acephal

>Whatever the Abrahamic influence on the course of Aristotelian thought, there is no reason to believe that Abrahamic influence was absolutely necessary to "universalize ethics" (take the early Stoics, for instance). This is expected and returns to my original point, that much of ethics is knowable in principle through unaided reason alone.

Aristotle directly refutes this in Nichomachean Ethics, this is why I wrote that it is “a very qualified doing”. He asserts that you can’t simply “get good” at committing virtuous acts because they require the correct upbringing firstly (“it makes a very great difference; or rather all the difference”); a good amount of that text reads like a parenting book; you can’t turn the skip later in life. So when you say:

> freedom to choose between alternatives apprehended by the intellect

I don’t think this is exhaustive in describing what’s going on in Nichomachean Ethics to any degree to render all else negligible. Given the way he talks about “soul” (a word which also conveys the worst interpretation of what he’s talking about in De Anima), it becomes clearer to me why conditioning is so important to him.

>One very common error people make is to believe that ethics - at least epistemically and for the most part - is sectarian. This view seems to stem from an ultimately nihilistic presupposition that morality is a fiction supplied by the fiction of religion. But that is not the natural law view and thus a view alien to both Aristotle and to Christianity.

I didn’t make that claim in any implied way, I asserted, correctly, that Aristotle is not an Abrahamic thinker.

> The natural law view is that human beings have a nature, which is most centrally to be a rational animal with the freedom to choose between alternatives apprehended by the intellect. Thus, Man has moral responsibility, because he plays a part in choosing what he does. Accordingly, because human nature defines what is good or bad for human beings (that which actualizes human potential in accord with reason vs. that which frustrates or opposes reason and the actualization of potential in accord with it), we bear responsibility for how we exercise our powers. Aristotle wasn't completely, but the core principles in the Metaphysics or his ethical works or in epistemology are - in my view - spot on.

The Nichomachean Ethics doesn’t discuss ethics within any context of absolute free will even, it is a very qualified doing. Aristotle explicitly points out that the actions of slaves are entirely disqualified from being considered ethical. Most Christian theologies would vehemently disagree precisely because having the supra-knowledge of the Mystery imparted upon one necessarily brings one's being into the dimension of revealed universality. That's not what Aristotle is talking about.

> What Christianity does or claims to do is supplement what is knowable by unaided reason with revealed knowledge - the object of faith - which, of course, does have ethical import, but it does not negate or supplant what is knowable by unaided reason.

All three of the Abrahamic theologies were infected by Neoplatonism, which . The Europeans revived their Neoplatonism through the Muslims even. The Middle Ages Christian theology of the "chain of being" is a riff on Neoplatonist "ladder of being".

Aristotle was describing in Metaphysics a cosmology concerned with unpacking the notion of motion as the actualization of potentiality, hence, "First Mover", which is not at all an Abrahamic idea.

> FWIW, Aquinas drew heavily from Aristotle and had such enormous respect for Aristotle, he referred to him as simply "the Philosopher".

This doesn’t interact with my point since it requires us first to ask how he read Aristotle, whom was not an Abrahamic thinker. An aside, but the Muslims called Aristotle “The Philosopher” (Ibn Rashud, Ibn Sina), and that tradition was received through the Muslims by their European readers.

It’s weird and messed up because Aristotle’s audience isn’t Christian or even Abrahamic the slightest. He’s right about rejecting abstract definitions that aren’t grounded in the elements of a situation however.

New browser engines have not

Sad watching Apple design repeat Microsoft’s mistake of trying to push through a single UI paradigm across mobile and desktop (and, especially, VR in Apple’s case)

The amount of em dashes in Nietzche; the amount of semicolons in Hegel

> My favorite thing about Napster and LimeWire was when you could find a song, and then BROWSE the hard drive of the person hosting that song.

Soulseek lets you do this and is still going

From what I've read, he's tied up RAM manufacturers through 2029. That's a lot of quartely earnings reports for many firms in the economy where they watch consumer spend come to a screeching halt.

Altman should be jailed for this. Single-handedly crashing consumer spending in an entire sector of the economy. At the very least for the reason that that was supposed to happen _after_ they had the AI in hand to supplant majority white collar labor, not before.

Facebook itself still has a big problem with it's lack of youth audience though. Zuck captured the boomers and older Gen X, which are the biggest demos of living people however.

Is there any reason to prefer uBoL over Pi-Hole/Adguard Home?

The famous French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan claimed that if everyone said exactly what needs be said, language wouldn't exist or something like that. I'd wager movies are a reflection of how our psyche works, including 'main character syndrome', omissions of causality for narrative coherency, etc.

Only in America is this kind of anti-labor sentiment masquerading as "if you knew what was good for you now look what happened", as if businesses were so stupid as to be fooled by "if we don't make it apparent, they won't notice" and somehow this would shield programming from off-shoring. The actual reality is that post-WW2 exceptionalism in literacy ended; the developing world caught up. The entire premise of American labor exceptionalism was built on this faulty assumption. And rather than reconfigure your negotiation as labor, your first thought is how you can get back in the good graces of the 'big boss'.