I resent that, I did contribute. I posted a kick ass poem that is right up there in terms of corny bullshittedness as this entire discussion.

its was an observation not a conclusion. One that has lead you to narrow the focus of your topic down to your specifc value set, which you used to evaluate the degree of symapthtic response to the people involved in the situation.


Sixx

what i find troubleing about the whole idea is, how can you derive the worth of others when understanding and evaluating your own worth is impossible.

Plus the that recurrence bit rubs me the wrong way

oh, and something you read caught my eye. when you say "if they had through everything... i wouldn't have had a problem with that.". it sounds as if you assume it's possible to think on your own. i'd suppose you might be right (to deny that would be an interesting argument indeed, one which i might try to make later on), but even so these people are obviously thinking for themselves to some extent. at what point do people lose control of their own destiny? if doing 'freely' what some 'puppetmaster' wants is not freedom at all, no real theist at all can argue we have free will. does the fact that you agree with (or are obsessed by) what someone's saying and do what they command mean you've lost free will, and have become a brick in the will? i'm fairly sure determinists would argue that we're all 'sheep' in a certain sense. in fact i think everyone can agree we're all sheep on the inside, even the leaders, because the leaders have to play by the same rules as the rest of us - they can never do or possess what is not theirs to do or own, nobody can. in that sense we all just play the cards we're dealt. am i making sense? in summary the question i'm asking is how can you judge anyone a sheep? who are we to judge?

and billy wouldn't that be "bullshitt I ness"? i think you're supposed to form the noun from the adjective, not the past participle (which however can be used as an adjective but only in the active sense). i'm fairly sure 'bullshittedness' would be "the state of having been bullshitted" whereas what i believe you want to say is "the state of being bullshitty". i like the word, though.

Well, I never technically stated that it was an existential reasoning...I merely was stating that: as nihilism stems from existentialism, I assumed that some of the reasoning behind existentialism might go hand in hand with the "sheep mentality" argued by nihilist(?). Existentialism does make the assertion that one's "self" is all one can really have any probability on...and as such, one's "self" is of the upmost importance. To deny one's "self" is the worst crime of all. However, as was suggested by Nietzsche, not denying one's "self" is not without its consequences...society will judge you. But since the probability of others' existence is not as high as yours, fuck it!

And of course, it goes much deeper than that, but that's just an idea.

Huh?

.

Well who else's value set am I going to use, apart from my own???!! That's what you're doing right now - that's what we all do. Of course its just my opinion - that's what philosophy ultimately boils down to - opinion. And all i wanted to know was who agreed with me and who didn't, and why. You're widening the scope here just because you want something to argue about, i think, but its not really going anywhere - no offense!



I KNEW someone would mention the free-will argument eventually! Personally I believe that we have limited free will in that every choice we make leaves us with a finite (rather than an infinite) number of choices. And yes, i have no idea how much these people were excersising this limited free will that i believe in or not: I can't look inside their heads. BUT from my feeble senses etc etc it seemed to me like they weren't excersisng any of it. Which annoyed me, which is why I didn't sympathise. Does that make it any clearer?

that's an interesting theory you have about limited free will, you might be interested in looking around the philosophy section for the multitude of threads dealing with fate, the future, our limitations, etc.
and i knew that what you said about the followers was your own personal opinion, i didn't mean to accuse you of being wrong or anything. i just like thinking about stuff like that... like for example how sympathy really means "the same feelings", so minus its connotation, i imagine the question whether we sympathize with other people boils down to whether or not we would have the same feelings as them in a given situation, whether we react how they do or not. and since we can never know what's in another person's head, we can never be sure whether it's sympathy, misunderstanding, or plain deceipt. and logically, if you don't sympathise with them for not exercising what free will they have to the fullest extent, that means you feel you do, and hence cannot have the same feelings as them. but i wonder how one could go about proving that what they're doing and thinking is free will? i'm sure there must be topics like this all over the board. for my part, i believe the future causes the present (and the past is what really doesn't exist), so that we're discovering the reason, and hence, the motive behind our actions later. it works out rather nicely because the universe could be completely deterministic in that sense and we would retain, in theory, all our free will. but that's another story.
bottom line, your position is totally understandable, although hard to justify. but everything really is if you think about it. i'm curious as to what your religious beliefs are, if it's not too personal. please don't take offence to that question, if you don't want to answer then just don't.
and perhaps as a question to keep this discussion going: you say that them not exercising free will is annoying. how so?

Thats okay, apostate87, i'm not offended! I consider myself to be spiritual really, and if i had to pick a religion then i'd say paganism would be it, since i connect with nature to a large degree.


That's very interesting. I too believe that the past doesn't really exist, mostly because i have a really hard time remembering it properly! (that's not a drug joke btw - i'm being serious!)

Perhaps you should start a thread on that? You could link it in with time travel as well, because that would obviously be closely connected....


It's annoying in so far as that if you're given the ability to really reflect on an action or decision before you take it, then you should do so (in my opinion at least). And of course there's plenty of ppl out there who don't do that, i know, I just wish more of them did!

Paganism is not a religion. Thats like saying pick a race and I say, Non-white.

Sixx eternal recurrence

Jelly iam not argueing with you, i made an observation and then a statment. I am attempting to lead you in a diffrent thought direction, generally thats what involved in a discussion. Back on point Ill ask a two part question do you think that your lack of sympathy is truely born from your percieved notion of the killers inabailty to act indepedently, or are you simpley digesting the herds disgust for murder into something that fufills your sense of idependence while at the same time following the herds value system. Can you truly answer this questions, can anyone truely answer this question, Nietzch and others have tried see above.

By the by philisophy is not opinion it is the process the thinking through and trying to creat a theoritcal framwork for things unexplained

Yes - I already stated that.

No - because I don't believe that "The Herd", and specifically its value system, exists, in that I don't believe in so-called objective morals (and that includes "Murder is Wrong" by the way). I termed these people "sheep" simply because in my view they were not rationalising their actions enough as individuals - rather, they were being "spoon-fed" by another individual: "Charlie says this, Charlie says that, Charlie is this, Charlie is that" - on and on. As I stated before, if they (in my opinion) had given thoughtful self-proclaimed reasoning, I would have been fine with it and not posted this thread.


I can't answer it - no. All I can have is a belief justified by my subjective value system.


No shit!



I'm not trying to be an intellectual little shit here, so I apologize in advance if I come across as one.........I don't know what you're philosophical background is but I've got a Masters Degree in Philosophy, and the overriding theme that I discovered, spanning all the varied topics that the course covered, is that there really is no objective truth when it comes to philosophy, and where you stand on whatever philosophical question is in hand, can only really have its foundation in rational opinion. Of course there's a theoretical framework created, as you mentioned, but within this are the two or more opinion camps that make up the varied arguments - for, against, sitting on the fence etc.

Okay call it a belief system then.

You have a masters and you don't know what existentialism is? What type of philosophy did you study...analytical or continental? What philosophies? And, how in the world do you formulate that just becuase their is no objective truth (which, I can sympathize with, but whole-heartedly disagree...but that's a discussion for another time) that philosophy is all opinions? Do you not discern the difference between BIG-T Truth (the objective) and small-t truth's? 2 + 2 = 4 in a base-ten mathematical system...truth! Ergo, philosophy isn't opinion, it's a science of definitions. Every form of philosophy must meet requirements...it must support logical and valid premises which justifies a logical and valid conclusion.


Objective morals? What's a subjective moral?

When it comes to morals, I again take Nietzsche's stance. Morality was a tool invented by man to help cage the beast within, to seperate man from animal, and to help man govern himself more efficiently. Moralaity doesn't exist, just the idea of it does. After all, what was immoral 200 years ago (say, a white woman bearing a black child) is perfectly acceptable today (although, a white woman bearing a black child isn't looked upon with any moral sentiment...except, maybe by feelings of family or racial bigotry).

So...what's an objective moral? I'm curious...

And are we all in agreement that everyone is in some way a sheep? This is far out there proposition, but isn't their following "The Father" as their "sheepness" just in relation to everyone's being a sheep? Or do you not consider Manson a sheep? Perhaps, his "sheepness" is seperated from the other sheep we see. Surely, he wasn't the average man doing the average thing most men do. Does that make him less of a sheep? Does that make his followers less of sheep...or a sheep of a different degree?

if they acted in the best interest of there personnel desires, ie. to get closer or garnner favor with Manson, then they did not behave as "sheep" but as individuals with personnel motive.

Iam interested in how you came to the conlusion that a herd mentality and its value you system dont exist could you expand a little on that.

1. very well said about the 'sheep' thing, precisely what i was trying to get at earlier but got a little convoluted.

2. about philosophy being all opinions: i think that can be correct while at the same time preserving the objective nature of philosophy. philosophy is really just finding a way of explaining something that can be agreed with. ie, when we say 2 + 2 = 4 we're really saying that we can buy it, and that it seems like the best way to look at it. then again, math is prescriptive and not descriptive, in that we make up math and such and it's correct as a result. all hard sciences are descriptive - empirical, etc. it's not that way because we defined it to be. it would be fairly simple to construct a mathematical system in which 2 + 2 was equal to something else, or, simpler still, one in which 2 + 2 makes no sense (as an example). every philosophy is objectively true only in its own context. remove anything from context and it no longer has any meaning.

3. morality? i think i'm going with mr N on this one. although the idea of objective morality is intriguing, almost sensuous. yes, i'll put thought into that. perhaps objective morality is done by averaging out all the subjective ones? so how sick you are would be the standard deviation... but then would every moral system get the same weight? who's moral system counts more?

it's easy for me to tend to think everything is ultimately subjective, but it's almost like deep down there's a part of me that knows something is universal. math, logic, science, religion, emotions, nature - no universal truths to be found. i wonder if i ever find it whether i'll be disappointed?

oh and i think when jellybrat says 'paganism' the means something along the lines of wicca, witchcraft, satanism (reaching) - implicitly. especially since she mentioned nature. correct me if i'm wrong. i think billy was actually calling you on the fact that 'paganism' is a blanket term for anything not related to judaism, christianity or islam; like hillbilly religion.

Ah, you're one of them. That is very popular argument amongst philosophers, one that I can agree with. Things are what we say they are...knowledge is only gained through our understanding of things...yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Don't know what the correct, technical term of it is, but yeah. But then you seem to step away from that, with "things aren't that way because we define them to be," which again, a popular argument, and one I really agree with. That's my main stance on this issue. Things are as we design them to be, but there's still a quality (the veil of appearance) we have only a minute comprehension of.

In a round about way, you just totally proved my earlier point. When I said, VERY DESCRIPTIVELY, that 2 + 2 = 4 in a base 10 mathematical system. 2 + 2 = ??? in any other system...which does exist, not all mathematical systems are a base 10. Ergo, one must be as descriptive as possible...hence, philosophy is a science of definition.


I too agree that their is a univeral truth. And ultimately, I think we know what the universal truth is. But it's so broad, most of us don't like it. But, as I've argued countless times before, how is existence not in anyway a universal truth?! Things exist...the end! Existence! The end!

Sixx you got to alot of the questions I was thinking before I posted,

on sheep: how many do you need to have a herd of sheep, or are there varying herds with in herds, to draw a relationship with Manson - was the group big enough to be considered sheep.

To present an opposing view point were all sheep following a herd the herd is the same, you can rationlize your response to a given situation in anyway you want but your actions still benfit the herd. Now the question do anomalies exist, wolfs in sheep clothing, no, but iam waiting for someone to tell me iam wrong