[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
Does anyone here really believe that the world would be safer if Iran obtained nuclear weapons? [/quote]
Aye!
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Of course we can and must preach who should have nukes while we still have the upper hand. Why would we want Iran to get them and possibly use them? What possible sense would that make?
Look at all the victims in Iraq. Most of them were killed by the bad guys and you want the bad guys to obtain nukes?
Exactly. Does anyone here really believe that the world would be safer if Iran obtained nuclear weapons?
It’s all relative. Maybe not here, but an iranian might think otherwise.[/quote]
heehee… quite funny that 
[quote]lixy wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Does anyone here really believe that the world would be safer if Iran obtained nuclear weapons?
Aye![/quote]
Ummm, herr Lixy, pray tell…why?
[quote]Fullback33 wrote:
…
Most of them were killed by the bad guys? I think if you were more vague it would help, lol. Who are the bad guys again? It seems there is even some confusion on the iraqi’s behalf on that subject as well.
Nobody ever answers the question, why do we think we know better than other countries. Iran may or may not be trying to get nukes. if they are, i am sure it is because they think it is neccesary. why are they wrong and we are right? they havent killed any civilians with nukes, but we have.
[/quote]
The bad guys are the ones setting off bombs in markets and mosques and torturing and beheading sanitation workers.
Iran is a major sponsor of terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere right now but by your logic, since they have not used a nuke yet, (because they dont have one) it is a fine idea to let them get one.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
lixy wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Does anyone here really believe that the world would be safer if Iran obtained nuclear weapons?
Aye!
Ummm, herr Lixy, pray tell…why?[/quote]
The world is safer when countries aren’t attacking each other. The US is much (MUCH!) more likely to start a war than Iran is. A nuclear armed Iran would make the hawks in Washington think twice about fscking up yet another country. Ergo, the world would be safer if Iran obtained nukes.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
lixy wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
…
You have no clue what relativism is. Read up:
hah! And you, my good man, obviously have no clue about how hotly contested this term is.
Sorry, Lixy, the wikipedia entry you provided is bogus & one-sided. It is long on Richard Rorty type fluffery, and gives short (re: nearly non-existent) shrift to the far profounder criticisms of both the term itself, and the “theorists” (usually not formal philosophers) who wield the term like a cudgel in American universities.
No formal philosopher would take the definitions provided therein seriously. There is a broad and deep literature establishing the incoherence of relativism as you/Wikki have defined it. Just for example: relativism cannot be the opposite of absolutism because relativism contains an absolutist claim: that “all truth is relative.” No serious philosopher would deny this. This (that “relativism contains its own thinly veiled absolutism”) is precisely why Pope Benedict refers to “the dictatorship of relativism.”
Now, before you go find a response to my example: I am entirely aware of (and can faithfully reproduce) what those responses are. I am not a philosopher (thank god!) However, I am sorry to admit that I spent an entire semester in a small, graduate level seminar on “relativism vs. objectivity.” Anyone who fairly assesses all the arguments, and counter arguments, and so on, will find that relativism is an incoherent philosophical term that ultimately falls apart under real scrutiny.
But, you see, the problem is, it’s an awfully useful (because uniquely powerful, see below) term for certain types of people, which explains its staying power. You are probably aware, for example, of how deeply the term is connected with deconstruction theory and linguistic/literary theories. At any rate, “relativism,” both in and outside the American university, is a faux philosophical term that is wielded as a pseudo-intellectual defense against reasoned arguments.
For example: don’t like the views of your opponent in a debate? Dismiss your interlocutor with “it’s all relative.” Don’t agree with them? “It’s all relative.” Losing an argument? “It’s all relative.” Over your head intellectually? “It’s all relative.” And so, discussions and debates are terminated, intellectual inquiry is smothered, communication is squelched, with a single, all-purpose, pseudo-intellectual mind widget: relativism.
Now, you might ask yourself, as formal philosophers tirelessly do: if, indeed, “it’s all relative,” and if we can establish no shared, universal values & meanings, what is the point of discussing anything? After all, what is there to discuss? One can go even deeper on this same point, and ask: absent shared, universal values and meanings, how we are even able to communicate at all? And so on…until we all slip comfortably numb into our solipsistic little worlds, repeating the banal mantra to ourselves, “it’s all relative” - a situation with which Rorty, bizarrely enough, is perfectly fine. “Relativism,” Lixy, is the (absolute) queen of the weasel words.
At bottom, the relativist argument is a power grab. It is a meaningless term, a cipher, a nothing, which covers up it’s own, virulent form of absolutism. It is a power grab because it doesn’t allow for, cannot even theoretically postulate the existence of, reasoned discussion, especially about itself. It is a power grab because beneath the smiley face, and the rising pitch on terminals to make assertions sound like queries, and the egalitarian rhetoric, is the assertion of unexamined (how can they be examined, “it’s all relative”!) social and political agendas. Think smiley face with a fucking Hitler mustache and you’re pretty close to understanding the fascist nature of “Relativism.”
Let me take all this a step further: to deny the universal status of any and all truth statements is to deny the existence of truth. What is so hard about this to understand? I’ll say it again, relativism is merely an updated nihilism.
[/quote]
It is not the denial of truth, but the knowledge that you cannot prove that something is true, unless you have some point of reference which can be shared or not.
Plus, a weasel word the way Hajek used it comes from the Weasels way of sucking eggs dry and leaving the shell intact, thus leaving the impression of a sound egg when all the substance is gone.
His examples are anything with social in it, like social equality, social justice and so on. Insofar relativism is no weasel word because it pretty much has an established meaning.
[quote]orion wrote:
It is not the denial of truth, but the knowledge that you cannot prove that something is true, unless you have some point of reference which can be shared or not.
[/quote]
Orion, you obviously haven’t read my post very closely. Or any rigorous philosophy. Okay, so tell me, how can we ever come to know if we share a “point of reference”? And your statement above, is that always true?
You’re right about weasel words. “Social justice” and similar phrases appear to have established meanings - until one looks into them closely and finds that they are utterly vacuous concepts. Same thing with relativism.
If you are not aware that your so-called “established meaning” behind relativism is hotly debated - and I mean hotly - then you really just don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry to be so harsh. But in all fairness, you asked for it.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
orion wrote:
It is not the denial of truth, but the knowledge that you cannot prove that something is true, unless you have some point of reference which can be shared or not.
Orion, you obviously haven’t read my post very closely. Or any rigorous philosophy. Okay, so tell me, how can we ever come to know if we share a “point of reference”? And your statement above, is that always true?
Plus, a weasel word the way Hajek used it comes from the Weasels way of sucking eggs dry and leaving the shell intact, thus leaving the impression of a sound egg when all the substance is gone.
His examples are anything with social in it, like social equality, social justice and so on. Insofar relativism is no weasel word because it pretty much has an established meaning.
“Social justice” and similar phrases appear to have established meanings too - until one looks into them closely and finds that they are utterly vacuous concepts. Same thing with relativism.
If you are not aware that your so-called established meaning behind relativism is hotly debated - and I mean hotly - then you really just don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry to be so harsh. But in all fairness, you asked for it.
[/quote]
But that is not how Hajek meant it.
Social justice for example gets its reputation from justice, which everyone agrees is good. Whatever social justice is is quite different than what most people think justice is.
Relativism is relativism. It does not hide behind a second word to suck it dry.
Plus, my epistemology is way better in German.
What I was trying to say that nothing can be proven to be true. Some things can have so much evidence going for them that you cannot really question them (yet), but that is a different concept and makes absolute “truths” unmanageable because even if you have found one, you cannot know that you have.
The only exceptions are if you establish some ground rules, like mathematics or a moral code, because in that frame of reference things can be said to be true or not.
However, especially with values and moral principles derived from them it is impossible to argue that one set of rules is better than the other and that is what most people that are against “moral relativisn” are trying to do.
[quote]orion wrote:
But that is not how Hajek meant it.
[/quote]
Okay, let me think about what you’re saying and try to address it as best as I can. I am somewhat familiar with Hayek’s epistemology, though I’m sure you are far more conversant in it than I am. Where do I find his discussion of the “weasel words” I’m betting it’s in the Fatal Conceit?
[quote]orion wrote:
Plus, my epistemology is way better in German.[/quote]
Haha, how could it not be better, in german?
[quote]orion wrote:
Plus, my epistemology is way better in German. [/quote]
Priceless!
[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
orion wrote:
Plus, my epistemology is way better in German.
Haha, how could it not be better, in german?[/quote]
I am sure that is not how you meant it, but I think that a lot of very influential philosophers dealing with “Erkenntnistheorie” published in the German language is not a coincidence.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
ephrem wrote:
…from a philosophical viewpoint nothing substantial can be said about truth because first you’d have to establish if said truth is universal. If a truth is not universal, it’s relative and thus meaningless as truth…
You do realize you are making an absolute truth claim here, right? If you are not aware of the irony of what you just said, I can’t help you - at least not over the internet.[/quote]
…you are right, but you’ve just proven my point: that truth is relative unless it’s universally true for everyone. If you disagree with this statement because you think this statement is not universally true, than please show with examples truths that are not universal but still objectively true…
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
orion wrote:
But that is not how Hajek meant it.
Okay, let me think about what you’re saying and try to address it as best as I can. I am somewhat familiar with Hayek’s epistemology, though I’m sure you are far more conversant in it than I am. Where do I find his discussion of the “weasel words” I’m betting it’s in the Fatal Conceit? [/quote]
I found it, he has actually stolen it from the Americans but introduced it to Germany on Februar 6, 1979, in a speech the the Freiburg University:
Soziales Verhalten im herkömmlichen Sinne fördere die Gesellschaft nicht, im Gegenteil. Hayek führte an dieser Stelle den amerikanischen Begriff weasel-word ein. So wie Wiesel ein Ei aussaugen können, ohne da�? man es nachher der Schale anmerkt, so seien Wieselwörter jene, die andere Wörter ihres Inhalts beraubten. Das Wieselwort par excellence sei “sozial”:
“Mehr als zehn Jahre habe ich mich intensiv damit befasst, den Sinn des Begriffs ‘soziale Gerechtigkeit’ herauszufinden. Der Versuch ist gescheitert.” Was es hei�?e, “sozial” zu sein, wisse niemand, so Hayek. “Wahr ist nur, dass eine soziale Marktwirtschaft keine Marktwirtschaft, ein sozialer Rechtsstaat kein Rechtsstaat, ein soziales Gewissen kein Gewissen, soziale Gerechtigkeit keine Gerechtigkeit - und ich fürchte auch, soziale Demokratie keine Demokratie ist.”
“like a weasle that can suck an egg dry, without leaving marks on the shell, so are weasel words those that rob other words of their meaning. The weasel word par excellence is “social””.
That is why I think relativism is not a weasel word, though it is often used by academic weasels as you pointed out above.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
pat wrote:
ephrem wrote:
pat wrote:In given circumstances things are either right or they are wrong. That is not a relative thing
…we must have a different understanding of what relative means Pat, because what you wrote here means to me that you do think that wrong and right áre relative = what a particular situation Ãs [right or wrong] depends upon the circumstances surrounding that situation, which means that right and wrong áre relative. Or not?
rel·a·tiv·ism Audio Help (r�?l’�?-tÄ-vÄz’�?m) Pronunciation Key
n. Philosophy
A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.
That is relativism.
I certainly hope that one is not so obtuse as to think that circumstances are not pertinent to a choice. That’s 3rd grader rationalizations. In a given situation a choice is either right or wrong. It is not relative because in every case where the situation arises the right choice and the wrong choice are always the same. Not relative to what you think, but what is actually the case.
…doesn’t it come down to how you assess the circumstances surrounding a given situation to determin whether something is right or wrong? I don’t quite understand where you stop deciding for yourself, based on the circumstances surrounding the situation, what is right or wrong and when that becomes self-evident. I’m honestly confused about what for you constitutes relativism and how that differs from how you assess such situations…
…you say ‘choice’ is right or wrong in a given situation, but i though we were talking about something else; namely that murder isn’t always wrong. That the ethics of murder are relative given the situation. Please enlighten me…
[/quote]
I do not understand why you are having a hard time with this. Murder is always wrong, but taking a life that is a threat to you or your family is not. Killing somebody because they shorted you on a drug deal is wrong.
Stealing is wrong, but if it means your kids will starve then it is not.
This stuff is not relativism. Relativism is allowing trivial matters to excuse you wrong behavior, like stealing because your friends stole, killing because you want to get in to a gang. Pocketing money intended to help others for the “greater good”, like Yasser Arafat.
I think you are looking at the word “relative” and relativism as the same thing, they are not.
Here wiki has a good article:
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
lixy wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Does anyone here really believe that the world would be safer if Iran obtained nuclear weapons?
Aye!
Ummm, herr Lixy, pray tell…why?[/quote]
I think the best option would be for America to disarm their nukes as an example. The next best option would be for every other country to have nukes.
Imagine a world where only America had nukes. Thats a scary place.
It’s no different than your pro gun laws. If everyone has them we’re safer than if only the bad guys have them. A better option is no one to have them.
[quote]Andrew Dixon wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
lixy wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Does anyone here really believe that the world would be safer if Iran obtained nuclear weapons?
Aye!
Ummm, herr Lixy, pray tell…why?
I think the best option would be for America to disarm their nukes as an example. The next best option would be for every other country to have nukes.
Imagine a world where only America had nukes. Thats a scary place.
It’s no different than your pro gun laws. If everyone has them we’re safer than if only the bad guys have them. A better option is no one to have them.
[/quote]
That is actually wrong because in a world without nukes the knowledge of nukes would still be there and every rational nation would have to build them secretly to be armed against her neighbours.
Better to live in a world where we know who has them.
[quote]pat wrote:
ephrem wrote:
pat wrote:
ephrem wrote:
pat wrote:In given circumstances things are either right or they are wrong. That is not a relative thing
…we must have a different understanding of what relative means Pat, because what you wrote here means to me that you do think that wrong and right áre relative = what a particular situation Ãs [right or wrong] depends upon the circumstances surrounding that situation, which means that right and wrong áre relative. Or not?
rel·a·tiv·ism Audio Help (r�?l’�?-tÄ-vÄz’�?m) Pronunciation Key
n. Philosophy
A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.
That is relativism.
I certainly hope that one is not so obtuse as to think that circumstances are not pertinent to a choice. That’s 3rd grader rationalizations. In a given situation a choice is either right or wrong. It is not relative because in every case where the situation arises the right choice and the wrong choice are always the same. Not relative to what you think, but what is actually the case.
…doesn’t it come down to how you assess the circumstances surrounding a given situation to determin whether something is right or wrong? I don’t quite understand where you stop deciding for yourself, based on the circumstances surrounding the situation, what is right or wrong and when that becomes self-evident. I’m honestly confused about what for you constitutes relativism and how that differs from how you assess such situations…
…you say ‘choice’ is right or wrong in a given situation, but i though we were talking about something else; namely that murder isn’t always wrong. That the ethics of murder are relative given the situation. Please enlighten me…
I do not understand why you are having a hard time with this. Murder is always wrong, but taking a life that is a threat to you or your family is not. Killing somebody because they shorted you on a drug deal is wrong.
Stealing is wrong, but if it means your kids will starve then it is not.
This stuff is not relativism. Relativism is allowing trivial matters to excuse you wrong behavior, like stealing because your friends stole, killing because you want to get in to a gang. Pocketing money intended to help others for the “greater good”, like Yasser Arafat.
I think you are looking at the word “relative” and relativism as the same thing, they are not.
Here wiki has a good article:
Moral relativism - Wikipedia [/quote]
so you are saying what relativism is is depending to the degree of oppositon you encounter?
[quote]pat wrote:
I think you are looking at the word “relative” and relativism as the same thing, they are not.
Here wiki has a good article:
Moral relativism - Wikipedia [/quote]
…you appear to oscillate between ‘thing are either right or wrong’ and calling those who oppose that thought ‘relativists’ whenever it suites you. No wonder i got confused…
[quote]Andrew Dixon wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
lixy wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Does anyone here really believe that the world would be safer if Iran obtained nuclear weapons?
Aye!
Ummm, herr Lixy, pray tell…why?
I think the best option would be for America to disarm their nukes as an example. The next best option would be for every other country to have nukes.
Imagine a world where only America had nukes. Thats a scary place.
It’s no different than your pro gun laws. If everyone has them we’re safer than if only the bad guys have them. A better option is no one to have them.
[/quote]
If America disarmed do you think Iran would stop trying to build a bomb?
America’s nukes have been and will continue to be a deterrent to massive warfare.
Why do you think war has been small scale for the past 60 years?