Larval Subjects

All views expressed are my own.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@bradford_skow Aquinas if scope and intricacy is the criteria.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@Qivshi1 Evolution isn’t about fitness. That’s Spencer. It’s about reproduction and variation. What’s good for reproduction is often awful for individual organisms. Cf., the octopus and what happens to the mother. Good for making more octopi, terrible for the mother.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@Qivshi1 I guess I’m inclined to say there is an essence of life if by that is meant certain biochemical conditions and organization must occur for life to take place. I don’t think that means one is a vitalist. A crystal resembles life in many ways but is not living.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@Qivshi1 What essence does he suggest? All I saw was that he said living beings don’t merely strive to survive, but rather to thrive.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@Helenreflects By writing in this style the reader says yes to each innocent sounding proposition. By proposition 10 all of their views have been turned inside out and they’ve assented to each proposition leading up to them. What’s happened to academic writing is very sad. 2/2

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@Helenreflects It’s written as a Trojan horse. The book has no intro telling the reader what he will argue. The appendix to part 1 should be the intro. If he did tell the reader what to anticipate the book would have been denounced immediately. 1/1

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@PhDhurtBrain Are you talking about a sort of Pauline psychology? “I would have never thought to covet my neighbors wife if the law hadn’t told me not to” (Romans). That is the thesis that the law creates the desire for what it prohibits?

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@waveturtlejake Plato goes on and on about music in Book III of the Republic.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@ErsatzDoctor Yeah, and Aesop was an idiot for portraying foxes wanting to eat grapes and people wasting away from being captivated by their reflections in water.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@PhDhurtBrain tons of movies! Not Tom’s movies!

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@PhDhurtBrain We’ve seen Oldman in Tom’s of movies without knowing it’s even him. He’s that good. Took me years to notice he’s the pimp in True Romance.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@PhDhurtBrain Due to her Spinozism, I’ve often wanted to read it. It’s not a slog?

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@AuthorPeterPike @patprendergast3 @SecularOutpost At any rate, thank you for the civil discussion and for articulating your position. I’m off to make dinner.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@AuthorPeterPike @patprendergast3 @SecularOutpost I don’t think it’s transcendent. I think we discover it in and through our practices just as different cultures repeatedly discover knives.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@AuthorPeterPike @patprendergast3 @SecularOutpost There are things that are good for us collectively and psychologically and things that aren’t. We have to discover what these are. We will never convince or persuade everyone for a variety of reasons.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@AuthorPeterPike @patprendergast3 @SecularOutpost My thesis is that we have to make moral discoveries. It’s not markedly different from medicine where we make discoveries as to what is healthy and unhealthy and often have mistaken ideas about what’s healthy. Likewise with morality.

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@AuthorPeterPike @patprendergast3 @SecularOutpost I explained my reasoning in my comments above. Maybe you missed them? How does a transcendent grounding address the questions you’re asking? Don’t we end up in the arbitrariness of divine command theory?

[Larval Subjects @LarvalSubjects]

@AuthorPeterPike @patprendergast3 @SecularOutpost That’s not might makes right. That’s the discovery that an idea (genocide) is a really bad idea or solution to the problem of living together and therefore should never be done.