In Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre recounts a story of a student who asked him for advice. As the comic says, the student was torn between two paths, to stay with his mother, or to join the army and fight the Germans to avenge his brother and protect France. Sartre explain that no moral system, be it religious or philosophical, could tell him what to do. Abstract systems were too divorced from reality to answer such concrete, human questions. Sartre advised the student, rather vaguely, that he was free, and only he could make the decision - he could not defer to a system to make it for him. Sartre also claimed that the student choose him specifically knowing that he would give such advice. If the student had wanted Christian advice, he would have gone to a priest, etc.
We can imagine, of course, that the student didn't specifically seek out Sartre because he knew ahead of time that Sartre would advice him that the choice was his alone, and instead actually wanted some kind of concrete moral advice from a his philosophy professor. Perhaps, in this case, he would found to the advice of "well you are free so the choice is yours" to be quite lame.
We can imagine, of course, that the student didn't specifically seek out Sartre because he knew ahead of time that Sartre would advice him that the choice was his alone, and instead actually wanted some kind of concrete moral advice from a his philosophy professor. Perhaps, in this case, he would found to the advice of "well you are free so the choice is yours" to be quite lame.
So actually...making people understand what they are talking about is censorship of their ignorant views. Making me read a book is censorship.
There are a large number of people who spend a good majority of their time and energy worrying about something called "postmodern neo-marxists", while rather amazingly, not being able to name a single one, or describe what they believe. Apparently though, these mysterious postmodernists think that "everything is as true as everything else" (a position that no one has ever held), and are engaged in some kind of systematic plot to destroy Western Civilization, by using...linguistic relativism, or something? It's kind of hard to say.
Actually, the phrase "drug seeking behavior" doesn't denote anything in the world, per se...
In order to lose all your money to this scam, first you have to lose half of it. Oh and by the way you already lost half of it.
How about this: no one can say anything that isn't grounded in empirical observation, except for Wittgeinstein.
In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein more or less lays out a position that any statement which does not directly link to an empirical observation is "nonsense". Of course, it wasn't hard to realize that most, or perhaps all, of the very book he had written would then have to be counted as nonsense. He got around this probably thus:
My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used themas stepsto climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
So in other words, no one is allowed to give nonsensical statements, starting the exact moment after they read Wittgenstein. A rather strange solution, to be sure, but what can you do I guess?
My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used themas stepsto climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
So in other words, no one is allowed to give nonsensical statements, starting the exact moment after they read Wittgenstein. A rather strange solution, to be sure, but what can you do I guess?
👍1
According to Kant's moral philosophy, actions such as lying were not permissible because they could not be coherently "universalized". So if everyone lied all the time, it would undermine the very concept of lying, because no one would believe anything anyone said, making lying pointless. In addition, Kant believe that for an action to be moral, it had to be done out of a sense of duty. If you save someone from a burning building because you want a reward, or because you will be punished if you don't do it, you aren't doing anything moral - you must do it out of your moral duty to save them.