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Levis

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Everything posted by Levis

  1. Well my dozen emails have all been ignored, but if he's ignoring everyone else it can't possibly be something I did (phew). However, she did say she'd have him get in touch with me and he still didn't so maybe it WAS something I did after all
  2. Don't know why, but I've been missing Fin more than usual lately. Haven't spoken to him for eons, it's as if he's gone off the internet. If only my entire uni degree wasn't on the stuff, I might be tempted to do the same. (I wonder if I could?) Anyway, I asked his sister how he was a few months ago, and she says he's fine, so that's a relief. I still miss him v. much though
  3. Would B.L.U.R.E.M.I. Q.U.A.L.I.F.Y*? [smallest]*sounds better spoken[/smallest]
  4. Sorry, I should have posted a warning
  5. Frankie Teardrop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7rU4fCIFXE
  6. Rather than being sad, I'm going to focus on how lucky we are that she was with us so long. Check it out, such a bright, positive, inspiring person and she managed to radiate all that out to 5 continents. That's a life well-spent
  7. All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run better run faster than my bullet All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run better run outrun my gun. I'm no Foster the People fan, but pretty strange how a song so dark got so popular, hey?
  8. Rollercoaster - Von Trapps xoxo internet radio
  9. well, actually - it's OK. But it's just an EP and a bit too polished. I prefer their albums still, especially their last one. Exploding Head was PHENOMENAL. The self-titled was great too, but a bit more amateurish. Onwards to the Wall is too professional. But in APTBS land too amateurish > too professional.
  10. ... here to tell me he's breaking my heart AGAIN
  11. A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS!!!1111!!!!1!1!
  12. He's right, I was here catching up and then going back to my 'busy' ( ) ways!
  13. That's just bad manners and poor upbringing. Disrespectful to someone older, and inconsiderate to your employer. It's also passive aggressive which warrants capital punishment on its own.
  14. The only branch of philosophy that I am willing to express in linear terms is logic, but I think ethics is not a continuum where one decision is better or worse than an other. you have to take into account at least 3 dimensions: the situation, the individual's perception of the situation, and the state of society at the time. And these aren't independent or objective factors either, they have forces acting upon them as well. So I can't see a universal ethical principle... You'd have to go right down and start by defining "good" and "bad" which are already subjective value judgements.
  15. Yes. That's right. In fact, the reward principle seems to be operating at the start of the book as well, when Socrates and gang are discussing the concept of justice. Both arguments seem to agree that people's behaviour is motivated by their desire to achieve the best possible outcome for themselves.
  16. Now let's all break it down to dubstep.
  17. Personally, I'd be pretty miffed if I landed up on a forum and people were all like ZOMG YOU'RE [name]!
  18. I believe him because his quotes are accurate and sentences flow logically.
  19. Can't be who you think he is... That actually IS a Plato quote.
  20. I have about 3 topics to discuss separately here but I am too lazy to do it right now especially after that word spew over in Book Read. However, I have an entire thesis chapter dedicated to one of those topics so it's BOUND to be exciting right?
  21. Well all this is the ethical question isn't it? What is 'good', does it have an absolute value, can it be defined, can a universally applicable code of ethics be created etc. The book doesn't answer the question obvs, but neither party manages to cover my POV, either. The person who DOES seem to be on my kind of track is Plato whose Republic I'm reading for the very first time (shhh, don't tell me what happens!). It's full of views that's all too easy to distort because everyone forgets it was written in 380 BC (even I had to look that up) when in actual fact it's remarkable that so much of what he says can be applied to the present state of society. BUT I digress... Like the Republic, the problem with people's idea of 'reward' is that they see at as a physical concept without taking into account that it might be motivated by an internal mechanism. You don't have to reward a child with candy when s/he helps you with something, a smile and a thank you is positive reinforcement on its own. It's one that's likely to keep occurring when the child grows up and interacts with strangers. In that way human beings ARE trained to reinforce 'good' behaviour so maybe there is an innate set of 'rules' that govern ethical behaviour. IMO altruism, 'good' behaviour etc. are motivated by pursuit of reward/avoidance of punishment. Game theory spends a lot of time working out the mechanics of altruism, and in people at least the behaviour isn't based on such pure thoughts. Turns out people with damage to that part of the brain which governs their perception of long term consequences are more likely to take less altruistic decisions. Probably reflecting a belief in some form of karma i.e. if you're cooperative, you're likely to receive assistance should you need it in the future. The saving-lives kind of altruism I look at from the same perspective - avoidance of the guilt that is the result of inaction. I doubt many people rush into a dangerous situation KNOWING they're going to die and without the faintest bit of hope of both sides surviving. As for insects, I figure it's just conformity to a different set of rules to those that govern human societies.
  22. Actually, I am quite disappointed in how both parties seem to be united in their disagreement against Kant's principles. I quite like the guy No, both chaps seem to agree that the categorical imperative and pretty much anything Kant said was stuff and nonsense. The apply it to animal behaviour by discussing what makes human actions superior, if anything does. Kant, apparently (go easy on me, I've only read a couple of essays), believed that "action engendered by any directly experienced drive must necessarily be ethically inferior". Of the two talking, one believes that 'the striving for good indeed exists as an original impulse of the human heart', while the other refutes Kant, AND this guy, by saying 'Surely you do not assume that anything which distinguishes man from rest of the living world must needs be considered different in principle from the rest of nature?' - and gives the example of language, to prove how you can't free human beings' uniquer traits from the laws of biology. From this we launch into a discussion about if/how the reward motive guides behaviour which is one of my favourite bits because it's all about Pavlov. Right at the start, though, things are even cooler. They use Kant here too, but apply his theories to quantum physics. It's quite an old debate actually, but it's what the book starts with - do elementary particles exist objectively? do they have individuality? Bit tough to condense all this into a post, especially after just one reading, but hopefully it wasn't terribly anticlimactic
  23. I feel my eyes didn't do it enough justice! I've stopped reading anything 'light' because I find it reflects in my thesis writing which is a badthing. But I do need to read stuff that's not thesis-related though! It's quite a thin book though - ten dialogues, about a dozen pages each. It's also quite interesting. Kantian philosophy applied (or not applied) to animal behaviour. I like these kinds of books for how they don't make a distinction between science and the humanities, because really you can't have one without the other.
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