HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: coonstot@quads.uchicago.edu (charles orville onstott)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Nietschze
Date: 14 Oct 92 22:48:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: midway.1992Oct14.224808.7486
Reply-To: coonstot@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Oct14.123814.645@ualr.edu> jakrute@acs.harding.edu writes:
>This may not be quite approriate for this group, but I would like to request
>some help on an upcoming paper for one of my philosophy classes.  I have a
>research project on the influence of Nietschze on the twentieth century,
>particularly the 1960's.  If anyone has has thoughts on this subject, please
>post or respond by e-mail.  The topic is fairly broad, since I can describe
>Neitschze's influence on ANYONE, but I would prefer to limit it to cult
>figures, social or political leaders, and/or the philosophers of the day.
>I particularly need help on the 1960's angle, so anyone with any advice,
>PLEASE help me.
>Thanx most graciously,
>CyberBanshee
>JAKRUTE@acs.harding.edu

  Another interesting element to this analysis is the influence
of the 1960's on the translation of Nietzsche and Buber.  See
for example the translation of _I and Thou_(Buber) by Walter
Kaufmann and compare it to the original German.

BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles O. Onstott, III                    (coonstot@midway.uchicago.edu)
Graduate Student in Religion and Human Sciences
The University of Chicago Divinity School

"Les dieux existent : c'est le diable."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: v066ram3@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Mark J Stuhlmiller)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: The search for Truth and the Good
Date: 14 Oct 92 04:51:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <exukjb.316.719012632@exu.ericsson.se>, exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell) writes...
>(Mark J Stuhlmiller) writes..
> 
>**   What is the purpose of being alive?
> 
>Is there one at all?
>If so whose?
>Or What's?
> 
>>Lets get the basic premises right before we argue over details.
> 
>>And what do you mean by being alive? Are you implying that _you_ are?
>>What gives you that impression?
> 
>>Etc. Etc.
> 
>The meaning of life is a life of meaning. Sounds trite, but the more I
>think about it, the more reasonable and startling this seems. At least
>as a basic start on an answer, this seems roughly on the right track. Just
>a couple of different ways of putting this general line of approach: 
> 
>1. The purpose of human existence is to live purposefully.
>2. The meaning [significance] of life is to live a meaningful [or 
>   significant] life.
> 
>Advantages:
> 
>Involves no obvious mention of God or any overall plan imposed from without 
>on the species as a whole.
> 
>It's kind of quippy.
> 
>It seems to have a great deal of initial plausibility. 
> 
>Well, gotta go. It'll be interesting to see where this thread goes, won't it?
>//////////////////////////////////////
>/* Kenny  *   Welcome to Mind Wars! */
>//////////////////////////////////////


      Kenny, thank you for your response.  I am quite sure that you realized
your argument is circular, and believe me I have taken your argument into 
consideration.  However, the meaning of life being a life with meaning just
doesn't seem to fly until you add profundity to it.  More simply stated, 
just what would make one's life 'significant' and/or 'meaningful?'
      One last question, why does the absence of "God" make this quest any
more advantageous?
      I appreciate your help, but I would be much more appreciative if you
were to respond without a 'quip,' because I think you might prove to be an
asset in this insight if you put your mind (and love of wisdom) to it.

summary:   What would make one's life 'significant' and/or 'meaningful?'


                          The gadfly of New Haven..
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta,sci.logic
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Of apples and their skins
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Date: 13 Oct 92 21:21:33 EDT
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

As much as I am tickled to hear the ever-fashionable Michael Sean Rooney
sound more and more like the smug Mr Zeleny, I feel a strong urge to
rectify his occasional slips into scrofulous postmodernity.  Thus I note
that, in article <1992Oct13.205509.7162@cheshire.oxy.edu>, amidst otherwise
unexceptional, and even commendable observations, rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu
(Michael Sean Rooney) writes:

>Philosophy, including mathematical inquiry into the foundations
>of truth claims, has many less controversial means of clarifying
>and justifying moral discourse, although such aids typically depend 
>on a certain level of pre-rational agreement on the terms of the
>moral discourse and so remains especially vulnerable to incommensurability.

To this I say that

(i)	the very notion of pre-rational agreement, relying as it does on an
antecedent metric of rationality, as well as an interpersonal standard of
agreement, is ipso facto self-contradictory;

(ii)	consequently, the claim of incommensurability presupposes the
existence of a meta-discursive (in the classic Tarskian, rather than sloppy
Lyotardian sense) semantic standard, and so refutes itself in a similar
fashion.

>Cordially, 
>
>Michael S. Rooney

no less cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: louray@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Panayiotakis)
Subject: Re: Of apples and their skins..
Organization: George Washington University
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 15:53:44 GMT

In article <1bd18lINNcl4@network.ucsd.edu> steube@elroy.sdsc.edu (Ken Steube) writes:
>I see two kinds of claims of existence (of an apple).  When I look at
>an apple I not only see an appealing red skin, but I intuit a
>collection of particles in a certain configuration.  I might say that
>there is an object with particles in a certain configuration in that
>specific instant.  Later, the configuration changes, and so I wouldn't
>say that the object in that snapshot exists anymore.
>
  Well, what if the apple has green skin?  or Yellow?  is it less appealing?  
And what about apples with bruises?  Why are THEY less appealing?  And how
many apples ARE in the seed?  I'd say, overtime, between 0 and 1 mil.  apples.
I should KNow.  I am God.  Which solves yet another question.  I answer any and all questions.  Post them to God.  If I see them, I'll answer them.  No requests please.

A
A
C     
D
A
C
C
A
A
D
D
D
C 
D
A
C
C
C
D
A
From: steube@elroy.sdsc.edu (Ken Steube)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Of apples and their skins..
Date: 12 Oct 92 23:20:53 GMT
Organization: San Diego Supercomputer Center @ UCSD
NNTP-Posting-Host: elroy.sdsc.edu

I see two kinds of claims of existence (of an apple).  When I look at
an apple I not only see an appealing red skin, but I intuit a
collection of particles in a certain configuration.  I might say that
there is an object with particles in a certain configuration in that
specific instant.  Later, the configuration changes, and so I wouldn't
say that the object in that snapshot exists anymore.

If I take a looser definition of apple and say that in spite of
particle changes this apple is the same as the apple I saw in a
snapshot a while ago, then I am assigning some permanent character so
that I can think of the apple continuing to exist from moment to
moment.

Taking the second approach to existence involves choosing to believe in
a permanent character of an object that persists in time.  This is
obviously optional.  (There are people who make a point of trying to
avoid this.)  I've certainly never seen anything that even appears to
be permanent, and so I'm wary of this approach.  When we talk about the
existence of an object and we say the object continues to exist, we are
reasoning from a belief in permanence.

There is a vast difference between the two claims of existence.  What
does existence mean without an assumption of permanence?

Ken
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark Peterson)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Obj/Exist
Date: 9 Oct 1992 13:42:51 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Distribution: inet
Reply-To: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4
Originator: hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu

From article <Bvto3K.D3J@umassd.edu>, by pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman):
> In article <1992Oct7.215507.28498@PacBell.COM>, rwbrigg@srv.PacBell.COM (Rick Briggs) writes:
>>In article 7GH@umassd.edu, pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman) writes:

[...lots omitted....]



Oh my.


>    Kant was not essentially interested in knowledge, rationalist, empirical, 
> or ideal.

I think this tells us we can stop the thread now.  

And as if that weren't enough...


> Furthermore,
> both rationalism and empiricism are types of subjectivism, a situation in 
> which the religious Kant was not required to judge realism. 

Empiricism is a type of subjectivism....  yeah, right.  If you're a Hegelian.


And just in case the horse *isn't* dead after that, we find...


>   Kant's "curtailment of wild speculation" included the denial that reality
> was knowable.

and...

>   There is NO Kantian reality, a position accepted, as far as I know, by all
> scholars of Kant.


I hate to bring this up, but none of the folks I know who work in Kant
would have the first clue as to what you could possibly be thinking
of.  Unless, perhaps, you are referring to Immanuel Kant's lesser
known, and illegitimate son, P.D.Q. Kant.  This sounds more like him.  ;-)


hiho

-- 
mark ce peterson   | uw-washington county  | hiho@csd4.csd.uwm.edu 
dept of philosophy | west bend, wi.  53095 | (414) 335-5200        

     The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves.
From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: The search for Truth and the Good
Date: 16 Oct 92 15:48:31 GMT
Article-I.D.: exu.exukjb.329.719250511
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.
X-Disclaimer: This article was posted by a user at Ericsson.
              The opinions expressed are strictly those of the
              user and not necessarily those of Ericsson.

In article <1992Oct15.161837.9315@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
>Subject: Re: The search for Truth and the Good
>Date: 15 Oct 92 16:18:37 GMT

Jim Kalb writes:
The first proposition doesn't seem very believable if "purposefully"
means "with some purpose, no matter what".  I can't believe that a
man's life would exemplify the purpose of human existence if his main
goal in living was to accumulate as many jars of peanut butter as he
possibly could.

Kenny's responds:
Well, I haven't gotten specific yet, true. What would have to be included
in a life of purpose or a meaningful life? Well, I have given a rough 
outline of it in my list (1)-(3), which don't specify the accumulation of
jars of peanut butter. The highest human values have, I'm saying, 
something to do with the attainment of a personal character one can 
approve of, the establishment and maintenance of interpersonal 
relationships, and some alignment with unlimited aims or goals.   

Jim Kalb continues:
By your second proposition do you intend that the meaning of life is
to live a life that feels meaningful?  I wonder where you'll get if
you pursue that.  For example, when one's life feels meaningful it
seems to me that part of the feeling of meaningfulness is a feeling of
relation to a system of things that goes beyond oneself and exists
regardless of one's feeling that it exists.  If that's right, then
it's hard to view the meaning of life as something that can be
completely reduced to feelings.  It may be that I mistake your
meaning, though.

Kenny Responds:
No, I don't. Meaningfulness I should say is to be conceived as an objective
thing, like happiness. I could, of course, have used the Aristotelian 
language of happiness instead of the kantian/rashdall language of the 
summom bonum, but they come to the same thing: the achievement of some 
sort of harmonization among of all the things that make for the good
life.  My list is intended in a general and broad way to identify these.
That is all.

Jim Kalb                
//////////////////////////////////////
/* Kenny  *   Welcome to Mind Wars! */
//////////////////////////////////////
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: nhorne@casper.cs.uct.ac.za (N E Horne)
Subject: Re: Obj/Exist
Organization: Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town
Distribution: y
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 20:55:09 GMT

In <Bvppnt.2Mt@umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman) writes:

>In article <1992Oct1.173934.25750@ariel.ec.usf.edu>, mccolm@darwin.math.usf.edu. (Gregory McColm) writes:

>>core, white interior, red skin) exists?  After all, this 
>>organization may be partly imposed by my mental processes.
>>Am I merely saying that I am not dreaming?  How would I 
>>know?
>>
>>Is "exist" really a definable verb?  Does the number 2 
>>exist?  How about transfinite numbers?  This issue does 
>>not seem to be as easily resolved as some Objectivists 
>>seem to think ...

>Unfortunately for these seekers after foolishness, 
>existence exists. 

(This seems to be a favourite Objectivist tautology, usually followed by the
 corollary that "existence couldn't exist in any other form". Of course attempts
 to unravel the meaning of that reduce to more foolish pursuit.)
 
>    While the above search for non-existence can be understood within conventi-
>onal metaphysics (e.g., Objectivism ...

(I hope that this is not an attempt to sneak Rand and Peikoff into the halls
 of convention from which, for good reason, they've been firmly barred.)

>... or classical realism) or epistemology, the
>following comments will be limited to existence.
>    The following existents exist: hands, lumps of organized particles and 
>electrical charges, the perception of a red roundish object, apples, quarks, 
>leptons, etc., products of the fevered imaginations of physicists, the apparent
>organization of objects, mental processes, dreaming, knowledge, existence, defin-
>able verbs, the number 2, tranfinite numbers, and resolutions and their lack.

(Hence the skeptical problem is solved - by decree. )

>    It may or may not be of interest to some but not only do all the above 
>existents exist, but many other things also exist. E.g., universities, compu-
>ters, factories, self-esteem, cars, theories and, my oh my, a hundred and one
>other existents. It is not recommended that an attempt be made to count them. 
>This warning is especially, but not exclusively, directed to empiricists.
>    All these existents exist, within some limit. Philosophers encounter the
>unresolvable when they [unknowingly?]transcend the limits of their concern.

There are few interesting problems that are obviously resolvable, and fewer 
still in which the availability of a solution is clear from the outset. 
Philosophers are concerned with deep problems that transcend broad parameters,
and one of the surest ways of killing the philosophical enterprise is by 
restricting it to proof by decree. 


Neil Horne

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: choy@skorpio.usask.ca (I am a terminator.)
Subject: What is beauty?
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 23:06:52 GMT

What is beauty? What does it mean to be aesthetically pleasing?
What is? What criteria are used to classify nice things?

Henry Choy
choy@cs.usask.ca
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: steveth@netcom.com (Steve Thomas)
Subject: Re: Of apples and their skins
Organization: VisionAire, San Francisco, CA
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 09:14:51 GMT

In article <1992Oct9.155935.18205@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@garnet.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
[Clear explaination of Russel's use of the Liar deleted--thanks for
clarifying that...]
>
>Russell's motive was not to show off or to confuse anyone; it was
>serious alarm about basic concepts being applied in mathematics at the
>time.  When Russell discussed the Liar, his aim was to look for
>correct principles of reasoning which would avoid the paradox above
>and other similar problems.
>

If Russell was a mathematician, what was he doing calling himself a
philosopher?  That, really, was my point.  What Russell, and most other
Moderns call "philosophy" is simply mathematics or linguistics (or
gibberish).  People--normal everyday folks, not mathematicians--look to
philosophy to help them in their every day lives.  Of course the
business of helping people would involve certainty--a thoroughly
unfashionable concept amongst those who displace philosophy departments
these days.

(A word to the Wise: these linguists and number-crunchers have no hope
of offering real solutions to real problems: don't accept the premise
that Humankind's most important study is actually a series of word games.)

When push comes to shove, the world will NEED people with answers.  People
will NEED philosophers that give them an explanation that is not, "there
is no answer".  

Modern philosophers will be the first against the wall when the 
revolution comes...

Russell WAS one of these modern philosophers.  That was the point I was
trying to make: if he's not providing solutions to the world's problems
then he's just mentally masturbating--and charging addmission to watch...

_____
Steve Thomas
steveth@rossinc.com
From: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: The search for Truth and the Good.
Date: 12 Oct 92 18:24:12 GMT
Reply-To: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pyramid Technologies, Mt. View, California.

In article <Bvz9tA.Hwt@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v066ram3@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu
(Mark J Stuhlmiller) writes:
|> 
|>
|>         To begin this, hopefully enlightening, trip I would merely 
|> like an answer to this question:
|> 
|>  **   What is the purpose of being alive?

A quickie response,... but first a distinction.  In "Eastern" systems
being "incarnate" (probably what you mean as being "alive") is a subset
of being alive.   Incarnation generally gives 'souls' an opportunity to
evolve,  via experience, to a more awakened living state.  In this
sense, being alive is a learning opportunity for the other being alive
which has no purpose.  It's simply what's so.

Paul Collacchi
From: mei172@cch.coventry.ac.uk (guru)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Obj/Exist
Date: 12 Oct 92 10:09:46 GMT
Organization: Coventry University

In article <1992Oct1.173934.25750@ariel.ec.usf.edu> mccolm@darwin.math.usf.edu. (Gregory McColm) writes:
>Is "exist" really a definable verb?  Does the number 2 
>exist?  How about transfinite numbers?  This issue does 
>not seem to be as easily resolved as some Objectivists 
>seem to think ...

guru sez:
	"exist" is like "reality": both are totally subjective terms, a result
	obtained from both quantum uncertainty and special relativity.


	1: Special Relativity

	Einstein showed that there is no such thing as "Absolute Time" ie
	we all have our own personal spatial reference frame in the four-
	dimensional continuum, and the different velocities and gravitational
	fields to which your frame has been subjected will determine the
	values of such phenomena as time.

	2: Quantum Uncertainty

	Heisenberg showed that we cannot know the position and velocity of
	any body to the same accuracy, ie there is always some uncertainty
	in the world-sheet of that body.

	Corollary:

	Combining the above two results shows that two people who are present
	at the same event will always disagree about what happened, due to
	the combined effects of working from different time-frames and being
	unable to agree upon the position of the bodies involved in that
	event.


	From the above we can conclude that reality is a subjective affair,
	since no two people can agree upon the events constituting reality.
	Also existence is subjective since no two people can prove that they
	were where they say they were, nor can they prove that any body is
	in any place.


	This is just my way of looking at things: all discussion welcomed.
-- 
      /~~~) /   / /~~~) /   /  
     (___/ (___/ /     (___/   These mind-expanding drugs have given me so much
        /                      imagination, I'm hallucinating grey vividly....
   (___/ mei172@cch.cov.ac.uk                       Victor Lewis-Smith
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
From: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk (Leo Smith)
Subject: Re: Of apples and their skins..
Reply-To: shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 18:34:00 +0000

The trouble with philosophers is they want their apples and to eat
them too...

Reality is approximate: This seems to be a real problem for
intellectuals. Not only is it approxiamte, it is subject to
uncertainty principles of its own.

Example :

Take the apple. At one end the most pure and exact description is to
take the raw sensory data - the redness - the smell - the weight etc.

At another end the most exact description might be in terms of atomic
physics - the leptons and quarks that comprise the apple.

But by the time you infer the latter from the former, the experience
(and probably the apple too) have utterly ceased to exist except in
your memory.

So as not to compare apples with oranges, isn't there some nice
utterly intimidating phrase or word that means 'the reality as I
experience it' as distinct from 'the extraordinarily complex mental
construct that I use to interpret and manipulate my life experience'

Surely the acute intellects of the philosophical community have come
up with a precise definition by now?
From: v066ram3@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Mark J Stuhlmiller)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: The search for Truth and the Good.
Date: 13 Oct 92 04:51:00 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <183850@pyramid.pyramid.com>, pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi) writes...
>In article <Bvz9tA.Hwt@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v066ram3@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu
>(Mark J Stuhlmiller) writes:
>|> 
>|>
>|>         To begin this, hopefully enlightening, trip I would merely 
>|> like an answer to this question:
>|> 
>|>  **   What is the purpose of being alive?
> 
>A quickie response,... but first a distinction.  In "Eastern" systems
>being "incarnate" (probably what you mean as being "alive") is a subset
>of being alive.   Incarnation generally gives 'souls' an opportunity to
>evolve,  via experience, to a more awakened living state.  In this
>sense, being alive is a learning opportunity for the other being alive
>which has no purpose.  It's simply what's so.
> 
>Paul Collacchi



          Thank you for coming to my rescue, Paul!
     Although I am glad that you made an attempt at defining "alive," 
I cannot be sure that we are agreeing upon the same term, just yet.
     If I am correct, this is a definition which has sprung from ancient 
Indian Transcendental Religion- which supported the caste system.  
It provided the lower members of the caste system with hope of gaining
'karma,' and of one day being reborn higher on the scale.  Now, I don't 
believe (unless proven otherwise) that after this life, "I" will be 
reincarnated.
     However, I think we can both agree that this is one of many 
definitions that can be found in the multitudes of religions throughout
the world.  What I would like to propose is that we determine the
essential characteristic (as much as we can) of every religions',
which believe in life after death, definition of being 'alive' so that
we may continue our quest for truth.  I think that we may be on the
right track with your proffer that 'life is a learning stage for the
soul.'
     Since this is such an important quest, however, I think you will
agree that we should scrutinize this proposition before we continue.
I already have a question about this learing stage for the soul:

          If we have no purpose in life except to bring our soul to
a "more awakened state," what exactly does our soul learn that is so
important???
                     aka  The Gadfly of New Haven
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta