HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gthomas@unixg.ubc.ca (Guy R Thomas)
Subject: Re: This whole abortion thing.
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 04:17:43 GMT

cash@convex.com (aka Peter Cash) writes in response to
heather@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us (aka Heather Freeman):
>>Could someone please come up with a good argument against the following:

>>        Complete access to abortion should be maintained because if it
>>        is restriction or eliminated the chances of women going to back
>>        alley abortionists would be greatly increased. Thus, more likely 
>>        that not, both the woman and the unborn child would die.  It is a 
>>        choice between two evils- one life or two, and the logical answer
>>        is one. Maintain the status of unlimited abortion.

[insightfull analysis of the argument noted and deleted]

May I quibble with the following:

>Remember that the unwed mother of today is in a vastly different situation
>than she was, say, forty years ago. The degree of social stigmatization
>attached to being an unwed mother is much, much less than it was in the
>past (just ask Murphy Brown), 

Incuring the wrath of the office of the president  (is that capitalized?)
is no mean feat.  All of todays social ills can be traced to the disintegration
of the family. 

>            and assistance (financial and otherwise) is
>much easier for an unwed mother of today to come by than it was in the
>past. Thus, there are seldom overriding reasons that would compel women to
>get an abortion despite the discomfort and risk of the "back alley". 

Seldom.  Ummmmmm.......  minister gets pregnant due to birth control
failure?  

Guy
gthomas@unixg.ubc.ca
From: fxpcd@camelot.acf-lab.alaska.edu (Peter Dolan)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Info need on Occam
Date: 26 Sep 92 20:59:56 GMT
Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network

Oh yeah, one more thing.  Does anybody know any good places to get info on  
Occam?  Please E-mail me at fxpcd@acad3.alaska.edu.  Thanks.
From: simonson@cs.washington.edu (Kevin Simonson)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Good and Evil
Date: 1 Oct 92 15:05:43 GMT
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle


     Article <1992Oct1.024410.5904@raven.alaska.edu> quotes Peter Dolan:

=This doesn't of course rule out the existance of a devil inside of
=creation, only an evil one... but... if there was an evil entity which
=existed BEFORE creation (obvious philosophical discussion point here) that
=has the ability to interfere with creation, then we start to have a little
=fun.

     Sounds like a very interesting idea.

=                        With this in mind I see several possiblities:
=One:  Only the antecedants determine the goodness, or evilness of an act.
=Two:  The antecedants plus the effects of an act determine the morality
=(I'm getting tired of writing goodness and evilness) of an act
=Three:  I'm missing some other possibility.
=        Possibility one is interesting.  In this case, most acts, are
=simultaneously good and evil, coming from both good and evil sources.

     This sounds like the "morality" (degree of goodness/badness?) of a
"source" of an action is being used to determine the "morality" of the ac-
tion itself.  How do we determine the morality of the source?

=        Possibility two is even more interesting.  If the goodness and
=evilness also depends upon the effects of an act then we won't know if an
=act was good or evil until the end of the universe.

     I'm not sure that this follows.

     Consider the isomorphism isomorphism with good for one-to-one mapping
and natural numbers to time.  If the question is then, is there a one-to-
one mapping between the even numbers and the natural numbers, a similar
analysis would say that we can't know until we've counted to the end of
the natural numbers.

                                     ---Kevin
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: gcv2010@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Subject: Re: Fear of the process of dying.
Reply-To: gcv2010@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Organization: Montana State University
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 22:57:55 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.111644.13419@odin.diku.dk>, lunatic@diku.dk (Philip Hoelgaard) writes:
>You may find this an unappropriate subject to discuss in this newsgroup,
>and for that I apologize, but I havent been able to find a better one.
>
>I would like to hear the nature of your thoughts and emotions in connection to 
>the subject of the very PROCESS of dying. How do you expect you will feel when 
>eventually in the process (apart from bad..) and have you got any idea of what 
>goes through the mind of those who are dying?   
>
>I do not fear being dead.

Just out of curiosity, what is "being dead"?  This implies some state after the
current state of living.  As far as I know, it's simply "death".

>
>But how can a rational human being be anything else than terrified when in
>the process? Does he/she stop being rational?
>
What about people who have been ill, or are elderly and alone, who welcome
death?  Who are simply tired of living?  Who have already had a full life, and
are ready to go?

I think the will to live may be what you're talking about; 
the will to take another breath, to fight off an attacker, to kill to assuage
hunger.  However, I believe that rational people know they're going to die,
that it's impossible to live forever.  It all depends on the circumstances of
the moment whether there's to be a struggle, whether or not one is mentally
prepared beforehand or if their life is being *taken* or *given*. 



Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: gschlesi@scott.skidmore.edu (gabriel schlesinger)
Subject: re:Right to Kill
Organization: Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs NY
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 03:54:41 GMT

Another point to back up the last one is this.  You just said that you
would be willing to kill the author of a new version of Mein Kampf, by
your logic it would therefore be the author's right to kill you
because you are a stated danger to him.


-Gabe (just playing a bit of Devil's Advocate)
From: simonson@cs.washington.edu (Kevin Simonson)
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
Keywords: find god fast think wait unity
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 22:09:37 GMT

     Article <92274.144941SXZ104@psuvm.psu.edu> says:

=    Follow these steps and thou shalt reach God.
=1. Fasting
=2. Thinking
=3. Waiting
=
=UNITY.

     Is this an assertion that 1 + 2 + 3 implies "UNITY"?  Also, is there
any reasoning behind this, or are we supposed to take it on faith?

                                     ---Kevin
From: ak254@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ralph A. Gardner-Chavis)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: the meaning of "freewill"
Date: 27 Sep 1992 16:18:59 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: ak254@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ralph A. Gardner-Chavis)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc4.ins.cwru.edu


 
 
I consider MAN to be the innocent victim of forces beyond his:
     recognition,
     knowledge,
     understanding
     and control.
 
I repeat, from my previous post, that a pleasant experience cannot
cancel a painful experience.  However, depending upon the severity
of the painful experience, our mind may attempt to keep that
experience from being remembered, on a conscious level, for it is
too painful to be relived, even by recall.
 
It is these hidden experiences, that are difficult if not
impossible to recall, without professional help, that  have a
disproportionately great influence upon our attitudes, desires,
evaluations, and our lives.
 
These painful experiences are traumatic.  The severity of a trauma
is inversely proportional to the magnitude of the frame of
reference relating to the occurrence. This is the reason that
traumatic experiences are more likely to occur during childhood
since a child's frames of reference are obviously more limited
than those of an adult.
 
I shall quote limited phrases from an article in the New York
Times, June 12, 1990.
 
A single instance of overwhelming terror can alter the chemistry
of the brain, making people more sensitive to adrenaline surges
even DECADES later...
 
New studies in animals and humans suggest that specific sites in
the brain undergo these changes.
 
Victims of a devastating trauma may never be the same biologically
 
It does not matter if it was the incessant terror of combat,
torture or repeated abuse in childhood, or a one-time experience,
like being trapped in a hurricane or almost dying in an auto
accident .... all uncontrollable stress can have the same
biological impact.
 
In conclusion, before we attempt to face human behavior with a
vocabulary of such words as; blame, guilt, sin, punishment,
freewill, etc. let us remember the following admonitions;
 
If a child lives with criticism,
        He learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility,
        He learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule,
        He learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame,
        He  learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance,
        He learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement,
        He learns confidence.
 
There are a few more of these.  If anyone is interested I will put
up the others next time.
 
Thus I repeat "freewill" is a subjective illusion useful to those
who wish to blame, condemn and find guilt in others.
-- 
Intelligent life on Mars? 
I didn't think there was intelligent life on Earth!
From: lunatic@diku.dk (Philip Hoelgaard)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Fear of the process of dying.
Date: 2 Oct 92 11:16:44 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

You may find this an unappropriate subject to discuss in this newsgroup,
and for that I apologize, but I havent been able to find a better one.

I would like to hear the nature of your thoughts and emotions in connection to 
the subject of the very PROCESS of dying. How do you expect you will feel when 
eventually in the process (apart from bad..) and have you got any idea of what 
goes through the mind of those who are dying?   

I do not fear being dead.

But how can a rational human being be anything else than terrified when in
the process? Does he/she stop being rational?

Waiting for the last heartbeat, in panic. Drowning.
I fear that I personally will never stop being rational.
Maybe most people die when heavily sedated, but the sedatives are given
in slowly increasing doses - and for me the process of being given the
sedation and experiencing the effects, is likely to induce the same kind
of fear as an execution - there will be no return.

Im sorry to be melodramatic about the thing, but frankly I am scared stiff 
when thinking about what the process will be like.

Please tell me how you feel.

Kind Regards
Philip Hoelgaard
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen.
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: st911306@pip.cc.brandeis.edu (Tox)
Subject: Re: Good and Evil
Reply-To: st911306@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 00:20:52 GMT

the one problem i see with the way this argument is running is that we have
defined God as being entirely good, thus necessitating (spelling) the existance of a devil.  but what if, as some believe, God is both good and evil, and
the devil only serves as a sort of prosecutor to show how weak we poor slobs
truly are?

sorry if that complicates things (no i'm not). 

l'shana tova
scott, st911306@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: stettbac@isibee1 (Juerg Stettbacher)
Subject: Re: God
Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 17:19:21 GMT

William Kretz (wkretz@nyx.cs.du.edu) wrote:
: God is real unless declared an integer.
: 


In the end, there will (could (*)) be two kind of people:

   - The ones, they say: 'Thy will be done.'

   - And the ones, they hear: 'Your will be done.'


(*) Just to prevent evidence from violation.



juerg at ethz switzerland

Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: gthomas@unixg.ubc.ca (Guy R Thomas)
Subject: Re: Two things
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 04:12:28 GMT

In <Bv9LFy.BBp@knot.ccs.queensu.ca> hausner@qucis.queensu.ca (Alejo Hausner) writes:

>In article <69041@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt0009b@prism.gatech.EDU (rahim) writes:
>>
>>Another thing I wanted to find out is that I have been recently
>>reading Nietzsche and find him incomprehensible.  Could someone 
>>recommend a book by him or on him that might assist me with a decent
>>introduction to the man?   I started _The Birth of Tragedy_ but it was
>>beyond me.
>>

Before going to secondary sources try reading him as if he were trying to
put one over on someone.  It may not make the ideas any more comprehensible
but it will make the reading more enjoyable.

Just my opinion, charged by weight.

Guy
gthomas@unixg.ubc.ca


>There aren't too many good books on Nietzsche.  Because a lot of what
>he says is hard to swallow, most commentators on Nietzsche end up
>writing more about their own ideas than on what he says.  For example,
>Jaspers writes about his own existentialism, Jung writes about his own
>theory of the unconscious.  A lot of people, looking for a theory,
>latch onto to some small part of his ideas, like eternal recurrence or
>the overman, and treat as a central theme.

>I can only recommend what I liked.  "Twilight of the Idols" is nice
>and short, although it's a bit condensed.  "The Genealogy of Morals"
>is not bad, though it's a bit longer.  I really liked it.  "The Gay
>Science" is pretty good too.

>Hope that helps!

>Alejo (hausner@qucis.queensu.ca)
From: lawhead@cs.olemiss.edu (Pam Lawhead)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Margaret Masterman
Date: 1 Oct 92 21:33:22 GMT
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science

I am trying to find out information about Margaret Masterman who wrote
"The Nature of a Paradigm" published in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
by Lakatos and Musgrave in 1970.  
I searched our little library and could find nothing but citations about
her.  In the book it states that she is part of the Cambridge Language
Research Unit but I could find nothing about that either.  If you
have any ideas I would appreciate e-mail to:
lawhead@cs.olemiss.edu
Thanks,

Pam Lawhead
The University of Mississippi
From: heather@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us (Heather Freeman)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Summary of Nietzsche's phil. needed
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 23:56:38 EDT
Organization: Princeton High School, Princeton, New Jersey

ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (pink floyd) writes:

> 
> Subject pretty much says it all...I was wondering if someone could
> summarize for me the essence of Nietzsche's thought and
> philosophies...
> 
> Please reply via e-mail....Thanx in advance....
> 
> --
>  ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu   FutureCulture E-List: [future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu]
>  andy (hawkeye)         new edge, technoculture, cyberpunk, virtual reality,
>                         raves, etc. Home of the famous :) FutureCulture FAQ!
>  


-----
Heather Freeman, Princeton High School BBS
DNS: heather@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us      UUCP: ...!princeton!phsbbs!heather
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for this message.
From: heather@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us (Heather Freeman)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: This whole abortion thing.
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 19:40:10 EDT
Organization: Princeton High School, Princeton, New Jersey

Could someone please come up with a good argument against the following:

        Complete access to abortion should be maintained because if it
        is restriction or eliminated the chances of women going to back
        alley abortionists would be greatly increased. Thus, more likely 
        that not, both the woman and the unborn child would die.  It is a 
        choice between two evils- one life or two, and the logical answer
        is one. Maintain the status of unlimited abortion.

        The reason why I ask for a good argument is so that I can try to 
come up with a nice counter argument, just in case. :}

        Heather



-----
Heather Freeman, Princeton High School BBS
DNS: heather@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us      UUCP: ...!princeton!phsbbs!heather
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for this message.
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: fxpcd@camelot.acf-lab.alaska.edu (Peter Dolan)
Subject: Re: Good and Evil
Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 23:16:04 GMT

In article <1992Sep27.025519.6106@news.weeg.uiowa.edu>  
elowther@news.weeg.uiowa.edu (Edward Lowther) writes in response to Peter  
Dolan's Re:  Good and Evil

>    I'm also quite new, but everyone is new, once.  Taking your article
> in full:  I'm not sure what the general direction of this is going ...
> (from within my own handle of the Good/Bad ness thing.)  You're trying
> to say Utilitarianizm but can't, right?  Probably, if you notice that
> you need a 'quantum' measure of "Good packets" and notice that "no  
matter
> what it may look like..." means sombody must be doing the looking, it
> emerges that the act of observing an action to have "Goodness" affects
> one's own framework of reference.  All beings' frameworks, taken
> together holistically, then, are the basic "Goodness" field.  
>   Let's see what the actual philosophers make of all this, eh? 
>   (Not to mention ourtraged physicists)
> -- 

An interesting idea, about the quantum packets of good and evil, and one  
I'll be thinking about.  What I was trying to express though, were two  
possible ideas about the goodness or evil of an act where good and evil  
are absolute and an act's goodness, or evilness, depends upon either its  
antecedants, or its descendants, thus absolute knowledge is probably  
necessary to determine the good or evil of an act (I got tired of writing  
the ness's).  In point of fact, I can think of a couple of ways around the  
absolute knowledge problem, but I find a subjective interpration that  
comes to mind from your post far more interesting.  Going back to the  
quantum concept, we can think of good and evil in the same terms as wave  
and particle.  An event will act as either one, depending upon how we  
observe it.  So, if we use your idea of all beings' frameworks together  
defining the "Goodness" field, then with this new twist, they should also  
define the "Evilness" field as well.  So, the basic goodness, or evilness  
would depend upon all other people... hmm.  Locally society would  
determine whether an act was good or evil wouldn't they?  And further  
afield, it would be the world society, and on, and on.  What relationship  
would laws have to such a people-created morality?
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: Brennan.J.Murphy.53@nd.edu (Brennan Murphy)
Subject: PLantiga-free will--evil--god--the whole enchilada
Followup-To: talk.philosophy.misc
Organization: University of Notre Dame
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 14:12:15 GMT

I am looking for some references to help me complete a paper for my
metaphysics course.  I have decided to focus on PLantiga's free will
defence, specifically his use of counterfactuals.  If anyone has any ideas
as to which way I could go with this, I would be thankful for some email. 
I know it is a broad question, but I am in my interim phases of a paper due
in two weeks.  

Thanks, 
Brennan
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: jamesp@cs.uwa.oz.au (James Pinakis)
Subject: Re: Fear of the process of dying.
Organization: Dept. Computer Science, University of Western Australia.
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 12:39:05 GMT

How about we compare dying to experiencing something mundane, say a sharp pain,
to be specific let's say the sharp pain you experience when you stub your toe
against a table.  Now, you know that you have experienced pain because
immediately following the instant of pain you are around to say "Gee, that
hurt".

Similarly imagine falling off a bicycle and being unconscious for a few moments.
When you come to you don't know where you are, and you'll possibly remember
a few seconds before falling off your bike but the exact moment of impact will
probably be forgotten, but again you'll be around to say "What happened?  How
did I get on the ground?  Oh, I must have fallen off my bike".

In dying however, there's (probably IMHO) no-one around afterwards to say "Boy,
that sure was strange.  I wonder what happened to that truck that was driving
on the wrong side of the road.  Wow, maybe I'm dead...".  So if there's no-one
around to report to, to gather information of what happened, to make sense of
what happened, then the feeling of death will pass completely unnoticed.  In
a way it's like saying "if no-one's around to feel it then did it really
happen?".

This is a way I have of calming myself when I experience those pre-sleep terrors
when I force myself to imagine not existing.  I extrapolate this saying "well
if I'm not around to report to myself on the act of death then death doesn't
really happen".  The fault in this logic comes when I continue backwards
and say, "if there's no-one to remember the second before death then there'll
be no-one to remember the 2nd second before death" and so on until finally we
get to "there'll be no-one around to remember the last second - but wait, I'm
here so therefore there is someone around to remember the last second...does
this mean that I don't exist?".  If I cease to exist then have I ever really
existed?  Ah, well obviously I won't cease to exist then.

Hmm, I'm not sure any of this will make sense to anyone else but I've always
wanted to try to put it into words.  Anyone want to comment (I'm prepared to
have these illusions shattered...)

james
jamesp@cs.uwa.edu.au
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: rmkrmk@wam.umd.edu (" RUCHINATOR ")
Subject: KANT's THEORY on PUnishMent
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 18:16:02 GMT

Hello, can anyone here argue KANT's theory on Punishment?

ruchi..