Posts by BenWilson
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I suppose getting dressed and undressed constantly would make it all seem pretty natural, although not necessarily to observers. I have a high tolerance for being seen disrobed, having been a swimmer for years, but other people can get quite distressed by this. Togs turn to undies pretty quick, it seems.
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Well, I'd agree that there is no "absolute" Best, which is independent of the person(s) making the evaluation. But there can still be a Best (or several), given a set of criteria, which a person or group might settle on.
And I guess that's really my position regarding morals - there isn't one set that (as Steve Parks put it) is handed to us by God. But as humans, we may very well settle on some set of them and call them Best, that's not impossible. It may, however, be unlikely. But either way, it's a political process, rather than one that could ever come from 'first principles' or scientific inquiry.
I can't actually prove emotivism is true. There may actually be real independent morals. Most moral theories assert that there are. Whether we could ever be sure of them is another matter. In some ways it's a good idea to make the assumption that they do exist, and postulate them, rather like scientific theories, and then subject them to testing. But there remains the problem of 'moral observations', which, unlike a lot of science, are very hard to agree on. Even bitter scientific enemies can agree when a thermometer has passed a certain temperature (maybe disputing the exact moment, but certainly at some point they will agree that a point has been passed). But moral enemies will not agree on the observations themselves. Especially when they have a moral theory as the basis for their moral observations. In that case there is no resolution possible between conflicting theories.
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My point was and probably still is, there must be an ultimate peice of engineering that is the best car, where everything works perfectly all the time and lasts forever.
It seems unlikely to me, because new things are always being invented to put into cars, and their stats are always improving. Also, price is a big factor in perfection.
Like the human condition on morals, we ain't there yet and maybe we never will. Do we even know whether we are heading in the right direction, or is that the wrong direction, hmmmm...
Maybe there is no such ideal car at all - Jackie was hinting at that. There could be an ideal car for each person, at a particular time, though. There certainly could be a best car, even if short of ideal. And there can be a best car in a fixed context, like a drag race. Well, one particular drag race, anyway.
I'm not surprised he stuck to his guns. A good car for a farmer with 8 kids is not the same as a good car for a single man living in a city with tiny streets, or a German who want to use the autobahn a lot.
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I grew up in a small town called Auckland which was gradually swallowed up by the surrounding cities. Which was fine by me.
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Actually the part I find odd is not the inclusion of Newmarket (despite it being a real stretch to consider it either part of the city or the waterfront), but what is left out. There's a weird little corner that cuts out a piece of both the motorway and the railway, and Auckland Boys right by the prison, and halves the Mt Eden industrial zone. I was wrong before to say it includes Kingsland...the corner seems to be where Dominion Rd intersects New North Rd, so that corner would probably be called Newton.
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From what I can see, pretty much the entirety of St Mary's Bay is in there - the line seems to go down Shelly Beach Rd.
I would hope that Jacobs Ladder is retained, at least as a heritage walkway. But it could be made a lot safer. Then again, it doesn't get you anywhere you can't get to from St Mary's Bay Rd, or Beaumont St. I wonder who actually uses it?
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Interesting report by the commission - I'm a little surprised to see that "Tāmaki-makau-rau Local Council will serve the area that currently makes up Auckland City, but excluding the city centre and waterfront." (paragraph 47), when you can see pretty clearly on the map that the actual area forming the border runs down the centre of Ponsonby Rd, then delves some way into Kingsland, includes Newmarket, and divides Parnell in half as well. I wonder what that portends? Skyscrapers in St Mary's Bay?
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Who characterized it as a shemozzle? I couldn't find any shemozzles in the link, apart from inferred ones.
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if a little academic and over intelectualised but what the hey
That's actually one of my main reasons for the position of 'emotivism'. If morals are like tastes, then, as with wine-tasting, one can work on them to a very great degree. But do you really need to learn wine-tasting to know if you like wine? And, having learned a lot about the tasting of wine, are you any more "right" about it, than the naive taster? Certainly you are more sophisticated and educated in your tastes, but fundamentally it comes down to whether you like it or not. Just about every avenue of human taste has highly sophisticated tasters - think about people who sample cars widely and lovingly - are they necessarily better judges of a better car? If you jump in a car and love it, but the connoisseur hates it, are you wrong? Almost inevitably, connoisseurs have very different tastes to the naive, but that only makes the cars they love good for them.
Similarly with morals. Having sampled them widely, one is certainly in a position to compare them with one another. But perhaps, having done so, one actually distances oneself from the original motivations, and certainly from the common motivations.
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The question of allowing suicide for someone who isn't going to die anyway is especially complicated when there's a high chance that the person isn't in their right mind. Mental illness can come in clusters, and feeling depressed may not be the whole story - I'm extremely wary of giving advice to anyone who seems to be seeing things I can't. I want to help but some people need it from professionals, and amateurs can actually do harm. Maybe the problem is actually chemical (or too many chemicals!) sometimes. But I'm equally wary of saying that people who don't see things the same way as me or others should be deprived of their rights. Suicide is probably the biggest call a person will make in their life, if they do it at a young age, so it shouldn't be taken lightly. I especially despise when it is used as a threat to control and manipulate people - the Japanese seem to have taken this practice to a fine art.
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