Sceletium Tortuosum 2010 Memory

Truth - A Guide for skeptics

your senses then you have to trust,
no wrong, they can look up,
If your mind will get you awake.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe



Nothing is more controversial than the concept of truth. All sorts of groups claiming it for himself. Mutual suspicion and rejection of the other (up to extinction) are the result. Therefore, the criticism seems prima facie evident that claims (with claims to truth) that the term havoc truth more harm than good. But once we really do without this concept? Simon Blackburn, a philosopher at Cambridge feels, in his book "Truth - A Guide for the Perplexed," this term refers to the tooth. He is trying to explore the content and meaning and the changes that has seen the concept over time to trace.
It follows the finding that the present philosophy is always helpful. This is especially true for contemporary philosophy. Still trying to Blackburn, the arguments and ideas of the "relativist" and "postmodernists" understand. For only if these trends are understood, they can also be somewhat opposed. For it is certainly not indifferent to what is believed to be true or what men and women think. The risk is very aptly characterized by the following sentence: The world is an equally valid, if everything is valid. Ultimately, it is
the importance of our thoughts and speech and subsequent actions. And actions create facts - proclaimed as the word of course. Was the earlier skepticism a complete abstinence from judgments, born of the insight into the Imperfections and subjectivity of their own world view and fear of dogmatism, is the modern counterpart to degenerate into a recognition of all the conflicting opinions. The result is a blossoming of unfounded doctrines without backing in every possible direction: Prophecy, Astrology, Voodoo, geomancy, dowsing, homeopathy, miracles, angels, occult, satanism, aliens, creationism, management strategies, psychotherapy, healing stones and many other dogmatism.
Blackburn sees this development as a threat to the world, although the arguments of the post-modern relativists sometimes acknowledges. The opposite - an undisguised absolutism - is he is also suspicious. But where is the golden mean? The possession of truth is one thing, the essence of truth, however, very different. Finally comes
Blackburn to the conclusion that both sides have suffered no major victories. The project of "first philosophy" - a all this to legitimacy - is in any case exposed as illusion. We can not step out of the world, and consider it objectively from the outside. But this means that knowledge is impossible? His answer is no. Once a scientific problem only the problem itself is, relativism appears only as an unnecessary distraction. Therefore, we should readily and, all of science-based theories of inspiration, despite all reservations and provisional.


Simon Blackburn: Truth - A Guide for skeptics. Translated from English by Andrew Hetzel. Scientific Book Company (Primus Verlag), Darmstadt 2005th

Sayings About 1 Year Olds

A bright spot for the blind ... I'm not a Marxist

The Austrian Supreme Court has ruled that a transsexual applicant is not the official change of sex in the birth register may be denied. In all shortly : So far, this correction refused on the grounds that the applicant eventually married and same sex marriage thus formally would be. Under the principle "It can not be, what must not be" banned the adoption of transgender official correction of the sexual state when the / the applicant is married. Formally, the applicant had to stay a man, even if they lived for some time as a woman. This decree gave the highest judicial knowledge now to case.

For me, the current legal status in Austria is more than questionable. Under Austrian law, there are the free basic law of contract between consenting citizens, unless the contract is unconscionable. Since marriage is nothing more than a contract between two consenting people, it should in principle accessible to everyone be. But there is suddenly special rules that exclude same-sex partnership. Fortunately, no one knows in Austria anyway the marriage law, with its obscure obligations, otherwise the marriage would be even more sharply. In theory, but everyone should go with someone a free prenuptial agreement. Immoral can hardly come into play when two people want to protect their life together by contract. To consider

I also want to make that marriage as a mass phenomenon, a phenomenon of the 20th Century. Previously, to marry is not the majority of the population allowed. Only free and financially independent men were allowed to take a wife. Slaves, servants, and many women and unfree workers were prohibited from marriage. And yet when - as is required by nature - an illegitimate child was born, the woman and the child was outlawed. So marriage was to the 19th Century concept of a patriarchal feudal society, the rule of man over the woman and her offspring cemented. With the general democratization and the marriage gradually became "democratized". In this respect, it is questionable whether the concept of marriage at all fit in a modern society that is in any case by the progressive deregulation anything but supportive family. Families need a common rhythm with shared time and activities. And they need a conducive environment. Both are given less and less as the economy and trade all such structures are destroyed gradually. So we almost have to look for alternative models (such as cybersex?)!

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the discussion around same-sex marriage are really pointless, as the Austrian basic law actually guarantees the freedom of contract law.

The reality is the way the common law practice, long out of date anyway!