...almost.

Are causal readers discouraged from reading introductory ethics texts because there is the vocabulary used by ethicists? Do you know that using this language discourages the causal reader?

I mean to say, some sort of vocabulary is necessary to get enough specificity, and many philosophers that write introductory texts use the traditional vocabulary after introducing how they will use these terms.

Take, for example, Simon Blackburn's Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics. It uses most of these terms that Harris thinks are incredibly boring, but it's a huge seller and highly rated by both professional philosophers and the public press (you can't say that about Harris's books).

I haven't read Subahibi, so I'm just going to take your question as "how do I get into philosophy."

Philosophy is one of the most diverse fields that we currently have. Philosophy is more than just pondering the meaning of life, it also is about uncovering the mindsets on discoveries and how people came about the knowledge we have today. You should start more simple over diving into people's work like Nietzsche so you can get the full picture on why they say what they say.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, metaphysics is the study of existence (not to be confused with existentialism, which is even more meta and theoretical), Aesthetics is the study of art, Ethics is the study of morality, and there are philosophies of politics, mind, body, religion, and all sorts.

I would shy away from direct writings from philosophers, as contemporary books are the literal collection of all of their knowledge presented in an easier to digest way.

That's not the point. The point is who gets to decide what good and bad thought is? here is a really good book on this topic

> The government now serves the will of the rich lobbyist groups.

You are not the only one to say that!

This book was written in 2012-- have you read it?

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It

Yes, you are correct. That's a big issue.

I haven't read the book yet, but I really should.

The book that originated the theory.

This should be mandatory reading for any aspiring political analyst. Too many people read the book and concluded that since demographics would allow democrats to win no matter what, they could abandon the center and push whatever the base wanted without consequence. Trump unfortunately is the consequence of not reading the book more closely.

I know you don't want any Huemer facts...but I thought it was cool that Stuart Rachels wrote a back cover review for Michael Huemer's book on Ethical Intuitionism.

I had that Elements too, though unfortunately I'm in the same boat as you so no recommendations. Just...please don't dogmatically adopt ethical theory that leads you to the conclusions you want to be true, m'kay? (cough Ethics of Liberty)

O.K. Fair point? But then you make that situation as rare as possible, not your priority. Tell you what read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097975. Or let me point you tothis article: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard Δ

> No. There are a range of goals (because AnCap is an umbrella term) but none of them are 'stateless' corporate-oligarchy since corporations are themselves branches of the state we are against. Something like a polystate is closer to what you describe but is not anarcho-capitalist in nature (or conception).

You don't think your system is total corporate tyranny, but it is.

> nature has oppressed you

Well look who doesn't have a clue what the other person believes.

> There are numerous volumes of text on why a state is unlikely to rise from Anarcho-Capitalism

So? There are many more that explain why it would.

> Who advocates for this particular acronym in the broader AnCap community?

David Friedman.

> Except that what we are advocating for is freed markets, not 'capitalism'. Though I would say I have no problems with capital accumulation.

Private owns of the means of production is capitalism. If you advocated for freed markets, you'd be a mutualist.

Take your time, don’t be too worrried about needing to have all your opinions in order and arguments to back them up. Ethics and morality is a complicated subject, and if you study it in depth your opinions are going to evolve over time through life experience and discovering nuanced ways of thinking about tough questions. For an intro I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Being-Good-Short-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0192853775#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1524704107598

Again dont worry about making decisions about what you think and why. Just read from a variety of sources, have engaging conversations (not arguments) with other people who find the topic challenging, and keep an open mind as you continue to grow and learn. People have spent whole careers wrestling with these questions, there’s no rush!