[Buddha-l] Taking a stand against....something

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 12-8-2012 12:32, David Living schreef:
> Erik:
>
>> If your boot is the claim that sociology is crap and people had
>> possessions before the big bang, you're most welcome, but I'm afraid
>> this boot backfires.

>> Sociology can be interesting but is it Science?

It is a humanity and it is very important for*understanding*human behaviour, for which science like physics or math is useless. Many sociological laws have even yet passed the test of falsification.

> Anyway - I said "possessive behaviour" not possessions. You can be possessive even if you have no possessions
> david maybe especially "possessive".
David about 100 years ago E.G. Moore discovered that some problems are 
caused by the careless use of language and they even are solved by 
correcting this. Now I do not think that this is typical for every 
problem but in this case he would have a point. The term 'possessive 
behaviour' can mean 'behaviour motivated by having possessions' or 
'behaviour motivated by wanting possessions' or 'behaviour*as if* 
motivated by having or wanting possessions'. The first and second 
suppose that the one who displays this kind of behaviour, and we  are 
talking about very young infants here, knows what a possession is. If 
this is your argument, you are a Platonist, because then you believe in 
innate ideas. Very few people accept this nowadays, it is more popular 
to be a sociologist than a Platonist, but if this is your game... it is 
a free country.
The third meaning is not very useful, because even a vacuum cleaner 
meets this description.

> As for the big bang - that's just a metaphor.
As a standard expression, yes, as Richard pointed out, but apart from 
that you used it as a hyperbole, a rhetoric exaggeration. Rhetoric 
however muddles often arguments, in this case it introduces an absurdity 
and diverts the emphasis from the human nature, which was the subject of 
your argument.

Erik