Unwarn me, I was falsely warned for no reason.

Prejudices very easily lead to rape, murder, and unmitigated violence.

Thanks for agreeing with me Blurry that prejudice and violence are not the same, not all abhorrent. If I were to prefer white people over black people, that’s not the same as murder, it is not abhorrent as say gutting someone. A bias is not abhorrent, murder is.

Or you might say, both are abhorrent, to different degrees.

Something does not need to be The Most Abhorrent Thing Possible to be abhorrent. Racism is gross, I abhor it, it’s abhorrent.

EDIT:

Beat me to it.

Prejudice = Weakness, cowardice, braindamage.

Prejudice’s are also positive evaluations, people, and you all practice them, both types, the positive and the negative, so whatever liberal delusions float your boat. I’m out.

Wendy, I’m not really sure who you’re disagreeing with, but it doesn’t seem like it’s anyone in this thread. The claim, “Racism is abhorrent” is not inconsistent with the claim, “Murder is more abhorrent than racism”, nor with many other claims about other types of prejudice.

Categorizing those two, murder and racism, the same, as abhorrent, seems fallaciously misleading. To me, you minimize murder, minimize real tragedy, when you add every two bit prejudice in the abhorrent category, that’s all I’m saying. True, anybody can put anything under the sun in the abhorrent category relating it by one degree (Spitting is abhorrent. Ignorance is abhorrent.), but that would not legitimize the use of such a strong word, it only weakens it.

You all have prejudices and you all have abhorrent opinions.

Those are going to come out in the posts.

The only issue is what kind of effect that has on the effectiveness of the forum. Ought a philosophy forum protect the members from abhorrent opinions? Is a philosophy forum effective if it censors those opinions? I don’t think so.

I don’t see how it’s misleading to say that both murder and racism inspire disgust and loathing and/or are repugnant. It’s no more leading than to say that they are both “bad”, “harmful”, “undesirable”, etc. etc. There are a ton of adjectives that describe both murder and racism, none of which is diminished when accurately applied to them, “abhorrent” is one of them.

Or, take it the other way. You seem to be OK describing murder as abhorrent. But is it as abhorrent as a gruesome genocide of all children and adorable animals? I think not. And yet you use the same word for both! How misleading…

First, to be a bit pedantic, we’re not here for opinions, we’re here for philosophy. “I just don’t like X” is a shite piece of philosophy, whether X is “jelly beans” or “black people”.

But I agree that abhorrent ideas, abhorrent reasoning, and arguments for abhorrent conclusions should not be censored when they’re presented in good faith as a subject of philosophical inquiry and analysis.

Genocide is murder. Murder is at the top of the list for all things abhorrent. I don’t throw the word abhorrent around lightly, applying it to things that are undesirable in minor ways. Hate is a strong word and an even stronger idea, make sure it’s used effectively, don’t waste it’s power on numerous ideas that are not hate worthy.

Philosophy is opinions that mirror reality or don’t. I will agree that the why’s of our opinions matter in philosophy so those must be included with our dislikes of X, to provide an argument to support our opinions of how one ought to live. I think more abstract philosophy lays beyond my interest for it’s harder to rectify and apply, it diverges from reality.

Prejudices will always exist. But there are more or less “civil and intelligent” ways in which to discuss them.

After all, serious scholastic research into race, gender and religion is there to be found.

For example, just Google “race and intelligence research”: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ra … 4QgQMIJDAA

These folks may or may not have a political axe to grind, but discussions of this sort can unfold in a more or less civil and intelligent manner.

Or begin the exploration at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Instead, the KT crowd [and their ilk] are more likely to come here with guns blazing. The N word this, the C word that. Huffing and puffing and heaping scorn on all the liberal “retards” and the “morons” who don’t think about race and gender and religion and sexual orientation in exactly the same way that they do.

In fact, I have a word for that. :wink:

“Remember that all is opinion” - Marcus Aurelius

I would have to disagree that “abhorrent ideas” should be disallowed. But then again, if an idea is not being supported through philosophical discourse, then it doesn’t really have any good reason to be posted here. If ideas are merely to be condemned by judgement of good or evil, there is no point in having philosophical discourse. There can’t be both.

Of course that’s just his opinion.

Though in fact he did say this.

If, in fact, he did say that.

There just seem to be things that we can in fact establish as true for all of us; and other things that we cannot.

For example, to the best of my knowledge, Joan Armatrading is in fact

1] black
2] a woman
3] a lesbian

Now, what in fact can we conclude about her for being these things? As opposed to all of the various conflicting political prejudices regarding what it means to be black, to be female and to be gay?

Is it enough that she says she is a woman? Is she in fact a biological woman or a woman in ideology? Perhaps she only identifies with being a woman, who can say anymore what gender another is, since they can identify as hermaphrodite, both, if they so choose. So you may need to go over your list of what is in fact true, iambiguous. She may not be black either…you’d have to read her DnA results to settle that one too.

Like I said, to the best of my knowledge.

But surely there are ways in which to determine if, here and now, she either is or is not black, a woman and gay.

But, in my view, any number of the KT crowd and their ilk here may well argue in turn that she is a “nigger”, a “cunt” and a “fag”.

And they encompass what it means to be these things in language [and in arguments] that bear little resemblance to a “civil and intelligent” exchange.

Some may well, in turn, express these extreme opinions without breaking any of the rules here.

But, as some have noted above, while recognizing the right of folks to express even extreme opinions, we can’t lose sight of the fact that particular folks of color, particular women, particular Jews, Moslems and Christians and particular practitioners of unconventional sexual behaviors, are going to be offended by the language that they use in fulminating against those who do not more or less look like them, think like them and feel like them.

Again, personally, I believe that what we need here is the equivalent of the dungeon. One would have to be a member of ILP to go there. And no one who did not want to would ever have to.

But that’s just me.

It is opinion whether those classifications exist and how the classification is determined.

For example, there are those who argue that there are no races … that there is only the human race. In their opinion, the distinguishing characteristics used to separate people into races either don’t exist or are not significant.

Another example is the current challenge to the definition of man and woman. It is proposed that it not be based on the genitalia between your legs but instead it ought to be based on if you “feel” like a man or woman. The definition based on genitalia was in itself problematic because a surprisingly large number of people are born with ambiguous parts. Maybe the separation into two genders is not appropriate. Just an opinion, of course.

The same sort of questions arise with respect to homosexuality. How many heterosexual encounters could you have before you stop being gay? Can you be gay or straight without having sex? Can you decide one day that you are no longer gay or straight? … Are you not gay that same day?
I saw a movie with a long discussion resulting from one of the characters claiming that he is pansexual. Lots of opinions on what that means.

Are math and logic also opinion? I agree we can have different opinions about the meaning of words or the scope of concepts, but I don’t agree that the application of a well defined concept is a matter of opinion. If I say, “She’s pansexual”, and you say, “No she isn’t”, one possibility is that we mean different things by ‘pansexual’, but another possibility is that one of us is drawing improper inferences from an agreed set of facts.

I thought that there have been debates about maths and what constitutes logic. I seem to remember the 1=.9999999. As far as logic goes, the consistency of the language used seems up for debate when it is applied to actual objects and systems found in reality. Logic kept as an abstract referent works better than once it is applied to an ever changing reality, an actual physical object or system. Are the words used what’s becoming inconsistent with people unable to agree what exists in reality?