In the 24th lecture of Steven Smiths Political Philosophy class at Yale available on ItunesU, he says that Patriotism is unethical because it implies "a blind deference to tradition" and sums it up in the Phrase, "my country, right or wrong". This seems contradictory for people who live in modern democratic societies because patriotism is at the very heart of democracy as the incentive to vote, and people who don't vote are often met with disdain as it appears that they don't love or care about their country enough to vote.   It would seem that the conflict is, what is ethically the stronger drive in human nature, the love of ones wisdom (which is at times anti-patriotic) or the love of ones country? I am familiar with Plato's Crito and the Apology and am looking for an argument which is pro-patriotic that is equally or more compelling than Socrates argument for the love of ones own wisdom as being most ethically sound.
121488
It is a very well known phenomena that people feel pride for the country where they were born and/or live, even though the effect seems to be declining slightly nowadays. Frequently, governments also try to instill a sense of national pride in their citizens in order to motivate them to serve the country.  But is it ethically correct to be proud of one's country?  When people say that they are proud of being a citizen of a country that has an independent jurisdiction, is a democracy and respects its citizens' rights, the obvious question to me is: Can you be proud of something that you did not create?
70711
My classmate told me I should always say, "With all due respect," or "I politely disagree," when disagreeing someone - especially an educator - in order to avoid being perceived as rude.  For example:     Teacher: This class always infuriates me. Most of you are either absent or   late for my class. I will give you all failing grades in this subject!      Me: With all due respect Ma'am, many of my classmates actually do attend your class, and arrive early, to learn something about your subject. I think you should take all those students who attend your class on time and daily, into consideration.   or      Teacher: There's a higher incidence of suicide in men than women because men choose to hide their suffering or pain without telling anybody.      Me: Ma'am, I politely disagree with this opinion. According to the most recent studies of the American Psychiatric Association about suicide, more women attempt suicide than men, although men seem to be more successful in their attempts, resulting in more fatalities.     Can you suggest some polite variations?
39857
A frequent argument brought up in support of voting anonymity is that it can lead to potential grudges. Certainly the review system is of the same nature.  I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that voting is anonymous and reviewing is not. Either both should be public--and this would be fine since public reviewing has been successful--or both should be anonymous--and I assume this would be the desired option since this community holds anonymity so dear.  One could say that voting rates the posts, the actual meat of the site, while reviewing is based on clarifying the purpose of the site and cleaning it up.   answer makes the point that the community can trust that votes are a good measure of quality for the very reason that they do not know who cast them; the mentality that a high-ranking member may have supported something could blur the line between "science" and "politics/religion."  Reviewing, then, can be seen as a judgment of specific members rather than quality of edit/questions, which seems to fall precisely under the "politics/religion" umbrella--the review system is much more vulnerable to grudges due to this.  So let's discuss the differences and the implications of these disjointed anonymity policies.
106336
I read somewhere a sentence which said about a political leader that he is the "holy something" whose actions cannot be questioned.   The context was to describe that even though this man does bad things, due to his power people are afraid to question his actions. I can not remember the correct idiom, so please help. If you know any similar idiom that can be used in such a context, that would also be great.
117355
This word proverbial has been bothering me a lot lately. I cannot understand it even after translating it into my native language. I would like to know its meaning as well as its origin.
101675
To what extent I am free with my voting?  And - especially - with downvoting.   I came into argument with another user on the reasons for the voting. So, I decided to ask.  Beside usual awful no-research-effort questions and quick-and-wrong answers, I am often voted down for the answers you would call correct ones:   When I think there shouldn't be answer at all (helping the OP to shoot himself in the foot or feeding a help vampire)  To negate an over-upvoting craze for the silly answer on even more silly question.   So, the question is - what you think on these reasons?   And - bonus question - is there any difference in the policies for the voting up and down?
48819
Donald Rumsfeldt had a way of speaking in public, where to make his point more forcibly he would pose questions and answer them. Has Saddam Hussain bombed his own people? Yes. Has he begun the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction? Yes Are we prepared to see him terrorise his neighbours? No (This is not necessarily an accurate quotation, but just an example of the sorts of things he said).  But what interests me is this form of rhetoric which involves posing loaded questions and providing answers that make your point. Another exponent of this was Josef Stalin. In his case it has been seen by some historians as a technique he learned during his childhood education in a religious seminary. It was a form of catechism.  So what is the rhetoric called? Is it catechismic?  The word does not exist (at least not in the OED) as an adjective.   Edit. I have briefly looked at .It is not entirely a parallel example - the OP complains that his wife does it in the course of everyday conversation. I am primarily interested in the development of an argument through this process. But the former question did bring out some interesting words - e.g. sermocinatio,- @Sven Yargs - which unfortunately does not have an OED entry. But I am also fascinated by the link to catechism, which I believe may be the provenance of this in some politicians. Someone has now come up with a suitable adjective - below.    Answer. I think the closest answer has been supplied by @Old English Lapdog. It seems to be the case that there are two distinct elements to this. One is that it follows the religious practice of teaching by question and supplied answer.  In that sense it relates to catechism. But in building an argument it is rhetorical. The word catechetical in its OED (sense 3) includes a reference to Socrates. 1711   J. Addison Spectator No. 239. ¶3   Socrates introduced a Catechetical Method of Arguing. He would ask his Adversary Question upon Question, till he had convinced him out of his own Mouth that his Opinions were wrong. So I am prepared to accept catechetical as the answer.
114254
A discussion at work recently involved our CEO (who has a psychology degree and is generally very knowledgable.. I have a lot of respect for his opinion) stating with great confidence that altruism is impossible, the argument being that an act of kindness is at the very least motivated by making oneself feel better by doing it. That makes an assumption that people are gratified by their act of kindness, but that's a different question. This is about the term itself.  The notion that we can't be kind without expecting reward didn't sit well with me, so I started thinking about it more, and realised I couldn't see past an apparent flaw in the concept.  First: definition. I'd understood it to mean an act of kindness for no reward. Google defines as: "disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others"  My CEO's argument appears to be that it's impossible because (effectively) the act of kindness is the reward, or at least that the feel-good-factor is directly linked to kindness, so there can be no kindness without feeling good.  This seems to be generally accepted.  If that's the case, then my own definition phrase becomes "An act of kindness without kindness", which makes no sense.  Google's definition makes it even more clear: "disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others"  "disinterested concern" surely is a contradiction.  At that point, I find it difficult to think further on the subject. The only way I can see it working is if the act of kindness itself is discounted as a reward, in which case altruism becomes entirely possible.  So my question is:  Is there an inherent contradiction in the notion of altruism? And if so, where does that leave the arguments about whether it's possible / impossible ?
29052
I don't think anyone wants to be the thought police, and I'm particularly wary of censorship on a part of the site that is a user's personal self-statement, and is a little off the beaten path.  On the other hand, I'm also concerned that we may not want a site where clicking on a user to see their other posts would expose folks to racist or other bigoted terms that almost everyone would agree are inappropriate for civil discourse.    Don't forget the "be nice" rule".  Note that I don't want a "flag user" rule, which I know has been beaten to death already, and further think that swears and semi-inflammatory opinions, etc. should generally just be ignored - I'm only asking about terms that provoke serious emotions around racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual orientation issues.  What, if anything, is the appropriate response in such cases?
97227
I'm currently working on the following question:  "At least one of Plato and Democritus believed in the theory of forms. Plato believed in the theory of forms only if he was not an atomist, and Democritus was an atomist only if he did not believe in the theory of forms. Democritus was an atomist. Prove, using Natural Deduction, that Plato was not an atomist"  I have been working for quite some time to take the information and turn it into a set of literals and statements I can work with.  So far, I have got $P \lor D$,  $P \Rightarrow \lnot a$,  $D \Rightarrow A$,  $D = A$  However, I cannot seem to make these prove the statement using natural deduction, any hints?
42919
Recently the media reported on a political poll that stated that "46% of Republican voters in Mississippi think that interracial marriage should be illegal".  One example story (of many around the 'net) is this one from the NY Daily News: .  From that article:     A survey conducted last month shows 46% of GOP voters in the state   believe interracial marriage should be illegal - a plurality of the   people questioned   Given that I know many people in interracial marriages (including in my own family) I was motivated to track down the full story rather than fall to the obvious hysteria.  I located the press release on the poll from Public Policy Polling  (PDF)  which has:     46% of these hardcore Republican voters believe interracial marriage   should be illegal, while 40% think it should be legal. With Barbour   included, Huckabee gets more support (22%) from the former than the   latter (15%), as does Palin (13-6). The support for Bachmann (10-2),   Gingrich (13-8), and Pawlenty (4-1) works the opposite way.   And at the end of the first page they state:     PPP surveyed 400 usual Mississippi Republican primary voters from   March 24th to 27th. The survey’s margin of error is +/-4.9%.   Now what I don't understand is how to interpret the results especially the margin of error value.    From the raw numbers, 46% (~50%) of 400 voters is 200 voters who responded who think that interracial marriages should be illegal.  But from stats of Mississippi in the 2008 Federal election, McCain polled about 725,000 Republican votes (to Obamas 556,000). My gut feeling is that you can't extrapolate that 46% number to the other 724,600 Republican voters and still retain a 5% margin of error.  So is the media misrepresenting the numbers (really? the media would do that?!?!?!) Or are there statistics at work that I don't understand?  Thanks for your help!
71276
From reading this  on Hume, having read the first seven sections of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (which covers the relevant section), a further question hit me. Hume dismisses the occurrence as "singular ... scarcely worth our observing", yet he brings the counter example up instead of others. Why does he bring up a counterexample which he himself dismisses as trivial? Is it to bolster his argument by suggesting that the only counterexample so important as to be worth mentioned is itself highly trivial? Or is it merely because its the only concrete, simple counterexample Hume conceived of? Responses with links to Hume scholars would be appreciated.
2502
I am currently writing an essay on artificial moral agents, and I need to explain the difference between ethics and morals. However, I am finding it really hard to find a good book or research paper which contains a citable definition.   Could someone point me in the right direction?
121209
Prof Michael Sandel, Justice: ..., Episode 06: "MIND YOUR MOTIVE" [in this episode, Prof Sandel introduces Kant.]     25:35: How many moral laws from Kant’s point of view are there in this room, are there a thousand or is there one?   25:45: He thinks there's one, which in a way does go back to this question: all right, what is the moral law, what does it   tell us? So what guarantees, it sounds like … to act autonomously, is to act according to one's conscience, according to a law   one gives oneself.   26:04: But what guarantees that ... if we all exercise our reason, we will come up with one and the same moral law? That's what Ahmady [the student whose question asked Prof Sandel to explain all this] wants to know.   26:15: Here's Kant's answer: The reason that leads us to the law we give ourselves, as autonomous beings,    is a reason.   26:33: It's a kind of practical reason that we share as human beings. It's not idiosyncratic. The reason we need to respect   the dignity of persons, is that we're all rational beings. We all have the capacity for reason. And it's the exercise of that capacity for a reason   which exist undifferentiated in all of us, that makes us worthy of dignity, all of us.   27:06: And since it's the same capacity for reason, unqualified by particular autobiographies and circumstances, it's the same universal capacity for reason that delivers the moral law. It turns out that to act autonomously, is to act according to a law we give ourselves exercising our reason. But it's the reason, we share with everyone as rational beings. Not the particular reason we have, given our upbringing, our particular values, our   particular interests.   27:46: It's pure practical reason in Kant's terms, which legislates a priori, regardless of any particular contingent or empirical ends.   How does everyone have the same capacity for reason, unqualified by particular autobiographies and circumstances? What about the mentally ill, whose capacities for reason ARE limited by their unfortunate medical circumstances? And what of babies?
113904
I've been seeing arguments of this form for awhile:   (agreed true premise) Some predicate P was applicable to behavior/event/thing A in the past. Variations: P(A) may have been true at some particular past time t, or over all past time T. (fallacious consequence) Therefore P(A) is true now. Variations: P(A) must be true now and all futures.   But I haven't known what to call them (e.g., when "calling out" their utterers). The problem seems to me to be due to ignoring (empirical) context and quantity (but has nothing to do with logical quantification). Some examples:   Mass immigration was "good for America" in its (past) history. Therefore mass immigration must be "good for America" now. (P=good for America, A=mass immigration) (even more logically problematic) Humans have been burning fossil fuels for centuries, and "there was no crisis then." Therefore, to claim that fossil fuel combustion is "a crisis now, one must believe that we've been in crisis for centuries." (P=not crisis-producing, A=fossil fuel combustion)   Does this fallacy (or cognitive bias, but this failure "feels logical" to me--ICBW) have a widely-accepted name? Given the extensive and systematic attention to logic and rhetoric over millenia, I suspect this has been previously taxonomized.
59249
This is what is supposedly his claim:     My noumenal self is an uncaused cause outside of time, which therefore   is not subject to the deterministic laws of nature in accordance with   which our understanding constructs experience.   How can he say that if a noumenal self has to exist in nature and be bound to body that exists in nature? Also, if his noumenal self is free then so does 7 billion other people's, which is not the case because they all live in a societal structure where everyone has freedom that comes with a bunch conditions as to what is forbidden.
21878
[Revised question]  Is there a name for expressions or sayings such as "the end justifies the means?"  After searching online I found that this expression is defined as consequentialism. But what I'm asking is whether there is a name for this types of phrase. At first, I thought it was an idiom, but by definition it is not an idiom because one can deduce the meaning from the words of the expression.   Also, after reading the many excellent comments and answers, I looked at the term proverb and maxim, but these don't seem to quite fit either because "the end justifies the means" doesn't seem to be a "general truth" in fact it is more of a moral rationalization that many people do not believe to be true.  Just to clarify, I'm not asking for definitions of "the end justifies the means"  or "consequentialism"; I'm asking what are phrases such as this called, where their meaning, unlike an idiom, can be deduced from the words in the expression or saying, and where it is not a general truth (i.e. adage, maxim, proverb, etc).