FOUR ([info]girlboymusic) wrote,
@ 2008-04-24 13:03:00
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Current location:cubicle
Current mood:lepidopterous
Entry tags:lists

and the word of the day is "winsome"
More words I have looked up recently:

accretion
arachnologist
arachnology
archaeologist
atomic number
basalt
bumfuzzled
cancelled
concurrent
credulous
endospore
extant
furor
hungarian
hydrolysis
impeach
magyar
oxidation
oxide
re
rhyolite
shale
skimpy
suffrage
seleniferous
sequela
thallium
tornado
vortex
viscoelastic
viscous
waterspout

(How great is the combination of "extant furor"?)


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[info]koganbot
2008-04-24 06:49 pm UTC (link)
arbitrary (to look for an antonym)
protégé (to locate accents)
yawp

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[info]girlboymusic
2008-04-24 07:09 pm UTC (link)
"Yawp" was for your latest Idol post, "protégé" was for your Ashlee discussion, but what was the opposite of "arbitrary" for?

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[info]koganbot
2008-04-25 11:58 am UTC (link)
I revived an old [info]koganbot thread because I wanted to answer something that [info]skyecaptain had quoted to the effect that our moral codes are "arbitrary stories based on semi-arbitrary impulses, needs, desires." I disputed the idea that the "stories" - that is, our social practices - were any more arbitrary than our brain size and our having legs and arms. "They all evolved in specific circumstances."

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/17184.html

(I don't know if David saw this response, actually. It depends on whether he has email notification for livejournal.)

I never did find an antonym for "arbitrary" that would do what I wanted.

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[info]skyecaptain
2008-04-25 01:35 pm UTC (link)
I didn't know that you could get email notifications! I was never satisfied with that conversation -- I did seem to be using "arbitrary" as a catch-all for an "antidote" for kind of dogmatic thinking ("this MUST be why etc.") that no one in their right mind could employ in their everyday lives; but a major problem arises if by attacking this position you suggest that there aren't lots of excellent reasons to believe what you believe, do what you do, etc. I'm not sure that was what I was moving toward at the time though giving myself the benefit of the doubt I'll say if I was starting to argue that, I'm glad I didn't take it any further.

Not sure exactly what Shawn's thinking was leading me to at that point, except that it seemed exciting that he was really questioning whether or not there was a Moral Problem, and coming to the conclusion, basically, that we have to assume that people naturally have morals -- there's no way to be without them -- so to talk about them at any greater level than how they're actually employed and used (some "deeper reason" for them) didn't make a lot of sense.

But when I think about that, what really doesn't make any sense to me is why anyone would want to make that extra leap -- somewhat recently we got into a slight argument about "meta-ethics," with me arguing that even if there might be Big Ethics -- ethics that generally hold true across a range of cultures, to the point that we might be tempted to call them universal, there's no greater principle that would allow for us to talk about them outside the scope of the specific social/political/whatever circumstances in which they're used. Which I think is the gist of Wittgenstein's "lecture on ethics," though again, I'm confused about whom but a very specialized kind of philosopher would really try to work toward an idea of meta-ethics; usually something like a "meta-ethics" is invoked as a judgment value -- our set of ethics are better than theirs -- but not really as a proposition, i.e. "there must be a way to discuss ethics in a way that reaches beyond how ethics are developed and used."

Actually I haven't spoken to Shawn in a while -- he might actually respond to some of this himself.

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[info]koganbot
2008-04-25 01:59 pm UTC (link)
To get email notification, go to manage account settings.

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