It seems we often follow the masses like sheep out of fear of ostracism - we are scared that we will be branded 'the black' sheep and be cast out of the system. And so we carry out wrongful deeds supposedly 'safe' in the knowledge that everyone else around us is doing the same.

Just because everyone else is shitting in their bed, though, does that really mean it's an enjoyable experience for us to do it also?

Something which appears rarely discussed is that if we look at our social system carefully, it often seems that everyone is ostracisizing themselves willfully and purposefully.

When a pedestrian is being attacked by a criminal or suffering some kind of other trauma, people often stand by and watch.

'An englishman's home is his castle'.

'Business and friendship shouldn't be mixed', etc. etc.

We often seem to convince ourselves that we have friends - even a loving partner, and yet how many of them can we really rely on? - To trust them with the things...

From Levinson, J. ed., The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics.

I must grant Zangwill his claim that folk-aesthetics is 'realist', that is, discussed and thought of in such a way that aesthetic judgements have (what he calls) 'realist aspirations' more robust than those of (e.g.) gustatory judgements.

It could be commented that he expects too much of the claim that aesthetic judgements may be better or worse than one another: whilst he claims that previous anti-realistic accounts beg the question against such a possibility (p.68), one could say the same about his assertion of it. (How has it come about that "de gustibus non est disputandum" is now a common platitude as opposed to a phrase viewed with general contempt?) However, I accept that folk-theory — the focus of his essay — may warrant such a brute claim.

In §5, the notion of the quasi-realist solution to the phenomenon of normativity is perhaps give...

Last semester I partook in a postgraduate course in university about Public Relations. Previously, in another university, I studied in depth a philosophical unit of ‘Ethics’. In the unit of ‘Ethics’ I learnt that the closest thing to ‘Public Relations’ ethics was a mixture of Journalism Ethics, Utilitarian Ethics, and Situational Ethics. Now, the b*tch of my Public Relations (Media Relations) course requested that we write a lengthy essay discussing ‘media relations’ ethics. Bear in mind she never studied core fundamental ethics in her whole life, and I graduated in ethics with first class honours. Anyway, I clearly knew that what she wanted us to talk about was established ‘notions’ of ethics like the ones taught in class which comprised of the following parameters of which I had memorized off by heart very quickly within the course:

 Honesty
 Accountability
 Caring for others
 Keeping promises
 Fidelity
 Fairness
 Integrity
 Respect for others
 Pursuit of excellence

Of ...

So it seems the muslim extremists are bombing the greedy capitalists in their posh hotels in India and Indonesia, and the capitalists are paying for the extremists to be bombed back.

Meanwhile those who are not particularly wealthy or religious go about their business (well that's what life here in China (outside of Xinjiang) is like, anyway).

The world has a way of working itself out - it seems the middle path guides one away from excesses, and therefore keeps one safer than those who have more than they could ever need, or dreams of heavenly virgins to be fulfilled.