[ZachPtheDude]

The nice thing about all that is that it leaves plenty of room for improvement.

Care to elaborate? They're just abstractions of my life experience, just like any philosophy.

My point being, if I have room for improvement with all that then you also have an equal amount of room for improvement with "all that."

 

[money4me247]

 

[bigshot]

Let's all become better people!

 

[prot]

Let's all become better people!

That is precisely the kind of attitude that will get you crucified

 

[prot]

I do have an issue with Dawkins; the man is an absolutely rude man and incredibly dismissive of people for entirely petty reasons. Along with Dawkins you have Sam Harris (and his big time partner in crime Bill Maher) who have teamed up to run a campaign of sorts highlighting the inherent violence and savagery that comes with the practice of Islam, brushing any innocent casualties under the rug because, given their islamic faith, they would likely have become terrorists if they survived so good riddance.

My point at large as it relates to this forum is that I believe the rhetoric used by the "objectivists" is not going to promote a real medium of discussion between the two opposing camps. I'm not saying one side did something bad first and they're to blame, but if you do take pride in letting science, and sound, guide your equipment decisions then also take pride in promoting rhetoric that respects both sides of the isle rather than snidely commenting about what some people spend in their search for their ideal sound.

Deidre McCloskey, an incredible economist, historian, and much more, has written a series of books on the industrial revolution and what really caused it, not just the scientifc advances but the changing social class structure, and with that a change in the dynamics of respect for the merchant class. I think her thesis about how rhetoric, and common values promote change more than anything else, would be something this forum should digest and implement. Promote more informed decisions rather than downplaying the subtle, if any, differences between amps and dacs assuming blah blah blah. Promote critical listening and enjoyment of the music as the end game, but also promote the journey that blind testing different equipment is, how it is a learning process between man, gear, and sound. Idk this might make zero sense.

About myself, I am a subjective objectivist when it comes to the audio debate, and a nihilistic, moral skeptic of an agnostic philosophically speaking and my study interests include Thomistic theology, Augustine, and British Idealism ala Oakeshott.

Dont know what maher is doing lately but dont forget he's just a standup dude.
As about dawkins I'm pretty sure he's not singling out any religion, treats all with the same disrespect ... which is the least those ppl deserve. Many tend to forget that those institutions were and are the no1 cause of violent death. Hundreds of millions of people and counting fast. Of course he may be nicer but accusing him of rudeness and foul language against criminals is kinda funny.

Interesting list of philosophy stuff there, unfortunately I'm not familiar with any of your authors. Feel free to expand on those.

 

[money4me247]

Dont know what maher is doing lately but dont forget he's just a standup dude.
As about dawkins I'm pretty sure he's not singling out any religion, treats all with the same disrespect ... which is the least those ppl deserve. Many tend to forget that those institutions were and are the no1 cause of violent death. Hundreds of millions of people and counting fast. Of course he may be nicer but accusing him of rudeness and foul language against criminals is kinda funny.

Interesting list of philosophy stuff there, unfortunately I'm not familiar with any of your authors. Feel free to expand on those.

Well, I think broad categorizations is negative regardless how it is applied. Religion can be a tool for evil or good. Just depends on the person wielding it, just like all tools. A hammer can build or kill. There is nothing inherently negative or positive about religion.
 
Did you know that there was a study that estimated that doctors are actually the third leading cause of death? And the first tenet of medicine is Do no harm. Humans are imperfect creatures. There will be death and suffering regardless of the existence of religion. I think the more important thing is the promotion of tolerance towards everyone. Something that people who are atheist, agnostic, or religious sometimes all equally have trouble with. 
 
I thought Thomas Aquinas' approach to religion and God was quite interesting to read about. He was a deeply religious Christian, upholding that both faith & reason are necessary. He combined Greek philosophy of rational thinking with Christian doctrine. Quite interesting philosophy. One of the few theologist philosophers that resonated with me. He did say that the Empedocele's theory of "mutation of creatures" is compatible with religion (they did not have the understanding of evolution as we do today). Greek philosophy actually only survived to be recorded today by Islamic leaders and philosophers. Don't really remember much about Augustine or Oakeshott.
 
My favorite philosophers were the American Pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey)!!! USA USA USA! =P

 

[ZachPtheDude]

Dont know what maher is doing lately but dont forget he's just a standup dude.
As about dawkins I'm pretty sure he's not singling out any religion, treats all with the same disrespect ... which is the least those ppl deserve. Many tend to forget that those institutions were and are the no1 cause of violent death. Hundreds of millions of people and counting fast. Of course he may be nicer but accusing him of rudeness and foul language against criminals is kinda funny.

Interesting list of philosophy stuff there, unfortunately I'm not familiar with any of your authors. Feel free to expand on those.

 
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/21/bill-maher-islamic-violence-more-just-fringe-eleme/
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/10/why-ben-affleck-defending-isla-2014106104141371662.html
 
The man stepped past comedy with those statements.
 

  Well, I think broad categorizations is negative regardless how it is applied. Religion can be a tool for evil or good. Just depends on the person wielding it, just like all tools. A hammer can build or kill. There is nothing inherently negative or positive about religion.
 
Did you know that there was a study that estimated that doctors are actually the third leading cause of death? And the first tenet of medicine is Do no harm. Humans are imperfect creatures. There will be death and suffering regardless of the existence of religion. I think the more important thing is the promotion of tolerance towards everyone. Something that people who are atheist, agnostic, or religious sometimes all equally have trouble with. 
 
I thought Thomas Aquinas' approach to religion and God was quite interesting to read about. He was a deeply religious Christian, upholding that both faith & reason are necessary. He combined Greek philosophy of rational thinking with Christian doctrine. Quite interesting philosophy. One of the few theologist philosophers that resonated with me. He did say that the Empedocele's theory of "mutation of creatures" is compatible with religion (they did not have the understanding of evolution as we do today). Greek philosophy actually only survived to be recorded today by Islamic leaders and philosophers. Don't really remember much about Augustine or Oakeshott.
 
My favorite philosophers were the American Pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey)!!! USA USA USA! =P

 
 
Some quotes from Michael Oakeshott that I enjoy:
 
“This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse -- appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human utterances. As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.” 
 
“When Mr. Lippmann says that the founders of our free institutions were adherents of the philosophy of natural law, and that ‘the free political institutions of the Western world were conceived and established’ by men who held certain abstract beliefs, he speaks with the shortened perspective of an American way of thinking in which a manner of conducting affairs is inconceivable without an architect and without a premeditated ‘dedication to a proposition.’ But the fact is that nobody ever ‘founded these institutions.’ They are the product of innumerable human choices, over long stretches of time, but not of any human design.” 
 
“So far from a political ideology being the quasi-divine parent of political activity, it turns out to be its earthly stepchild. Instead of an independently premeditated scheme of ends to be pursued, it is a system of ideas abstracted from the manner in which people have been accustomed to go about the business of attending to the arrangements of their societies. The pedigree of every political ideology shows it to be the creature, not of premeditation in advance of political activity, but of meditation upon a manner of politics. In short, political activity comes first and a political ideology follows after; and the understanding of politics we are investigating has the disadvantage of being, in the strict sense, preposterous.
Let us consider the matter first in relation to scientific hypothesis, which I have taken to play a role in scientific activity in some respects similar to that of an ideology in politics. If a scientific hypothesis were a self-generated bright idea which owed nothing to scientific activity, then empiricism governed by hypothesis could be considered to compose a self-contained manner of activity; but this certainly is not its character. The truth is that only a man who is already a scientist can formulate a scientific hypothesis; that is, an hypothesis is not an independent invention capable of guiding scientific inquiry, but a dependent supposition which arises as an abstraction from within already existing scientific activity. Moreover, even when the specific hypothesis has in this manner been formulated, it is inoperative as a guide to research without constant reference to the traditions of scientific inquiry from which it was abstracted. The concrete situation does not appear until the specific hypothesis, which is the occasion of empiricism being set to work, is recognized as itself the creature of owing how to conduct a scientific inquiry.
Or consider the example of cookery. It might be supposed that an ignorant man, some edible materials, and a cookery book compose together the necessities of a self-moved (or concrete) activity called cooking. But nothing is further from the truth. The cookery book is not an independently generated beginning from which cooking can spring; it is nothing more than an abstract of somebody's knowledge of how to cook: it is the stepchild, not the parent of the activity. The book, in its tum, may help to set a man on to dressing a dinner, but if it were his sole guide he could never, in fact, begin: the book speaks only to those who know already the kind of thing to expect from it and consequently bow to interpret it.
Now, just as a cookery book presupposes somebody who knows how to cook, and its use presupposes somebody who already knows how to use it, and just as a scientific hypothesis springs from a knowledge of how to conduct a scientific investigation and separated from that knowledge is powerless to set empiricism profitably to work, so a political ideology must be understood, not as an independently premeditated beginning for political activity, but as knowledge (abstract and generalized) of a concrete manner of attending to the arrangements of a society. The catechism which sets out the purposes to be pursued merely abridges a concrete manner of behaviour in which those purposes are already hidden. It does not exist in advance of political activity, and by itself it is always an insufficient guide. Political enterprises, the ends to be pursued, the arrangements to be established (all the normal ingredients of a political ideology), cannot be premeditated in advance of a manner of attending to the arrangements of a society; what we do, and moreover what we want to do, is the creature of how we are accustomed to conduct our affairs. Indeed, it often reflects no more than a dis­covered ability to do something which is then translated into an authority to do it.” 
 
 
 
 
And one from Robert Nisbet, who greatly influences my views on communities, both real and those based on the medium of discussion (like an internet community):
 

"The family, religious association, and local community—these, the  conservatives insisted, cannot be regarded as the external products of man’s thought and behavior; they are essentially prior to the individual and are the indispensable supports of belief and conduct. Release man from the contexts of community and you get not freedom and rights but intolerable aloneness and subjection to demoniac fears and passions. Society, Burke wrote in a celebrated line, is a partnership of the dead, the living, and the unborn. Mutilate the roots of society and tradition, and the result must inevitably be the isolation of a generation from its heritage, the isolation of individuals from their fellow men, and the creation of the sprawling, faceless masses."
 
 
 

anyway, enough quotes
 

Just my thoughts.

 

 

 

Big Shot, that is the point: we can all make improvements in our beliefs, as far as judgments of "correctness" go.  But, who is the judge?

 

[money4me247]

interesting quotes to read. hahah i've forgotten how verbose philosophers like to be, but man, that kinda stuff is so fun to read!

 

[ZachPtheDude]

  interesting quotes to read. hahah i've forgotten how verbose philosophers like to be, but man, that kinda stuff is so fun to read!

 
I got burned out attempting a double major in economics and philosophy, now I'm pursuing an audio engineering program with some electrical engineering on the side.  Philosophy and econ (and most social sciences) will always be my hobby though.