Philosophy Now Forum

Why be an Altruist It is impossible for a person to ask any moral question unless he already has a sense of empathy, or at least a recognition of other human beings and society. The fact that he recognises he is in society at some level means he must ask questions about it and how he relates to it. ...

Government When the police do not act for society according to the law, for fear of upsetting a particular cultural-religious group, we are one step nearer Anarchism [not chaos]. Anarchism based, not on the individual in this instance, but on social groups. No country has ever been absolutely anythi...

Surviving the American Dream Well it does depend on how that is defined. If it simply means Freedom, it has to be asked who this is for or what it is for. Freedom for all individuals tends to be transferred to freedom for any business or other concern they may create. But while the former may evolve...

Pigmentation and DNA - colour and race - are not in themselves ethical values. They are components of culture. It is the way culture is used that is an ethical matter. Therefore the term racism is an ethical value. It stands opposed to the ambivalence of anti-racism. Clearly enough, to categorise pe...

Ethical values can be imposed on us by the plain logic of how things are.
What does it mean for something to be outside and yet connected.

Pragmatism, is a value that is essential in ethics. Without it there is whimsical self deceit. A danger is with politicians who claim to be pragmatists, and are indeed nothing else that they acknowledge. Pragmatism must have a purpose or end value, and 'pragmatists' are merely ignoring what that is ...

Religion has its many faces, four as categorised. Two of these may be considered eccentric or atypical. Extreme religious sects or cults have existed that are self destructive, if not of society generally. Mainline religions tends to be more socially responsible or they would not have existed and ad...

Words are fluid. Technical terms defined by science. Most others float on a populist current [gay]. The term 'god' may signify something out there, beyond, immanent, a corpus of belief. Terms from Catholic to capitalist are indicative, and have changed. A person's god is determined by his personal c...

The ethical plot deepens when the value of equality is considered. It is consonant with freedom and is therefore in the same dimension. It relates to other values that are consonant with those which relate to freedom. Equality is opposed to such end-values as elitism, class, caste, and forms of tyra...

Returning to the ethics described diagrammatically. The present popular linear arrangement of social ethics, or politics, and of virtue and vice is very poor. Indeed it is often simply an arrangement of theories that are mixes of values, rather than the values themselves. The simplest construct that...

The question of god, is the question of sapient life - fundamentally. And sapience implies life. But it is an absurdity to speak of god creating sapience. It is absurd to speak of god creating himself. Therefore sapient life and god are as one. The ultimate question is that of sapience.

I notice the usual comment that ethics or morality derives from God. If the underlying question is, Do you believe in God. This almost certainly denotes a prior belief in the identity of God that brooks no debate. The end of this is acrimony and violence as seen everywhere today. There is no need to...

Carrying on what I said previously Freedom is a term which is employed more as a slogan for political purposes, governmental and personal, with little regard for anything other than opposition to outright tyranny. But there is the freedom of the autonomous person, of the elite, of many or all. Freed...

Antonyms There appears to be a tendency to take a value like freedom, and define its opposite - tyranny, authoritarianism - and then employ the pairing almost in isolation. Any further definition is in the things we like to do in their name. Pragmatism. It is assumed the opposite of a word - social ...

If I knew what philosophy is I would probably leave it to the academic fraternity. RWS of England.