tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post3948988045867842067..comments2024-03-29T02:29:03.388-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Some varieties of bullsh*tEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46024177892148307362013-12-02T19:17:00.056-08:002013-12-02T19:17:00.056-08:00assuming incorrectly that something (say, genitali...<i>assuming incorrectly that something (say, genitalia or sex) can have only ONE "natural purpose" </i><br /><br />I'm not aware of any natural law theorist who assumes that genitalia or sex have only one natural purpose. Certainly I don't -- indeed, I've said repeatedly that genitalia and sex have more than one purpose. Nor is there anything in the NL position that requires saying otherwise.<br /><br />Not that I'm calling you a bullshitter, mind, you. just someone who manifestly doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.Edward Feserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-83415308186540152322013-12-02T18:48:43.685-08:002013-12-02T18:48:43.685-08:00Of course, one particular form of bullshit is very...Of course, one particular form of bullshit is very popular with some natural law theorists: Specifically, assuming incorrectly that something (say, genitalia or sex) can have only ONE "natural purpose" -- and then going gangbusters based on this deeply flawed assumption.<br /><br />It's hard to see anyone who builds their reputation on such a premise -- so obviously contrary to human experience -- as anything but a bullshitter.Rob Thttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06805401173549033322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-18286373865349679062013-11-14T07:25:08.650-08:002013-11-14T07:25:08.650-08:00Mind checking if I have been guilty of bullshit he...Mind checking if I have been guilty of bullshit here?<br /><br /><a href="http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2013/11/against-ofloinn-on-relation-of-17th-c.html" rel="nofollow">Item a</a>, <a href="http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2013/11/creation-ministries-international-are.html" rel="nofollow">item b</a>, <a href="http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/04/cagasuamfobdis.html" rel="nofollow">item c</a>.<br /><br />Answers can be left as comments under my blogposts (the items). I will aslo check up on this one.Hans-Georgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-48925854592465326962013-11-01T03:40:15.309-07:002013-11-01T03:40:15.309-07:00“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick successi...“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!<br />The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!”<br /><br />Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Beingclaudiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08867207336478957331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-63571707896112723502013-11-01T03:25:45.591-07:002013-11-01T03:25:45.591-07:00Ah, but in Cryptonomicon the proper spelling is an...Ah, but in Cryptonomicon the proper spelling is anathema.Glennnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-24074432684514273392013-10-31T22:14:42.357-07:002013-10-31T22:14:42.357-07:00According to Neal Stephenson, the proper spelling ...According to Neal Stephenson, the proper spelling is "bulshytt." That might help distinguish the technical term in philosophy from its vulgar homonym.Josephhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04720409839023747889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-51222776532436173672013-10-29T17:19:40.045-07:002013-10-29T17:19:40.045-07:00Yes, pederasty arose as a common practice in the H...Yes, pederasty arose as a common practice in the Hellenic world in the late Seventh Century BC and faded from popularity during the later Hellenistic period, if my memory serves. <br /><br />But, I believe, there were many parts of the Greek world where it was never a common practice (well, obviously, there are always men with such perverse attractions, but I mean in any sort of socially legitimate and recognised sense) and even where and when it was, it was hardly the case that it was unambiguously accepted and praised. It was certainly never the case, as some revisionists claim, that it was the natural and normal orientation of many Greeks, or that they tended to slight and repudiate heterosexual attraction. <br /><br />Even Plato's <i>Symposium </i>, one of the works that provides the best evidence of the idealisation and claimed superiority of pederastic relations use Aristophanes as one of the principle mouthpieces for this view. But, curiously, Aristophanes, at least from all the surviving evidence we have, was a poet who almost exclusively alludes to and makes use of heterosexual bawdiness and representations in his comedies. Add to that the fact that Aristophanes famously savaged Plato's mentor and mouthpiece Socrates, and we can see something unusual is going on in this aspect of the dialogue. Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-11263218852385463932013-10-29T16:25:34.125-07:002013-10-29T16:25:34.125-07:00"although even that had a far more ambiguous ..."although even that had a far more ambiguous place than many revisionists claim, varying in its legitimacy across time and place in the Hellenic world"<br /><br />To give some perspective for everyone, the time span between Aristotle and Christ was roughly 400 years. Think about how the opinions on homosexuality of this country have changed over the last 20 years, and you could see how easy it is to make an over-generalization.Timotheoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09848027239405239382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-22851966796259221592013-10-29T16:06:10.882-07:002013-10-29T16:06:10.882-07:00@Jeremy Taylor
Thanks for confirming my suspicions...@Jeremy Taylor<br />Thanks for confirming my suspicions; I had a feeling that was the case.Timotheoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09848027239405239382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-78914825202671178292013-10-29T15:07:14.324-07:002013-10-29T15:07:14.324-07:00- others, not offers- others, not offersJeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-37281041176715722572013-10-29T15:06:19.862-07:002013-10-29T15:06:19.862-07:00Rank Sophist,
It is only pederasty that had any a...Rank Sophist,<br /><br />It is only pederasty that had any acceptance amongst the ancient Greeks. Adult homosexuality (where both partners were capable of growing beards), even for the masculine partner, was something inferior and distasteful, at the very least. Even Plato has Socrates use the pleasures of a catamite as an obvious example of a disgraceful pleasure.<br /><br />For an ancient Greek it is almost certainly pederasty which was the more acceptable practice - although even that had a far more ambiguous place than many revisionists claim, varying in its legitimacy across time and place in the Hellenic world. For example, we often find parents and offers with a low opinion of pederasty, even in those cities and times it was common practice.<br /><br /> If Aristotle condemns pederasty then it can be assumed he was not in favour of adult homosexuality either.<br /><br />The only partial exception I'm aware of is female homosexuality. This is not condemned, to my knowledge, against the ancient Greeks, although it is discussed very little.Jeremy Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-50628636975179856302013-10-29T14:39:23.236-07:002013-10-29T14:39:23.236-07:00rank sophist: "I think it's clear that yo...rank sophist: "I think it's clear that you gutted your professor's argument."<br /><br />He meant well; he's just blinded by the very narrow thinking of contemporary academia. <br /><br />I think he probably heard “Aristotle”, equated it with “Plato”, made the mistake of trusting whatever history text on homosexuality he read to be historically accurate, which in turn probably made the mistake of equating Plato’s opinion with what he wrote in the <i>Phraedrus,</i> and then confirming his bias by naively trusting a philosophy <i>Bachelor </i> and US History PhD to know anything about a classical philosopher’s position. (which is like asking a math major who got a PhD in computer engineering to give a summary of Euclid’s <i> Elements </i> off the top of their head)<br /><br />Honestly, he knew better, since he was a PhD in US History and one thing you should never do as a historian is assume you know better than someone else on a slice of history you’re not a specialist in.<br /> <br />That’s why I called bullshit, because he knew what he’d be wading in going into it.<br /><br />Strangely, I actually thought I was fairly well received though; up until homosexuality was mentioned, they were all for natural law theory, and were still interested in it even afterward. (Albeit, skeptical that it could even potentially refute homosexuality as being moral)<br /><br />I especially thought this strange because practically none of them had even the faintest idea of the theory before that day. Perhaps my (very rough) explanations matched up well with their common sense intuitions?Timotheoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09848027239405239382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-5168705654925069822013-10-29T13:57:08.891-07:002013-10-29T13:57:08.891-07:00Timotheos,
Thanks for the clarification. It's...Timotheos,<br /><br />Thanks for the clarification. It's an interesting topic, and I was never sure what exactly Aristotle's position on pederasty and homosexuality was. I think it's clear that you gutted your professor's argument.rank sophisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01644531454383207175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-70643704514380283322013-10-29T13:51:06.970-07:002013-10-29T13:51:06.970-07:00@ rank sophist
To be a little more technical on s...@ rank sophist<br /><br />To be a little more technical on something I didn't make clear in the original post, my professor thought that the Greeks at least generally believed that pederasty was an ideal, and from that concluded that Aristotle must have thought that homosexuality was right, and I was therefore wrong about the origins of natural law theory. So you can see that there were layers of bullshit in his argument regardless of what Aristotle actually thought, and that the passage I quoted refutes his claim.<br /><br />Putting that aside, you say that the passage in question only speaks about pederasty, and not about homosexuality in the full. I’m not so sure that’s correct, because I think that might just be the way the passage was translated. <br /><br />For instance, when Aristotle’s words are reproduced in Aquinas’s commentary, it does clearly say homosexuality instead of pederasty. That might be because Aristotle’s words in that edition are a translation of Aquinas’s translation, which was, perhaps, an erroneous translation, but I’m not sure that’s the case.<br /><br />Another possibility is that pederasty was generally the only form of homosexuality of the time, and so when Aristotle commented on that, he could also be taken to be commenting on homosexuality in the full, like when, here in the south, we say “Coke” when we really mean “Soda” because Coke is the most popular brand of Soda.<br /><br />Not having a working knowledge of Greek however, or any other translations of the Nicomachean Ethics on hand, I cannot be sure.<br /><br />What I am sure about though is that both C.S. Lewis and Dr. Feser (in TLS) have both claimed that Aristotle explicitly condemned homosexuality, and the former certainly knew his Greek, so, for what it’s worth, I have some extra ethos to back up my claims. <br /><br />(although, to be technical, C.S. Lewis used the word “sodomy”, which, if I remember right, always included homosexuality in the full back in his day and context)Timotheoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09848027239405239382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-73637658663377372542013-10-29T10:46:32.674-07:002013-10-29T10:46:32.674-07:00Timotheos,
Thanks for the link. Aristotle's p...Timotheos,<br /><br />Thanks for the link. Aristotle's passage deals with pederasty, however, rather than homosexuality as such. Only in Aquinas's commentary is this expanded to relate to general homosexuality. It's still interesting to get a clear answer regarding Aristotle's position on pederasty, though.rank sophisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01644531454383207175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-16832360817758713862013-10-28T20:37:11.443-07:002013-10-28T20:37:11.443-07:00Thanks for the update BrandonThanks for the update BrandonTimotheoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09848027239405239382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-26347780191371162002013-10-28T17:31:55.764-07:002013-10-28T17:31:55.764-07:00The Bekker number is 1148b (1148b37-39, I think).The Bekker number is 1148b (1148b37-39, I think).Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-61787173001949970722013-10-28T14:16:10.669-07:002013-10-28T14:16:10.669-07:00@ Scott
What’s even sadder is that the example he...@ Scott<br /><br />What’s even sadder is that the example he “critiqued” was to merely illustrate the idea of per se causation as compared to per accidens causation, not to illustrate the idea of chains of per se causation. So simultaneity is not even directly relevant to the illustration.<br /><br /><br />@ rank sophist<br /><br />How about this?<br />“These states are brutish, but (B) others arise as a result of disease (or, in some cases, of madness, as with the man who sacrificed and ate his mother, or with the slave who ate the liver of his fellow), and others are morbid states (C) resulting from custom, e.g. the habit of plucking out the hair or of gnawing the nails, or even coals or earth, and in addition to these pederasty; for these arise in some by nature and in others, as in those who have been the victims of lust from childhood, from habit.“<br /><br />Nicomachean Ethics Book VII Section 5 <br />(sorry, about the lack of a bekker #; I can’t make heads or tails of them.)<br />Available <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.7.vii.html" rel="nofollow"> here </a> and with Aquinas’s commentary <a href="http://dhspriory.org/thomas/Ethics7.htm#5" rel="nofollow"> here. </a>Timotheoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09848027239405239382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-32985397430407353362013-10-28T12:06:27.624-07:002013-10-28T12:06:27.624-07:00@Ben Yachov:
"If we had a dime for every Gnu...@Ben Yachov:<br /><br />"If we had a dime for every Gnu who thinks the First Way is just Aquinas' version of the Kalam . . . "<br /><br />It's even worse than that—this guy is actually "arguing" that because Aquinas's <i>illustration</i> of a <i>per se</i> causal series (the famous hand-stick-stone) isn't really (he says) <i>per se</i>, Aquinas's <i>argument</i> therefore fails. Takes him twenty minutes, too.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-5596268073066848182013-10-28T09:48:09.116-07:002013-10-28T09:48:09.116-07:00Timotheos,
I am not aware of any texts in which A...Timotheos,<br /><br />I am not aware of any texts in which Aristotle labels homosexuality as immoral, though. Do you have a source? I've tried digging up such material before, but I was left to conclude that it was yet another Thomistic rather than Aristotelian concept.rank sophisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01644531454383207175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-7306785784755601762013-10-28T08:19:05.138-07:002013-10-28T08:19:05.138-07:00If we had a dime for every Gnu who thinks the Firs...If we had a dime for every Gnu who thinks the First Way is just Aquinas' version of the Kalam we would have enough money to start our own Thomistic TV network.Son of Ya'Kovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05645132954231868592noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-52689588131357798992013-10-28T08:16:46.792-07:002013-10-28T08:16:46.792-07:00>This guy totally pwned you!!
The classic phil...>This guy totally pwned you!!<br /><br />The classic philosophers are taking this guy to task.<br /><br />It figures he would post a video repeating all the same basic errors instead of coming here to make his argument.<br /><br />He must be afraid of being taken to task.Son of Ya'Kovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05645132954231868592noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-78480566496782541622013-10-28T06:41:22.435-07:002013-10-28T06:41:22.435-07:00"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klhu7AUQO30
..."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klhu7AUQO30<br /><br />@Dr. Feser<br /><br />This guy totally pwned you!!"<br /><br />Somebody obviously doesn't know what an <i>illustration</i> is (and probably also hasn't read <a href="http://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/SMLM/PSMLM10/PSMLM10.pdf" rel="nofollow">this</a>).Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-72420924218315532372013-10-28T00:30:19.786-07:002013-10-28T00:30:19.786-07:00This post reminded me of an extremely liberal hist...This post reminded me of an extremely liberal history professor I once knew who, apon hearing of the aristotelian natural law theory I proposed as a possible argument against the morality of homosexuality, replied that I must have gotten the facts wrong, since the Greeks not only thought homosexuality permissible, but in fact thought of it as an ideal. He quickly got agreement from another history professor listening to the discussion, who also happened to have a Bachelors in philosophy, to agree that he had NEVER heard anything to the contrary.<br /><br />At that point, I was done with the discussion, since there was at least five levels of bullshit in that reply, and these professors were both Phd's in US History, and they were the only professors in the room, in other words, even with proof texts in hand there was no way to convince them. In addition, no one else in the room, except for perhaps a Daniel Dennett book carrying scientismist, even had the faintest idea of natural law ethics, so I had little intellectual resonance.<br /><br />Since the professor in question was also a quasi-communist, I must call him out for what he was. <br />A Bull-shi-vist! ;)Timotheoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09848027239405239382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-9882781447982394922013-10-27T23:25:29.026-07:002013-10-27T23:25:29.026-07:00Mr. Green: "Indeed. Well, except for the bit ...Mr. Green: "Indeed. Well, except for the bit about the heart's being the seat of the emotions"<br /><br />And here, yet again, I decry the technical limitations of English against Latin.Timotheoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09848027239405239382noreply@blogger.com