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Old 12-29-2006, 08:12 AM
fretelöo fretelöo is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 2,495
Default Re: Politics-Ethics Question

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I'm not going to buy some guy's book just because he has an opinion that you happen to believe in. You're the one who brought up this 'action and lack of action are the same thing' argument, so it's up to you to substantiate it when it comes under scrutiny.

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I guess I have a differing definition of what "scrutiny" is. You certainly don't qualify ... yet. You still seem not have grasped the point I was trying to make. Whether or not refraining from acting (I note that despite three attempts or so you still seem to be unable to realize the difference between "lack of action" and "refraining from acting") is the same commiting some obviously criminal act depends on your notion of what distinguishes an action.
If you're unwilling to put forth the effort to come to some educated opinion about the things in question here - so sorry. It's not up to me to force feed you 3 years worth of propaedeutic courses on philosophical ethics, action theory and theory of mind.

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Saying 'some guy who is obviously smarter than you said it, so it must be true' is not an agument I'm afraid.

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I'm afraid you misunderstood yet again. What I was saying is that his theory of action wouldn't have been one of the most influential over the past 50 years or so had it been so easily discountable by arguments as you put forth. It's not an argument about authorities but a generic one, calling upon the combined intelligence of the philosophic discourse of the last half century ("if it withstood that, it can't be too idiotic"). But, I must agree, it was a sarcastical remark to some extend.

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You are just hiding behind a book when you get a question you don't want to answer.

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No. I've just learned over many similar discussions that it's plainly a waste of time trying to establish all the neccessary preliminaries to be able to answer that question in a non-trivial way. It's not imposible, it just takes 10 pages double spaced. And, to be honest, someone somewhere who I met in a POKER forum who doesn'T exactly seem to be the most eager to put in some effort himself (how riddiculous your words about Davidson sound you would have realized had you just read half that wikipedia article I linked here) isn't the first that comes to my mind that I would happily devote a few hours of writing about.
Just for the record:
If we
- established what D.'s theory of action is about
- established that this account is part of practical philosophy
- established how practical philo relates to ethics
- established how your Africa-question is at core an ethical problem
- established why that is so
- established how the action theoretic account and the ethical evaluation interrelate on that particular problem
- we would be able to come up with an intelligent answer.

But, again, as of now you haven'T left the impression that you care too much about the fine print. So I just leave it out.

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'Free' western societies have all kinds of laws that are either immoral, intrusive or illogical. Germany also has a law that it s illegal to publish the image of a swastica (or something like that).

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Yeah, well, get your facts straight, will ya? We have laws that forbid the public display of 3rd Reich imagery of any kind. Given our history, that doesn't seem entirely "illogical" to me. Swastika and Hakenkreuz are two different things, as I hope you realize.
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