150 karma · joined November 21, 2010
Aristotle said approximately the same thing over two thousand years ago in two different places: (1) that philosophy is possible only once a society has secured subsistence (Metaphysics); (2)virtue can only be pursued as as goal once one is financially secure (Nichomachean Ethics). Is it significant for any idea of progress that such statements are still possible despite occurring in distinct historical contexts, one of which premised itself on slavery? Is this evidence of an antinomy between the claims of democracy (Yes, we live in a constitutional republic, but it is dressed as the guarantee of equal opportunity and this is what public activism premises itself on lest I'm mistaken) and the claims of the market?
I think you're missing the point. It means you endorse a system where food pantrys are necessary because there's no way everyone 'makes it'. You're just on the right side of the food line.
That may ring the wrong religious bells but the problem of procrastination in the West was first of all, and there's a lot of documentation surrounding this, a religious problem. Saint Jerome is the first to directly speak of idleness but it's even there in Paul's letters: How do you secure a base of pagans for your Judaic sect in a world swimming with very similar cults and mythologies? Keep em busy with your sect.
This is related to the consistent demand for communal surveillance stretching throgh all the church fathers; everyone should make sure everyone else is busy being faithful. So I wonder how and at what point that discussion of procrastination transforms into the modern formulation?
It isn't clear to me why money lying around necessarily entails job growth in the tech industry, especially for larger software firms but even smaller ones. But again, I feel this would only be marginal contribution to the job situation were it the case.
This would be pretty mega. Covers A LOT of bases.
But as far as policy debate goes, the university system is a trainwreck of financial demand and is only going to get worse. Maybe Peter we need to do other things than college, but that isn't very responsive to historically sedimented structural inequities (I know, I know, meritocracy is best, etc). A discussion of free schools is underway in Britain, but I feel that presents a chicken-or-the-egg problem.
What do we do?
Makes me think of the older times: it use to be if you wanted to prove something you swung a sword at someone's head. But because of the monopolization of violence in modern societies (relatively speaking), your armor is layers of pseudonymity, proxies, and other net paranoia; battles are taking place over virtual fields where to fall is to be exposed as a person, a regular human being (credit card, email, all pathways to "meat world" mechanics).
Sociologically interesting or am I overthinking what could be a travesty if these exposures aren't accurate (or are)?
And yet your caveat at the bottom illustrates that what a beach is isn't a trivial problem. Leibniz just wanted to avoid the regressive mechanical discussion by positing substances or monads as a solution to answering the question "What's a beach?". This isn't to say he's right than to say your trivialization doesn't work and that there's room for his speculation.
Leibniz didn't say a mill can simulate the human mind. He's talking about any contraption that can the simulate the human mind (which is also capable of simulating many things given proper arithmetic and [infinite?] time) one of which would be, for the sake of illustration, the size of a windmill. You have to realize that dissection of the human body was still extremely taboo in the 17th century (not to mention technological impediments). You may also be missing the point.
That's exactly his point, and that problem hasn't budged an inch since Descartes.
No, you didn't. Forgive my use of the word to describe your position but perhaps you'll see what I had in mind when I did.
>I just said there are clearly cultural differences across races [meaning in the US today.]
So a lower class black participates in the same culture as an upper middle-class black? (anecdotal: I sure as hell don't) A lower-class white shares culturally with middle-class whites? In "attitudes towards education, ambition, work and success" no less (which is what your brought up cultural difference with regard to)? Perhaps the wording of your claim is leading my astray, but as it's written it's not very defensible and can only make sense once your inject it with a vertical register, socio-economic status, good ol' fashioned class relations.
>There are plenty of black people, for example, who will openly talk about this, including Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell, among others.
Irrelevant.
>Although on a separate point I'd say it's not 100% proven that somehow all failure or imperfection on the part of black Americans, to take one just group, is solely the fault of feeling oppressed, or having suffered from a history of oppression or being a minority or "on the bottom." Some of it may just be due to the results of personal choices and personal behavior and willpower.
Personal choices? Personal behavior and willpower? Sure. Now are you willing to scale that explanation uniformly across an entire sector of the population? Unless you're going to defend something very improbable, you have to explore more comprehensive causalities. The latter don't have to directly do with anything, but can and do mediate every other intersecting relation of cause.