Absolutism vs. Postmodernism

[sandsleeper]

[Axtech]

[Joey]

[sandsleeper]

[mosaik]

[sandsleeper]

[mosaik]

religion is a scary place for me to tread due to it's irrational nature.

edited:

i used to believe that objectivist morality was an absolute because it was based on reason, but narbus kept asking me to prove it. and i couldn't. in another debate, some guy tried to debunk ayn rand's objectivism by posting the shermer article. i read it and modified my thinking.

it actually worked out for me. now where i used to say "right" i say rational.

i can prove what's rational and what isn't, but not what's right and what's wrong, and i basically think that if it's rational, it's right.

i don't know what philosophy that makes me a student of. i like to think i'm a jack of all trades.

[sandsleeper]

sounds good to me, since picking just one would be too much of an absolutist choice.

[mosaik]

i think i'm inventing my own.

but for now i'm just an anarcho-capitalist with a little objectivist/skeptic mixed in.

[joe_canadian]

that makes you a rationalist as opposed to an empiricist, I think.

[Johnny]

One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter

[joe_canadian]

my personal position is essentially what Kimmy described, but I have some problems with it.

I believe it insofar as a person's opinion is not forced upon others, or the opinion doesn't breed behaviour that's aggresively harmful to others. I think this has been discussed before, but if someone believes it's okay to say, kill another human (by which I mean the killing is a random act with no motivation behind it), I think it's crap. but under that system of thinking, I can't say it is morally wrong, just that I feel it is morally wrong.

I don't have a large amount of specific morals, but those I do I feel very strongly about. I know these are definitely products of my upbringing and personal character - so I can't debunk that line of thinking - but I simply cannot believe that there are no absolutes where morality is concerned.

I'd definitely like to hear more on the subject.

[sandsleeper]

check out this article by Stanley Fish:


i have a few problems with some of his statements simply because he contradicts himself in a few places, but at the end he explains how one can be a postmodernist relativist and still be opinionated... pretty interesting.

oh yeah, btw, it's tied in with terrorist/9-11 stuff but it helps to explain a lot about postmodernist relativism.