The bigots need a home, and it would only be polite to just give them a nice, well organized section of the site so that one can easily find all the social hierarchy/power/nobility/racist stuff in one place.
Would the statement, “Utilitarianism is the only coherent moral system” qualify as preaching? What principle distinguishes that statement from the statement, “Racial Nationalism is the only coherent social system” as of a different kind, i.e. the former isn’t preaching and the latter is?
Not that I don’t understand what you’re getting at, I just think it’s virtually impossible to police in the way you’re suggesting.
Slight historical aside: as I understand it, the reason iloveopinions was created was as a (somewhat facetious) attempt at the same distinction you’re suggesting. If you want to discuss, there was ILP, if you want to pontificate, there was ILO. But that was facetious because it was really a way of saying, “you aren’t doing philosophy, you’re stating your opinion”.
There’s a little equivocation here. I would argue that “philosophy” is more a way of engaging with ideas than a set of ideas. A personal philosophy can be deeply unphilosophical, I hope you’ll agree.
Which is why I say that ILP is for discussing, rather than pontificating/preaching.
Idle intelligent chat is not enough. I expect people to come up with alternative ideas and ideals on how one ought to live, rather than hash and rehash what some dead guy insinuated in aphorisms.
I think that’s exactly right. There is plenty of shite old philosophy that we don’t talk about much anymore outside of academic niches. But at the time those dead guys were writing, what they were doing was com[ing] up with alternative ideas and ideals on lots of things, including how one ought to live.
But I don’t think that’s different from anything I’ve said, is it? When I say “discuss”, I mean the coming up with alternatives, and also the good faith consideration of the alternatives that others come up with, the comparison and evaluation of your alternatives with theirs on some objective criteria.
Contrast that with preaching, which is intended to be a one-way interaction: they reveal to you some truth, impervious to reasoned responses. Even if that truth is about how one ought to live, I would not call that philosophy.
Not in idle chat, no. If you have no beliefs, no ground zero viewpoints, then you have no skin in the game and all you offer is idle chitchat back-n-forth amounting to nothing.